Resume

Contact Information

William Petruccelli

Location: Sydney, Australia

Mobile AU: +61 430 125 746

Mobile IT: +39 339 773 1603

Home: www.williampetruccelli.com

Professional Objectives

As a Character TD my goal in production is to give the animators the best tools possible to create high quality animation.

Professional Experience

Character FX Technical Director

Animal Logic, Sydney, Australia
February 2010 – present

VFX Feature:

“Sucker Punch” (2011)

  • Supported the development and maintenance of rigs for creatures, digi-doubles and props assets
  • Cloth simulation (Softimage XSI, Syflex)
  • Characters’ grooming (Maya, Proprietary Hair System)
  • Shot based Character Effects

Feature Animated:

“Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole”

  • Had fun in the Character Finaling department

Character Technical Artist

Krome Studios, Brisbane, Australia
March 2009 – February 2010

Games:

“Unreleased Title”

My main duties have been to optimize old character rigs and create new rig setups as per need. I wrote a batch exporter to export maya assets to the game, a pymel based standalone animation transfer and I also developed rigging and animation tools.

“Blade Kitten”

Cinematics team.

Research and Development:

“Global Rig API”

  • Object Oriented based procedural rig system (PyMel)
  • Pipeline, Rigging and Animation tools (Python, MEL, Python Maya API)
  • Prototype rig

My main duty has been developing a Python Object Oriented based procedural rig system completely from scratch. Starting with the analysis and design of the system till it’s implementation in production.

Character Technical Director

Big Grin Productions, Denver, Colorado
August 2008 – March 2009

Animated TV Series Pilot:

“Ian e Maxx - Earth Unplugged”

  • Procedural Rig development (MEL, Python)
  • Characters’ setup
  • Character Picker R&D (Python, PyQt4)

I’ve worked as freelance on this project.

Rigging TD

Axis Animation, Glasgow, UK
October 2008 – October 2008

Commercials:

“The One” (Merle - Robert Wiseman Dairies)

Technical Animator

Eurocom ltd, Derby, UK
May 2008 – August 2008

Games:

“James Bond 007: Quantum of Solace” (Activision)

R&D:

“Eurocom Mannequins”

  • Mannequins’ setup
  • Anatomy Study (Proprietary MoCap Techniques)

My main duty has been developing and implementing advanced deformation techniques on male and female mannequins.

These are being used as base and reference for next-gen games biped characters. I’ve worked closely with Motion Capture, R&D, Animation and Modeling departments.

Character TD

Fulmini & Leopardi, Pisa, Italy
March 2008 – April 2008

Animated TV Series:

“Taratabong - Il mondo dei Musicilli”

  • Characters’ setup

Senior Character Rigger

Rainbow CGI, Rome, Italy
February 2007 - February 2008

Features:

“Roma - The movie” (R&D)

  • Characters’ rigging and skinning tests
  • Character Picker development (Python, MEL)
  • MEL, Python scripts

“Winx Club - The Secret of the Lost Kingdom”

  • Characters’ rigging and skinning
  • Cloth and hair setup
  • MEL scripts and proprietary tools developing

Maya Instructor

NEMO NT Academy, Florence, Italy
2006 - 2008

Teaching on the advanced Maya course holding classes focused on character setup and MEL scripting. Duties include creating documentation and didactic contents material such as video tutorials, reference rigs and batch scripts.

3D Generalist, Compositor

3DSign, Florence, Italy
2005 - 2006

Responsible for modeling, animation and other production and post-production tasks in projects ranging from documentaries and interactive systems for museums to advertising reels and 2D-3D videos and animations.

Skills

Technical Skills

  • Extensive experience in rigging and skinning characters
  • Extensive experience in procedural rig development
  • Extensive Experience in Object Oriented Programming and API development
  • Extensive experience in rigging, pipeline and animation tools
  • Extensive experience in Maya node-based architecture
  • Experience in feature films and games pipeline
  • Experience in Maya dynamics, nCloth, Hair and Fur modules

Tools

  • Maya, Softimage XSI, Syflex
  • Python, PyQt4, PyMel, MEL, basic Maya Python API and C++

Education

B.A. in Industrial Design

Università degli Studi di Firenze, Italy
2004 - 2006

Faculty of Architecture - Curriculum in Visual Design

Quote 110/110 Cum Laude

Degree Thesis: “Rigging for Feature Animation“

Personal Interests

  • Music, cinema, figurative arts, boxing, skateboarding