Tell us a bit about how you got started on your journey into the world of 3D.
“I was born in the USA but grew up on the island of Corsica (France). The French word for a computer-generated image is image de synthèse. I remember the news anchor saying, “the objects you see on screen do not exist, they were synthetised on the screen by a machine.” This is a quaint concept now, but it was revolutionary at the time. When I got to the College for Creative Studies in Detroit (CCS), I took my first 3D Alias class. It was in a very mysterious computer graphics lab. It was always completely dark, full of very colourful machines I had never seen before, Silicon Graphics Indigos running a weird OS (Unix). When I started tumbling and moving around in the CG world, I was hooked. You could say I never stopped tumbling.
Tell us a little about your career journey.
After all my early schooling in France, I went back to the USA. I studied mechanical engineering at the University of Virginia with the goal of working with cars. My third year, a Ford executive came to present the new Mustang on campus. He told me about car design and CCS. Remember, that was way before the Internet. I graduated but my mind was made up to go to Detroit. Studying industrial design, I became handy with 3D, and I could not get enough of it.
I got an internship and later a job at a CG supplier in a Detroit suburb called Digital Image. If you are a student reading this, my first advice is to pay attention to the world. I did not. The economy was slowing down, and I was laid off, completely caught off guard. I had no network at the time, no portfolio, and no CV ready. In a time before LinkedIn, I did not have a list of people I could call. I did not go to shows and presentations to build my network. That was a huge mistake and I vowed this would never happen again.
I went back to France for a year to teach 3D modelling at the Institut Superieur de Design in the North. Talking about making connections, that tie helped me recruit students at that school years later. I loved teaching but I still wanted to make it in Detroit, so I went back. Six months later, after a glorious stint at McDonald’s, I got a break and started as a contract 3D modeller at General Motors Design. That was the dream job for me. Fast forward a dozen years, I was not moving up the ranks. On my job hunt, I found out that Tata Motors in the UK was looking for a new digital modelling team leader. If you are going to change it up, you might as well go big.
My family and I moved to the UK in August 2014. I spent almost 7 years there, first as team leader and then as senior manager in modelling, rendering and animation. A year after COVID, Tata Motors went through a massive restructuring, and I was made redundant. That time, I had the Internet and a lot more experience, but I had everything ready: CV, portfolio, and people to contact. I contacted an old friend in California working at a startup and I gave a throwaway line “if you need any help.” They did! COVID made me aware of a few things.
First, I really enjoyed working from home. Second, it was now validated beyond any doubt and revolutionized the job market. Even better, round the clock work could be a competitive advantage if companies managed it well. I was given tasks and only one directive: hand them off completed at your close of business day. I could walk the dog, have a coffee in town with my wife, nobody cared. It was a great period to be honest. I was very well compensated.
The guys in California were very cool to work with and they had complete trust in me because of my experience. I was having a fun time with my family. However, it was not going to last forever, and I was not meeting anyone new in my PJs. Then Robin Oldroyd, who I met when I was at Tata, reached out and asked me if I would be interested in working for Autodesk. I jumped at the opportunity. The last two years with Autodesk have been great.
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