About

I'm a mechatronics engineer with a focus in software. Previously I was a Camera and Motion Control Engineer at LAIKA.

Animation Tracker (Java)

Animator: Brian Hansen, LC: John Ashlee, AC: Drew Fortier

I wrote tracking software which can be seen running in the background of this hero animation pass (just right of the greenscreen). This software used data from Kuper and Dragonframe. This software was used for almost all of the elephant shots, which comprised one of the most technically demanding sequences LAIKA has produced.

Quilt Generator (C#, Unity)

This is a generative design iPhone app I made using Unity. It lets the user design 'flying geese' style quilts by sampling colors from the onboard camera.

KDI (Python, Arduino)

At LAIKA, I refactored a critical part of our stage software, which mediates between motion control and capturing images. Previously all control logic was inside the hardware box, which made it difficult to update in a stage environment. I also wrote unit-tests, a system testing matrix, and documentation for users and developers. The application can be seen in the photo below – look on the right side of the screen, it has a green border around it. The hardware portion is sitting below the keyboard with a green display. Another member of my team rewrote the firmware code for those physical boxes. The bright yellow box is a Witness Trigger, a specialty hardware solution I made for triggering multiple Dragonframe instances from a master animation station.

daWinchi (Autodesk Inventor, Mill)

LC: Frank Passingham, AC: Gavin Brown

I designed and machined this positionally accurate winch system for LAIKA's stop motion film, Missing Link. It drove the train and allowed for repeat-passes.

Twiddler, Lens adapters (Android, Autodesk Inventor)

This shot shows a tablet-based animation tracking app I made, and a specialty lens adapter which I designed. Our in-house machinists produced a batch of them.

Telemetrics Control (C#, Unity)

I bought this quiet, heavy servo-driven pan tilt head from surplus. Using Unity, I created an interface to control it over a serial port.

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