MPC Titles

I worked for MPC Vancouver for more than 8 years, 7 of them as head of the 3DDMP / Environments department.

As far as I can tell, I hired 154 people into the department during my time there, around 40 for their first ever role in VFX.

The studio closed it’s doors for good in December 2019

MPC Ad Astra 2

This shot, like a lot of shots on the project, was touched by a great many people. I believe it was finished in MPC London, based on a Terragen setup created by myself and the environment lead, Scott Russell.

MPC Dark Tower

The Dark Tower – 2018

I created a library of textures for the titular ‘Dark Tower’ which were used in a ‘texturebombing’ shader by Tim Crowson. The background sky is a matte painting by Matt Ellis, based on photos I took in the South Pacific.

The landscape was a ‘2am’ shot, created in less than 24hrs alongside Michael Gardiner and Eduardo Lopez. It never made the final cut…

Leap Year Apartment

Boston Apartment Skyline.  The script called for the apartment (despite being on a higher floor) to feel crowded by the surrounding buildings.

MPC – TFH

The Finest Hours – 2015

I was again lead artist on this show, as well a HoD of the whole of the Vancouver environments department.  I created several coastline matte paintings for this show, as well as some skydomes.  This is one that I worked on at a rate of about 1hr/week for the duration of the show – a fully digital grass bank, blowing in the wind.

 

MPC Jersey Boys 1

Jersey Boys – 2013

This was my first show as CG supervisor, working with Greg Butler as VFX supe.  I oversaw the creation of around 120 shots, which wasn’t a large number – but were split across around 20 sequences, with only a handful of shots in each.  This is one of the few shots I worked on personally – the bowling alley sign which gives the band it’s name.

MPC Dark Shadows

Dark Shadows – 2011

I was made lead artist for the first time mid-way through this show, when the existing lead left.  I set up the WPP (world position pass) projection templates for the cliffs, as well as the Liverpool docks skyline.  I also created the cliff-top as a matte painting, and used a script to re-create a Vue forest ecosystem as a card setup in Nuke.

Neverland stone bridge

A lot of the work on this show was turning exterior shots (from Ireland) into the fantastical landscapes of ‘Neverland’.  Many of the forest shots were supposed to contain deep canyons with natural stone bridges, but were simply shot with cones or small pieces of bluescreen on the ground.

Neverland white wood 1

First shot of the ‘White Wood’ environment.  The simple sets and the odd design for the forest made these shots very tricky to create.

Sanctuary lotus headquarters

Lotus Defense Corps Headquarters from Ep. 2 ‘Uprising’.

Architecture of the main buildings is loosely based on the old ‘Apple’ campus.