Credentials
Animation depends on a small coterie of exceptionally talented professionals who have the ability to understand artistic needs and perform highly technical applications while keeping up with the demands of production. In her veteran role of Artistic Coordinator, Pam excels in these areas. Such is her acumen that she is often called upon to solve problems where others stall. Pam’s broad based production, artistic and technical skills allow her to effortlessly serve as the liaison between the Creative staff, Production Management, technologies and Finance to anticipate and/or resolve production challenges. She is driven in equal measure by both quality and efficiency and thrives on good communication. Leveraging her Visual Development skills, Art Directors find their artistic visions becoming a production reality, even while budget considerations are maintained. Her work standards have proven that she is dedicated, thorough, highly motivated and a dependable individual that can handle any task.
Named 2020 ToonBoom Ambassador
https://www.toonboom.com/community/ambassador-program
Professional Summary
Highly adept at artistic and technical trouble-shooting in all stages of animation production. Devise elegant solutions for visual challenges, track/manage complexities, help turn the director's vision into a production reality while keeping the creative scope of animation projects within financial boundries.
In my over 20 years of production experience, with time at Walt Disney Feature Animation as well as Premise Entertainment, I have reduced costs and streamlined production artistic and technical pipelines as well as tracking processes to make them more efficient. Due to my dexterity in successfully managing production resources and challenges, one Associate Producer affectionately refers to me as her own private ‘SWAT’ team!
The leadership role of Artistic Coordinator at Disney Animation utilized my skills in art and production management capitalizing on my ability to undertake a varied array of tasks including artistic and technical troubleshooting and planning to help turn the director's vision into a production reality. Serving as the point person for resolving production concerns, I also worked to create a common ‘language’ between production management, the artistic crew, technologies and Finance to better facilitate communication regarding use of production resources and to track, manage and control production complexities. This system also provided numeric complexity data to Finance allowing them to more effectively cost out scenes and budget for future projects.
High Profile Projects
•It's Doug the Pug! Sizzle piece • Princess and the Frog • Curious George • Lilo & Stitch
• Mulan • John Henry
Professional Experience
Animation Production Consultant- Freelance 2015 - Present
High-end animation production consulting - specializing in Visual Effects work, production pipeline/process streamlining and providing a multi-faceted skill set as a resource to assist in production organizing needs and the timely completion of projects. Skill-sets include (but are not limited to); Scene Planning, Color Styling, Ink and Paint Colorist, Final Check, Shot Finaling as well as Visual Effects.
Freelance Graphic Designer- IDEA Orlando Inc. 2014 - Present
Design logos, graphic elements and create print-ready presentation books for branded destinations for the cruise, hospitality, entertainment, and tourism industries.
Artistic Coordinator/Visual Effects Supervisor - Premise Entertainment/Project Firefly 2004 – 2014
Hands-on artistic and technical trouble-shooting and planning throughout production of traditional hand drawn 2-D, FLASH and 3-D animation, for features, television and multimedia based projects.
Evaluate software and make recommendations for purchase and use in production. Train all users.
Communicate with partnering studios to articulating/resolving questions or concerns.
Devised solution for clean-up scanning issue on “Curious George” which drastically minimized number of scenes returning to clean-up to be re-drawn.
Quality control for all scenes resulting in an over 95% initial approval rate for final color on “The Princess and the Frog”–no fixes required.
Identified scenes requiring special attention “The Princess and the Frog.” Monitored shot progress and rectified any issues to keep scenes moving forward.
Reduced workload of the Layout Department by half on animated short “Farm Force”.
Responsible for aesthetic, technical and creative aspects of digital production for 9 minute short “Farm Force” including visual effects, camera work and delivery of final color.
Created ‘BrainTrust’ notes for each sequence and scene outlining the manner in which artwork was to be created/handled, allowing the art director to deal with other critical concerns.
Technical Art Director - Studio Kinate 2011
Created and implemented sleek and efficient pipelines, processes and procedures for all aspects of this start-up virtual studio specializing in 2D animation for feature films, broadcast and government agencies. Established an entirely ‘paperless’ animation workflow on “Introduction to C-DEW” training films for the U.S. Navy, Office of Naval Research.
Maintained artistic vision and technical excellence for all phases of production.
Directed training in studio.
Artistic Coordinator/Assistant Artistic Coordinator/VFX Supervisor Director - Walt Disney Feature Animation 1996 – 2004
Delivered animated short “John Henry” 17% under the allotted production budget. Accomplished savings through careful planning of the pipeline, pro-active definition of production processes and timely resolution of issues.
Resolved process, artistic and technical issues impacting production resources. One such solution resulted in a savings of between 8 to 80 work hours per scene during production of “Lilo & Stitch”.
Designed visuals and techniques used for Title scene for “Mulan” and the “Girl Worth Fighting For” song.
Facilitated development of Disney’s proprietary software CHIP. Created, ran and documented testing scenarios.
Created and maintained production complexity documents tracking Animation, Clean-up, Effects and digital complexity levels. Documents used as tools by Production Management and Finance to ensure the best possible allocation of production resources.
Department Head of Image Processing - Walt Disney Animation Special Projects 1991 – 1996
Supervisor of department tasked with creating the look for all types of animated Disney-related projects.
Work closely with clients as the representative for the Special Projects production team.
Established production pipelines and processes to suit the specific needs of each project.
VFX Supervisor, Scene Planning, Color Styling and Shot Finaling.
Designed training programs for department.
Color Stylist and Production Artist - Walt Disney Animation Special Projects 1989-1991
Worked closely with Art Director to establish the color palettes and visual effects for sequences and scenes.
Professional Highlights
Siggraph Conference Speaker - Topic; “Compositing in the Digital Film Industry: Case Studies in Film Production”.
Disney’s “I Have an Idea” Award - Awarded 2 Disney honors for Animation cel designs which were subsequently produced and sold at the Disney-MGM Studios Animation Gallery.
Disney CHIP Software Development – Facilitated development of Disney’s proprietary software. Liaison between Florida production crew and Technologies Software Development team. Wrote functional specifications document articulating production needs for the software. Primary alpha and beta tester for the CHIP project. Devised and ran regression test scenarios. Developed testing scenarios and trained all CHIP users.
Software Proficiencies
ToonBoom; Harmony, Animate, TVPaint, Adobe Creative Suite; Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, AfterEffects, SketchUp, Microsoft Office Suite, Aspera, Tactic, Maya, Disney’s proprietary animation software; CHIP, CAPS and FAME.
Education
Bachelor of Arts Degree; Art Major. Thiel College, Greenville, Pennsylvania