About
A bit about me…
I was born in Montreal, Canada, which is also where I currently live. From an early age, cartoons, movies, and video games played an important role in my life. My first big inspiration was 1994's TV show "ReBoot". Soon after, when I was 11 years old, I watched my first CG feature-length movie, Pixar’s Toy Story, in theatres and thought to myself “That’s what I want to do when I grow up”.
2004 - 2015
Skip ahead to 2004, with a month left until graduation from InterDec College's 3D Animation program, my career as a Rigger began among Ubisoft Montreal's Cinematics Department. While there, I had the chance to work on several cinematic projects for some of Ubisoft’s biggest franchises such as Far Cry, Splinter Cell, Prince of Persia, Rainbow Six, and Assassin’s Creed.
In February 2009, I was offered the opportunity to train a newly hired team of Riggers at Ubisoft Chengdu in China. My mandate was to build and teach a 1-month course, while overcoming the language barrier. The new recruits would have to learn to rig in 3D Studio Max and understand the limitations of working with a game engine for the Nintendo DS. Following their training, I took on the role of Rigging Lead for the remaining 5 months of my contract, and assisted the team on their first game projects: TMNT: Arcade Attack and Petz.
After returning to Montreal, I joined the team at Digital Dimension in October 2009. There I got to work on pre-rendered cinematics trailers for some of Warner Bros. Games’ new titles, such as Mortal Kombat, F.E.A.R. 3, and The Lord of The Rings: War In The North. In 2011, our team worked on the CG and VFX for a full-feature film starring Liam Neeson called The Grey.
In December 2011, I was hired at WB Games Montreal to work on my first AAA title for Xbox 360 and PS3. The production of Batman: Arkham Origins, which last 18 months, was challenging yet incredibly gratifying. Soon after, a collaboration with Rocksteady Studios gave me the opportunity to work on the DLC skins and episodic content for Batman: Arkham Knight.
Until that point, my work as a Rigger primarily involved setting up biped and facial rigs on characters, building custom rigs (for vehicles, animals and props), weighting the geometry meshes (aka skinning), handling cloth and physics simulations, establishing rigging pipelines (including productivity and automation tools), and offering technical support for the animators and other departments in the studio.
2015 - Present
While our industry was making leaps and bounds in terms of story-telling, game design, and visual fidelity, I felt that believable performances remained an aspect that was lagging behind. Since narrative games are my favorite genre to play, I have always felt passionate about creating genuine and emotional performances that resonate with audiences. I had always been fascinated with facial animation, but it was only around 2016 that my focus began to shift away from rigging and I began exploring different technical solutions.
While still at WB Games Montreal, a collaboration with NetherRealm Studios made a childhood dream come true when I got the chance to animate the face of Leonardo for Injustice 2’s TMNT DLC Fighter Pack.
In March 2018, I joined Eidos Montreal, where I was given the opportunity to build a new facial animation pipeline for Marvel’s Guardians of The Galaxy. This was the most ambitious project I had embarked on yet, and the expectations were incredibly high. Since its release, the positive feedback has been overwhelming! Our team’s passion and hard work has definitely paid off. To get a sample of what fans said about our work, check out this compilation of Tweets.
As of November 2022, I am working as Lead Cinematic Animator at Nesting Games, a relatively new studio located in Quebec City. The project is exciting and ambitious, and I can’t wait to talk about it in the near future!
