Erik Nelson

Background

About Erik Nelson

Erik Nelson's career path has been a fruitful one full of successes and achievement. Starting out as a PA at a major VFX house in Los Angeles and eventually working his way up to a pivotal support role in their Virtual Production department allowed him to find his passions for developing new ways for the VFX community to streamline it's processes and remove technical tasks from artists so they can focus more time and effort into making great art. From there Mr. Nelson took a stab at a freelance role in virtual production by becoming more versed in real-time digital technologies such as on set virtual production, real time rendering, motion capture, and camera tracking. Following within that skill set he took various jobs culminating in motion capture tech work with Weta Digital on Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. Not being satisfied with freelance work, Erik moved on to another staff role with an up and coming VFX studio to help them grow their technology needs. Starting as an artist and eventually seeing a need for coding and pipeline he became the Sr. Pipeline developer and Head of the Engineering and Technology department at Barnstorm VFX. His position allows him to develop and integrate systems into their pipeline which have increased the output of the studio year after year. In order to tell great stories and make great art, the artist must be given every opportunity to excel and hone his craft. This is the core belief behind everything Erik does. From implementing new ways to automate progress tracking as to minimize manual data entry to developing outside the box rendering strategies that increase the opportunity for artistic iteration to navigating the complexities of on-set real time VFX Virtual Production which provides artists data to enhance their work, Erik has always had the art being created in mind. As he heads into his 10th year at Barnstorm VFX (and 17th year of his career Journey) Mr. Nelson is focused on continuing his dream of facilitating the artists surrounding him. With the support of the administration, and the help of his small team of engineers, he plans to continue pushing forward into more advanced automation, data aggregation, seamless integration, and forward thinking technology concepts to keep Barnstorm VFX as a front runner in the visual effects industry.