Nicholas Harvey(VII)
- Animation Department
- Visual Effects
Nicholas Andrew Harvey was born on April 21st, 1995 in Dallas, Texas at 8 PM to his loving parents and his supportive sister. He grew up watching cartoons, goofy off with friends and going on adventures in Boy Scouts and trips. A lot of his life and online experiences influenced his sense of humor and drive to want to be the best in the animation industry.
It was during fifth grade that some of his neighbors down the street introduced him to Homestarrunner.com. A weird, but hilarious online series that had weird animal characters, as the Brothers Chaps would call them, perform different jokes through a variety show of Toons, Shorts, and Checking E-mails or "Sbemails!" :)
When given the chance Nick jumped to any way to want to learn about how to make a cartoon. In high school, at R. L Turner, he took an animation class and got certified in Adobe Flash CS6 which allowed him to carry over tips and tricks on how to animate from OneyNg, SpazKid3D and Harry Partridge of NewGround and YouTube Fame. Though when picking a college he really wanted to help animate in the leagues with Pixar, DreamWorks, and Disney. So he looked to Texas A&M University's Visualization Program, since they were very well connected within the animation industry!
Nick was ecstatic about hitting the floor running with his college and went to every college networking event he could attend. One day he went to a Pixar event where Viz-Grad students came to talk about lighting the first 10 minutes of UP. Nick raised his hand and asked the recruiter that was attending, "Hey! How often do animators get picked up from this school?" The recruiter responded with, "Oh, honey, you went to the wrong school." Turns out Texas A&M's Visualization Program focused more technical animation rather than traditional animation. So with that in mind Nick had only one thing to turn to in his school that was the closest thing to work towards traditional animation and that was Rigging.
Nick learned how to make a basic rig and was hooked when he discovered how to use set driven keys. After that he was required to do a study abroad or study away where he learned how to do Rigging, Motion Capture Animation and some radio play at the University of Texas at Dallas in their ATEC program. During that time he met his mentor, Benjamin Rische, who was the lead animator at Brazen Animation during the time.
When currently learning Rigging practices and techniques, he would be networking through TAMU ACM SIGGRAPH's student chapter by attending SGC, RTX, and SIGGRAPH to get industry professionals to talk and set up field trips for students a part of the student chapter.
Ben offered his assistance to teach Nick how to learn how to rig for animators and how to get his foot in the door within the industry. Nick was offered to go to graduate school at Texas A&M and SCAD, but was persuaded by Ben to save his money and take Rigging Dojo online after college. At some point Nick was working on an unfinished Barbarian Project where he got multiple industry professionals to critique his work.
After nine months of working part time at Sam's and doing at-home projects, Nick got his first job at Groove Jones, which was a sort of spin off company of Reel FX. This studio focused on creating AR and 360 VR experiences for comic con, museums and ad agencies. Focusing on projects for the Perot Museum, Ford, American Horror Story and Modelo. This is where Nick got to create multiple rigs and learn how to use the XSENS suit and Motion Builder together.
His next job planted him in the great, crowded state of California at Halon Entertainment! When he first moved out he helped out with using Optitrack Motive to record actors for launch trailers Borderlands 3, Disintegration and Kerbal Space Program. During that time he transitioned into helping with films by setting up motion capture equipment for The Batman at the Warner Brother's Lot and recording temporary animation for PreViz as well. He did some small rigging help with Suicide Squad and small motion capture for Snake Eyes.
When COVID started, he became a lead rigging lead working on the trailer for New World. This required him to talk to international vendors, in-house supervisors and other technical artists to make sure all of the rigs were checked and properly exported into the Unreal Engine. Once the project was completed he started working on an auto-rig for the studio for his next big project about a wooden boy who lies with a certain mouse of house involved.
For Pinocchio, Nicholas created an auto-rig that created quadruped rigs and bipedal rigs using templates that you could attach and build together. This was used for the PreViz for multiple donkeys, the first iteration of Figaro and other creative things that Nick could make with the rig itself. Additionally, Nick created rigs for characters, more creatures and props that were used for the Pre-Visualization of the film. This movie was Nick's very first on screen credit!
After completing multiple things at Halon, Nick was ready to move on to the next big thing and his friend Kelsey Grier helped him with that. BRON was the name and fixing the auto-rig in the studio was his game. Nick had a four mouth contract with BRON and took the time to update the studio's face rig, create documentation and tutorials for the studio and helped with anything possible to push the studio forward into the right direction. During the time the studio was short staffed, so he critiqued shots and gave input on what needed to be done on the rigging side to help the animation supervisor out. All of this was done for the Unreal Engine show Gosammer.
Now, Nick works as a CG Rigger for LAIKA on the newest film, WildWood! Rigging multiple everything you could think of and adding the rigging tools and pipeline!
It was during fifth grade that some of his neighbors down the street introduced him to Homestarrunner.com. A weird, but hilarious online series that had weird animal characters, as the Brothers Chaps would call them, perform different jokes through a variety show of Toons, Shorts, and Checking E-mails or "Sbemails!" :)
When given the chance Nick jumped to any way to want to learn about how to make a cartoon. In high school, at R. L Turner, he took an animation class and got certified in Adobe Flash CS6 which allowed him to carry over tips and tricks on how to animate from OneyNg, SpazKid3D and Harry Partridge of NewGround and YouTube Fame. Though when picking a college he really wanted to help animate in the leagues with Pixar, DreamWorks, and Disney. So he looked to Texas A&M University's Visualization Program, since they were very well connected within the animation industry!
Nick was ecstatic about hitting the floor running with his college and went to every college networking event he could attend. One day he went to a Pixar event where Viz-Grad students came to talk about lighting the first 10 minutes of UP. Nick raised his hand and asked the recruiter that was attending, "Hey! How often do animators get picked up from this school?" The recruiter responded with, "Oh, honey, you went to the wrong school." Turns out Texas A&M's Visualization Program focused more technical animation rather than traditional animation. So with that in mind Nick had only one thing to turn to in his school that was the closest thing to work towards traditional animation and that was Rigging.
Nick learned how to make a basic rig and was hooked when he discovered how to use set driven keys. After that he was required to do a study abroad or study away where he learned how to do Rigging, Motion Capture Animation and some radio play at the University of Texas at Dallas in their ATEC program. During that time he met his mentor, Benjamin Rische, who was the lead animator at Brazen Animation during the time.
When currently learning Rigging practices and techniques, he would be networking through TAMU ACM SIGGRAPH's student chapter by attending SGC, RTX, and SIGGRAPH to get industry professionals to talk and set up field trips for students a part of the student chapter.
Ben offered his assistance to teach Nick how to learn how to rig for animators and how to get his foot in the door within the industry. Nick was offered to go to graduate school at Texas A&M and SCAD, but was persuaded by Ben to save his money and take Rigging Dojo online after college. At some point Nick was working on an unfinished Barbarian Project where he got multiple industry professionals to critique his work.
After nine months of working part time at Sam's and doing at-home projects, Nick got his first job at Groove Jones, which was a sort of spin off company of Reel FX. This studio focused on creating AR and 360 VR experiences for comic con, museums and ad agencies. Focusing on projects for the Perot Museum, Ford, American Horror Story and Modelo. This is where Nick got to create multiple rigs and learn how to use the XSENS suit and Motion Builder together.
His next job planted him in the great, crowded state of California at Halon Entertainment! When he first moved out he helped out with using Optitrack Motive to record actors for launch trailers Borderlands 3, Disintegration and Kerbal Space Program. During that time he transitioned into helping with films by setting up motion capture equipment for The Batman at the Warner Brother's Lot and recording temporary animation for PreViz as well. He did some small rigging help with Suicide Squad and small motion capture for Snake Eyes.
When COVID started, he became a lead rigging lead working on the trailer for New World. This required him to talk to international vendors, in-house supervisors and other technical artists to make sure all of the rigs were checked and properly exported into the Unreal Engine. Once the project was completed he started working on an auto-rig for the studio for his next big project about a wooden boy who lies with a certain mouse of house involved.
For Pinocchio, Nicholas created an auto-rig that created quadruped rigs and bipedal rigs using templates that you could attach and build together. This was used for the PreViz for multiple donkeys, the first iteration of Figaro and other creative things that Nick could make with the rig itself. Additionally, Nick created rigs for characters, more creatures and props that were used for the Pre-Visualization of the film. This movie was Nick's very first on screen credit!
After completing multiple things at Halon, Nick was ready to move on to the next big thing and his friend Kelsey Grier helped him with that. BRON was the name and fixing the auto-rig in the studio was his game. Nick had a four mouth contract with BRON and took the time to update the studio's face rig, create documentation and tutorials for the studio and helped with anything possible to push the studio forward into the right direction. During the time the studio was short staffed, so he critiqued shots and gave input on what needed to be done on the rigging side to help the animation supervisor out. All of this was done for the Unreal Engine show Gosammer.
Now, Nick works as a CG Rigger for LAIKA on the newest film, WildWood! Rigging multiple everything you could think of and adding the rigging tools and pipeline!