Steve Reach

A graduate of Full Sail University and class valedictorian in the BS degree program for Computer Animation who love to breath life into characters while telling a story through dynamic and entertaining camera compositions and motion.

I love to entertain, make the audience feel the emotion of the characters, and create a sense of purpose in what the viewer sees through the camera.

One of my greatest pleasures is surprising the viewer with a piece of content they were not expecting.

While attending Full Sail University, I was offered and accepted a short-term role as a dinosaur animator with a small company called Orbis Leadership and Management who were working on a dinosaur simulator.  This was my first experience with working on rigs for import into a game engine.

Shortly after graduating from Full Sail, I began working at CFL Ad Group using their custom character rigs which are avatars for the client and football players that are contracted with his business.

I animated these characters in either alpha to composite them into live film for interaction with people and/or environments, or for full CG scenes that I create for the purpose of entertainment and creating a story with the end goal of advertising for the client. 

During this time, I had the opportunity to learn some After Effects and experiment with expanding my Maya skillset in order to push my knowledge, including fluid simulations, cloth, and working with FBX animations for skeletal matching to these characters, despite not being built for this purpose. These types of limitations never stopped me from making it work. 

My most relevant education is Full Sail University, as previously mentioned, where I took classes related to many aspects of the animation pipeline.

I now have basic knowledge of rigging, UV mapping, MoCap, compositing, lighting/shading in Arnold after starting with Mental Ray as the curriculum was updated mid-course.  Advanced knowledge of modeling with a career discipline in Character Animation and lip-sync.