My Work - it's what I do

Here's a sampling of my work. Unless explicitly stated I did NOT do the design or the front-end code. Code samples are over in the toolbox.

Fluid Smoke Composite

This scene was produced in Houdini using volumetric fluid effects to simulate the smoke. This final composite was assembled in Fusion.

Couch Vaporize

I used Houdini to vaporize this couch by "eating" the model with an animated boolean and emmiting particles from the end of the disappearing geometry.

Tornado Particle System

This is an example of a procedural particle system created in Houdini. The system will run for the entire length of the timeline by dynamically generating the particles and the motion.

Volumetric Fluid Smoke

I created this simple fluid smoke in Houdini using the smoke volume fluid container. The DOP network contains a uniform field with noise to simulate wind.

High Dynamic Range Image Light Probes

HDR photography has gotten a lot of attention in the recent years but before it was available in Photoshop Paul Debevec at USC had been experimenting with creating light probes using HDRI methods. This allowed the lighting of a physical environment to be recorded and, in turn, be used to light a 3D scene. I created these probes at ETSU by photographing a silver garden gazing globe and applying the resulting HDRI as a texture in Maya to be used as image based lighting with Mental Ray.

TimeSpace 2.0

"TimeSpace, a Washington Post project, is a coverage mapping framework that displays content from multiple sources in space (via a map) and time (via a time line)." -PBS

I was fortunate enough to develop version 2 from the ground up and learned a lot from the experience. The heart of the system is a set of scripts that scrape content from RSS feeds around the web, categorizes them using Open Calais, geocodes them, and stores them in a PostgreSQL database. All of this is running on Django with all supporting scripts written in Python.

See TimeSpace 2 in action!
TimeSpace Sorry, no link available.

2 Gals Speech Products

For this client I created a brand new design that integrates with an open source CMS delivering a clean, professional look and feel with a powerful back end allowing the owners to manage all the content on their site with ease. I took the opportunity to try out a hosted shopping cart solution which allowed the site to be developed outside of a bloated e-commerce platform but still retain the required functionality.

Visit 2galsspeechproducts.com
2 Gals Speech Products Click image to visit.

Post Alert

"Post Alert is a site-wide notification system that will deliver breaking news and special projects to Washington Post users."

Post Alert, or Toast as it was dubbed during development, is powered by Django and uses the default Django Admin to allow editors and producers to schedule "slices". The entries are stored in a PostgreSQL database and retrieved with Python and published as static, cached JSON. A cron job publishes the file and clears the cache.

Post Alert Sorry, no link available.

West Virginia Speech, Language & Hearing Association

The website for WVSHA is a mashup of Django and a PHP CMS that gives the client online event registration and payment along with a member directory that is easy to update. Design, XHTML & CSS by Greg Davidson.

Visit wvsha.org
West Virginia Speech, Language & Hearing Association Click image to visit.

Fluid Media Viewer

"A 3-D media navigation tool that allows for hierarchies and multiple types of displays. Built on Flash Actionscript 3 and using Papervision 3D, Fluid can display numerous videos in 3D space allowing users to navigate through them without scrolling."

I created the back end tools in Django and Python to organize the media and present the resulting player configuration to Flash in JSON. All the flash work was done by Jesse Foltz.

See Fluid in onBeing
Fluid Media Viewer Click image to visit.

Threaded Comments

"A threaded and user-moderated comment system that provides a visual representation of the most valuable comments and conversations among users. The comments are cataloged in a database and displayed via Flash. The most liked comments become larger and conversations (replies) gravitate to the center."

Threaded Comments (Web Com) leverage the power of modified preorder tree traversal to store and retrieve the hierarchical information in the database efficiently. One of the more elegant features is in the moderation system: the I-Filter. The I-Filter tracks moderated comments and continues to display any reported comment to the original user as if it were never reported until an editor approves or removes the comment. The offending comment is not, however, viewable to anonymous or other registered users. This is done in an attempt to slow down trolling by allowing the user to perceive that their offensive comment is still live when in reality it is not. Flash interface by Jesse Foltz.

Threaded Comments Sorry, no link available.

Hudson Valley Cabinet

I designed and built a simple site to provide a refreshed, elegant style for their web presence. There wasn't much information they wished to convey on their website so this site went from layout to live in a couple hours.

Visit Hudson Valley Cabinet
Hudson Valley Cabinet Click image to visit.

Micro Sites

Micro sites are essentially blogs. Built in Django, they allow the development team to rapidly skin and deploy a fast, lightweight, note-style page. The micro sites framework was part of a successful short run ad campaign and continues to power Innovations in News.

Micro Sites Sorry, no link available.