Based in Toronto, Ontario.
Currently: senior motion designer at alter ego.
I’m a motion designer and art director based in Toronto. I started out as a Calgary kid with a family computer and too much curiosity, and I’ve been chasing the craft side of making things ever since.
Long Version
I was born and raised in Calgary. I was a suburbs kid during the week and a mountain kid on weekends, learning to ski and exploring the wilds of Alberta and BC. Then in 1995 I found the internet and was hooked. The family computer became my gateway to art, music and film. I hung out in weird IRC channels and almost certainly downloaded a few viruses which led to panicked 2-AM reformatting sessions. My parents were incredibly supportive of their weird, arty, digital son.
After high school I did a four-year BFA in New Media at the University of Lethbridge. Being in an art program in southern Alberta in your early twenties is almost impossible to describe. The partying was extremely hard, but the art always crept in. One night the entire basement of a house party was a cardboard-box playhouse maze. Another night there was a band downstairs with someone screaming lyrics out of a random book they found in the room. The next night, a full custom-built halfpipe mass decorated with paint.
In my second last year, a small group of equally passionate film nerds and I made a short film called Inside Charlie. It was an all-consuming affair for students with no budget so we called in a lot of favors. We ended up organizing the first annual Lethbridge Student Film Fest. (I think there was a second one?) In my last year I did an independent study on found typography in Lethbridge and printed it as a book. Back in 2006 that meant sending files directly to a printer in Asia and I’m fairly sure faxing something related to payment.
By then I’d found my real passion in video and motion design and two things lit me up. One was Justin Harder, whose work was oozing pop culture, glam, rock and sex. Pure eye candy. The other was threeleggedlegs, who were doing something I’d never seen: showing the process. Right next to the finished work, they showed how and why it got made. To this day I haven’t seen another studio take the process as seriously as the result. It’s what I still want to strive for especially now that anyone can create anything at any time.
For my first real job hunt, I burned my reel onto DVDs, stomped the labels (remember that?), packed them in clear jewel cases and mailed them to studios I thought were rad. Rare Method, a Calgary agency, called. I was shooting and editing videos mostly of talking-CEO heads but with the occasional chance to open After Effects and make something fun. Next came Sajak & Farki, a small Calgary design studio where the attention to detail was a crash course that trained my eye. I was surrounded by incredible talent.
All the while, I was eyeing other studios at night. I’d stay up late after being out late with friends, cutting my reel on an old MacBook from a mix of personal and corporate work (nothing’s changed there) and browsing the bookmarks of all the studios I loved which, as I noticed, were mostly in Toronto or Vancouver. Eventually I took the plunge and left Calgary for Toronto with my girlfriend (now wife) to a city where we knew no one. I worked as an art director at ad agencies, pitching ideas, getting buy-in, and always pushing for something a little funnier and a little less safe. Sometimes they bought it. Often they didn’t. Motion kept tugging at me while I made decks and microsites, until I finally landed in a purely motion role at Studio Feather in its very early days, just me, the owner and one producer. That led me to where I am now, Alter Ego. I loved the change. Returning to craft-based work is where I truly shine.
These days I’m still chasing the same things. I like pushing graphic design to feel more contemporary, and I like bringing people into the process instead of handing them a finished thing at the end. I’m told I’m easier to work with because of it.
I still live in Toronto’s west end and, like any Torontonian, I love it and grumble about it in equal measure but its quirks and challenges are what make it great and no two people are ever the same.
University of Lethbridge
alter ego post, toronto ontario
2017 - present
Art Director / Motion Designer
Studio Feather, toronto ontario
2016 - 2017
Art Director
Mirum, toronto ontario
2013 - 2016
Art Director
Dashboard, toronto ontario
2012 - 2013
Interactive Motion Designer
Sajak & Farki, calgary alberta
2009 - 2011
Video Editor / Motion Designer
Rare Method, calgary alberta
2007 - 2009
Presentation
Art Direction
Quoting
Leading projects
Guiding junior talent
Creative producing
Bilingual in french & english
2D & 3D