Vincent Truitner - Animator and CGI artist

Vincent Truitner is a native of Los Angeles but grew up in Minnesota, graduating from Ramsey (now Roseville) High School in Roseville, MN. He always had artistic leanings and was fascinated with fantastic stuff -- monsters, aliens, starships, robots, you name it, as long as it wasn't mundane. He was 9 years old when Star Wars came out and to him, that was really the ultimate. "I wondered if I could ever work on something like that," says Vincent.

After some years at the U of M, Vincent transferred to the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), sometimes referred to as the "Harvard of art schools," and received a BFA in Illustration, while minoring in Animation. Vincent calls RISD "The opportunity that changed everything for me, and I received my best years of art training there."

After graduating from RISD in 1996, Vincent landed an animation internship at Pixar Animation Studios, which had just released their ground-breaking CGI animated feature Toy Story. "There I learned how to bring virtual characters to life on the computer, and this has led to my present career as an animation/FX artist in film," says Vincent.

After doing early development work on Toy Story 2, he was hired by WB animation to help bring to life the title character of The Iron Giant, and returned there to animate the CGI character Drix in Osmosis Jones and the CGI demons in the live-action Scooby-Doo. In between those projects he also worked on two independent animated shorts, and at Cinesite Digital Studios (FX studio of the X-Men films) on a CGI Satan in what Vincent calls "A bad, little-known Christian apocalypse film called Megiddo."

He was a senior animator at Sony Imageworks, and was an animator on the squid-like robot Sentinels for "The Matrix Revolutions." He was an animator on "Spider-Man 2," working on the digital versions of Spidey and his next nemesis, Doctor Octopus. The film went on to win 2004 Academy Award for Visual Effects.

Vincent also served as animator for the 2006 animated feature Monster House, helping to animate the titular abode - a remarkably complex animated character. Attendees of CONvergence 2006 had the opportunity to attend a free, early screening of Monster House in 3-D, which featured a Q&A session by Vincent after the film.

Most recently, Vincent worked at Rhythm & Hues Studios on the fantasy epic "The Golden Compass," where he was part of the team that brought the film's distinctive animal daemons to life. He also worked as an animator on the titular characters of another major holiday release, 'Alvin and the Chipmunks."