We posted Last Parish a week ago as a quickie and after some debate (there has been a LOT of quickie to full debates as of late) we have decided that Dade should have been featured all along.
Dade started out as a designer with a knack for 3d in a time when knowing both trades was pretty rare. After joining Digital Kitchen, Dade quickly moved up the ranks because of his ability to lead his own projects and before he knew it his business card read CG/VFX Director. Currently, Dade is working for Superfad in Seattle directing projects and working as a Digital Cinematographer. I asked Dade to clarify his role of Digital DP since I had never come across that title, and this is what he had to say:
I realized that many times when I was working with other creative directors and directors, I would be asked to “man” the camera and of course set up the lights in our CG scenes. I didn’t see much of a difference from what I was doing virtually, and what many of the live action DP’s were doing on the spots we’d shoot. Digital
cinematographer was just a way for me to let people know my involvement and
that I took that responsibility quite seriously.
Now that Dade is a director doesn’t mean that he stays away from production work, in fact it seems quite the opposite. On any given project, Dade will not only direct, but he will also design, texture, model, sim, animate cameras, light, render and composite. Pretty impressive list of daily chores for any single person to handle, and yet he seems to manage it all pretty well. Although he did tell me that “I still find myself in my home studio staring at wireframes till 1am”.
I think what impresses me most about people like Dade is that although he has been in the industry long enough to sit back and take it easy, he still has the passion that drives him to remain hands on and put the long hours needed to make his projects feel complete.