I started at The Art Institute of Pittsburgh in January of 1984 in the Visual Communications program. I was hired at the graduation portfolio review by a small company in West Virginia named Bright of America, a specialty paper products and gift company. My responsibilities there included design and layout of product catalogs as well as many of the product lines, photo direction of catalog shoots, photo retouching (the old fashioned way) some illustration, and general paste up work (again the old fashioned way).

I left BofA in 1990 and moved back to Pittsburgh. The next two years I was doing mainly freelance design/illustration work, I also bought my first computer during this period and moved most of my design and some of my illustration work to the digital realm.

In 1992, I was contacted by Dave DiBella from The Art Institute of Pittsburgh Placement office who reminded me that I had put animation as one of my areas of interest on my file and inquired as to if I would be interested in interviewing for a company who needed an animator. I interviewed and was subsequently hired by North Coast as a broadcast Graphics Artist, then moved into 3D animation as well as visual effects when they bought the first visual effects system in the city, a Discreet Flame system, in 1994.

I was self trained on both Visual effects/compositing, and 3D animation although it must be noted that everyone was self trained back then as there were no schools teaching the skills, the field was too young.

In 2001, I left North Coast and started Animal along with several other local post production professionals. Animal is a little over 4 years old now, it's been an interesting few years. We offer shooting, editing, 3D animation, and visual effects services to a growing range of clients and have completed award winning work for agency partners both locally and nationally.