I am Jarrod Davis

Problem Solver,Emmy Award Winner,Unreal Engine Madman,Visual Effects Artist,After Effects Expert,Tools Scripter,Motion Graphics Animator

About Me

My lifelong dream was always to fly in space. But even in the best circumstances, the odds of any human accomplishing that are vanishingly long. At least for the next couple hundred years.

As a consolation prize, I decided to fly spaceships around on TV and in movies. That worked out pretty well. Got a nice statue, anyway.

Over the years, I worked on a bunch of stuff, some of which you've probably seen, including Star Trek and Firefly.

I'm not really a bragger, but since this whole site is about me and what I do, I kind of have to put this stuff in.

Emmy Award
Actually real.
Click the button to see my IMDb.com page, for a pretty complete list of credits.
Click the file icon to download my latest resume!
Vital Stats
Name: Jarrod Davis
Profile: Technical Artist
Contact: jarrod@jarroddavis.com

Skills

Unreal Engine 89%
Compositing 80%
Motion Graphics 78%
3D Modeling and Animation 81%
Graphic Design and Illustration 83%
Javascript/HTML/Web Apps 68%
Figuring out how to do what needs to be done, every time 100%

34

VERIFIED CREDITS

4

EMMY NOMINATIONS

1

EMMY AWARD

26

YEARS OF EXPERIENCE

A Brief History

The frequent short-term nature of work in Hollywood means that there are some overlapping dates. This is just a rough guide.

1
NewTek

I began my career at NewTek, Inc. - makers of 3D modeling and animation software LightWave 3D. I started in technical support, but was eventually able to go out to trade shows, demoing software and making valuable industry connections, while spending all my free time teaching myself modeling, animation, lighting, and rendering.

'97-'98: NewTek
2
FI

My first industry job was at the legendary Foundation Imaging on a kids show called Roughnecks: The Starship Troopers Chronicles. Eventually I graduated to working on high-end made-for-TV productions such as Superfire, and then the final episode of Star Trek: Voyager and the first season of Enterprise.

'99-'02: Foundation Imaging
3
DD

Not a long or glamorous stint, but I worked on several high-end commercial projects, from Ericsson to now-defunct Global Crossing as well as an event intro video for Seattle's Museum of Pop Culture. (I also used to sneak in to watch VFX dailies from the first X-Men film. That was awesome.)

'00: Digital Domain
4
DD

I joined Zoic Studios (Radium LA at the time) for the pilot of Firefly, and was part of the core crew for the run of the show. We won the Emmy for it in 2003. Afterwards, that team flipped over to work on the reboot of Battlestar Galactica, for which we were nominated for an Emmy. Also there I worked on House, M.D., Eureka, 24, and many other film, commercial, and TV projects.

I did my first CG supervising on Century City and my first full-on VFX Supervisor gig for Ghost Whisperer, including being on set at Universal Studios and on location.

'02-'07': Zoic Studios
5
NewTek

I left 'Hollywood' and rejoined NewTek in San Antonio in 2007. In the Content department, I started out building and rendering LiveSet™ virtual sets, animation stores, and title templates for the TriCaster™ video production system. After moving into the UX department, I got to start diving into software development. Since then, in addition to creating and maintaining the user interface for the TriCaster™ and IP-series products, I've developed some web applications, and been a co-developer on a telestrator application and the LiveGraphics™ animated title system.

'07 - '20: NewTek (pt. 2)
6

In around 2011, I started doing freelance animation and visual effects for a number of clients. I've worked on award-winning short films such as Squeezebox, independent feature films such as Angel Dog, Te Ata, The Adventures of Pepper and Paula, Gosnell and several web commercials for clients such as Palm Agent. I've recently completed 100+ shots for the upcoming film The Chickasaw Rancher, including herds of cattle, sky replacements, and lots of smoke and fire.

'11 - 2018: Freelance
7

In 2020, I went to work for Leidos on a contract for the 16th Air Force. We did full VR digital twins of two aircraft, the EC-130H Compass Call and the MC-12W Liberty. I was responsible for rigging and animating the interactive doors, switches, knobs, handles, throttles and other things like oxygen masks and bottles.

We were also working on an interactive language trainer that would have let you walk around a virtual city carrying on interactive conversations in other languages with fully animated characters. You would be scored on your proficiency in various ways. I was in charge of rigging, animating, and doing the facial animation for all the characters. I left before we could get to a real vertical slice, and sadly I believe the project never came to fruition.

'20 - '22': Leidos
8

In 2022, I joined Jackalyptic Games as a Senior Technical Artist. The project: A brand new game set in the Warhammer universe, using Unreal Engine 5 and aiming for AAA quality. I ended up being responsible for a mix of technical art and technical animation tasks, from making UI and post-process materials, to working on the primary locomotion animation system for both player and NPC characters. I got to make a modular, animated tank track system for a few vehicles. I also made a range of tools for in-editor analytics and debugging. I also recently got to help out by working on a cinematic and enhancing the cinematics system's capabilities.

'22 - present: Jackalyptic Games

Portfolio

Take a look at some of the things I've done.

If you want to. I'm not your dad.