8111

Neil Lim Sang was born in Jamaica. His family emigrated to Canada when he was six. His dad was diagnosed with ALS and passed when Neil was only fifteen. He was partnered with a Big Brother who had a strong influence on his interest in making art. 

He attended art college and worked with all kinds of traditional media. After finishing there he continued on at Sheridan where he studied both computer graphics and animation. His first jobs were in New York City and Mexico City doing animated flying logos. 

He came to work in Berkeley in the early 1990's  at Rocket Science Games. He later landed a job at ILM in the commercials division where he forged his skills and what he calls his "vfx tourettes". Commercials ran at a breakneck speed and taught Neil how to do great work fast. After seven years Neil left to pursue other opportunities including Sony where he worked on Polar Express doing motion capture, and a tour in Australia on Happy Feet 2. 

Today he works as a senior artist on all kinds of projects. Neil's passion for music fuels his creative drive. He’s an incredible colleague and friend with a positive work ethic and an amazing story. It was so much fun to catch up with Neil and talk about his genuine zest for life.

Habib Zargarpour was born in Iran. He moved to Belgium at an early age (4th grade), moved to the south of France for high school, and Vancouver for university. 

For a time Habib was interested in airplane design but later gravitated towards architecture. Attending Art Center to study industrial design he honed his skills and interests. One of those interests took the form of doing a 3D design for a lawnmower on the computer. His work in the digital space continued to grow. After school he worked for numerous clients doing designs for things like a camcorder for Panasonic. 

Before graduating Habib landed a gig doing visual effects for “Adventures in a Dinosaur City”. He and a group of friends wound up doing three and a half minutes of CG effects for the project by developing their own tools. He later did work on the Roger Corman “Fantastic Four” creating the fire effects for Johnny Storm. 

Some time later, an opportunity to work at ILM came up on “The Mask”. For the next ten years he worked at ILM developing key tools on additional films including; “Twister”, 2 “Star Trek” films, “Star Wars: Episode 1” (the pod race sequence), “The Perfect Storm”, & “Signs”. In 2003, he left to work at Electronic Arts for the next seven years doing realtime rendering for games. He spent some time at Microsoft working on the Xbox team where he began work on the Photon project doing development work for James Cameron and Joe Letteri. He later landed a gig developing realtime previs tools for “The Jungle Book” and “Ready Player One”. 

He worked on “Blade Runner 2049” and “Greyhound” with Digital Monarch Media, which was later acquired by Unity. Today he’s working at Unity developing new techniques and realtime tools for virtual production and working on his own film “Squadron”. 

Habib is absolutely brilliant and one of the nicest people in the business. With every project he’s worked on he’s made an indelible imprint on the industry with boundless enthusiasm and excitement for the medium. 

John Schlag grew up in Baltimore and became the church organ player from the ages of 13 to 17. Everyone thought he'd grow up to become a music major but instead he studied electrical engineering at University of Delaware and later attended Carnegie Melon for his Master's degree. He spent a few years at NYIT and then drove across the country on his motorcycle. He later landed at MacroMind (later to become Macromedia) where he worked with Alex Seiden developing a 3D program that never launched in time. He then landed a job in 1990 at ILM in the computer graphics division on Terminator 2 followed up by Death Becomes Her. John helped develop Viewpaint for Jurassic Park. He helped supervise and set up tools for the crowd scenes in Forrest Gump and the pingpong scenes with the digital pingpong ball. 

After four years at ILM John left to work as a freelance consultant and to spend more time being a dad. John moved to Germany for a few years working as a VFX supervisor on numerous projects and later landed at ESC Entertainment to work on the Matrix sequels. Since then he’s has worked with Nvidia, Sony Imageworks, Digital Domain, Adobe Research, and Google. 

John is a great storyteller and shares his knowledge and perspective on the evolution of digital tools and the immeasurable value of experience.

Robert Bruce, "brucer" was his ILM email nickname, grew up in California. He attended a number of schools and flirted briefly with the idea of becoming a classical guitarist. He eventually landed in Sonoma where he earned an undergraduate degree in Computer Science. Rob later came to work at ILM, but wound up leaving after an unexpected health issue forced him to change gears. He returned to school earning a master's degree in Library Science and began his own career in academia. 

Rob is amazing and we talk about the old days, old friends, and the pros and cons of a life in academia. 

Paul Hill grew up in Arlington, Virginia. He is the youngest of three children and attended catholic school in his youth. He earned a degree in english from the University of Virginia with an emphasis in creative writing. After college he went to work for the US government helping coordinate resettlement of Vietnamese refugees from South Vietnam to the United States. Paul moved to San Francisco and got a job working for Dolby Laboratories as their Creative Director. From there he did a stint at Skywalker Sound and eventually landed at ILM where he would work for the next 16 years. Since ILM, he’s worked on multiple projects including several feature films, commercials, Audi’s website portal, and numerous other projects. 

Paul’s documentary film “Alaska Far Away”, and the new documentary on PepsiMan are available online. Paul Hill is a wonderful human being. Its 100% true that he is the kind of person you always dream of working with. His work ethic, kindness, empathy, and good humor are unparalleled in the business. It was a great pleasure to reconnect with Paul and hear his story. He once even won 25K on Jeopardy! 

Rod Bogart, aka RGB, (the best initials in the biz) grew up in Colorado. His dad worked at IBM and occasionally brought computers home. Computer Science was a natural pursuit and Rod went on to earn his BS and MS degrees. After graduating he spent some time running a visualization lab on the University of Michigan campus. He later worked at PDI in Hollywood where he helped develop procedurally based image processing tools to automate wire removal and the removal of most anything from any shot. He joined the ILM R&D group in 1995 and helped develop the Open EXR standard with Florian Kainz, Drew Hess, and Piotr Stanczyk which went on to win a Scientific and Technical Achievement Academy Award. Years later at Pixar he developed their color science pipeline. Rod then moved to NYC where he worked for HBO on their HDR tools and workflows. Today he is the senior software engineer on the virtual production team at Epic. He’s been at ground zero of virtually every major development in the business for the last 30 years.

Rod is one of the most kind and intelligent people I've ever worked with. He has an uncanny ability to take highly complex technical concepts and explain them in terms anyone can follow and understand. It was great fun to reconnect with him and hear his story. 

Gonzalo Escudero grew up in Madrid. He went to school for architecture and later landed a job doing motion graphics at a small local firm. He attended SIGGRAPH and wound up with a job offer to come work at ILM. After working as a Technical Director on a number of high profile projects Gonzalo left ILM to pursue a career as an actor in New York City. Gonzalo shares his story about taking risks, following your dreams, and giving yourself space to grow as a person. You might even say, “Change in plans…”.

Natasha Devaud was born and raised in Switzerland. As a little girl she learned how to knit before she knew how to write her own name. She earned a degree in Education and moved to Palo Alto in the US to work as a nanny and learn english. She returned to Switzerland to enroll in an accelerated program in fashion design. An intriguing and fateful visit to a lab at ECAL in Lausanne led to a Master's Degree in computer graphics. Natasha travelled to SIGGRAPH in Chicago to serve as a volunteer and went the following year to Anaheim where she was hired by Rhythm & Hues. She was later hired by ILM where she worked for the next 22 years. Her credits include several Star Wars, Transformers, Harry Potter and Marvel movies. Natasha was my office mate for several years at ILM in the 1990's. She's always been a great friend and her story of happy accidents, passion, drive, and luck is amazing.

R. Christopher White grew up in Dale City, Virginia and always had an interest in computers. After seeing some rigid body dynamics during a Summer program at George Washington University he was hooked. Chris earned his BFA in Computer Arts at Syracuse University. He went on to graduate school at University of Illinois’ Electronic Visualization Lab in Chicago and applied for the ILM internship for the fourth time and got in developing tools for Twister. He would up working at ILM for the next seven years. He later left, finished his graduate degree and soon headed for New Zealand where he’s been ever since. 

Today, Chris is a Visual Effects Supervisor with over 25 years of industry experience. From feature films and streaming media to special venue projects, he has a passion for making engaging environments, creatures, and effects. His work has been recognized with multiple awards from the Visual Effects Society, along with Academy Award, BAFTA, and Emmy nominations.

Some of his more notable work includes Twister, Star Wars Episode I, Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King, King Kong, Avatar, Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes, and The Umbrella Academy. He is currently working on the Avatar sequels at Weta Digital in New Zealand.

Enthusiastic about giving back to the next generation of artists, he enjoys guest lecturing at universities and conferences. As an active member of InclusionFX, Chris offers young people from traditionally underrepresented groups mentoring and career guidance in visual effects.

Mark Siegel grew up in Minneapolis loving science fiction and monster movies. He was an avid reader of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine and the articles sparked his imagination. He earned a degree in Theatre from the University of Minnesota and attended the Ringing Bros. Clown College. His stage and circus experience taught him skills for working with prosthetics and make up. He landed a job at Universal Studios as part of a Verne Langdon monster makeup show for tourists. This eventually led to work as a sculptor and fx artist working on multiple films including Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Dune, Ghostbusters, and many others. He was later hired by ILM where he worked for decades on numerous projects in both traditional and digital formats. Today he is retired and living in the Bay Area. Mark is a great storyteller. He’s had an amazing career spanning many disciplines that all inform his work in fascinating and unexpected ways.