Steven Zaharakis

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Born under the palm trees of Oahu, Hawaii... Steven spent his first baby year's hoola dancing and eating humongous amounts of pineapple. Due to family circumstances, he soon moved to New York where he lived the majority of his childhood in good old Fresh Meadows, New York. It was here that he began to take interest in video games, movie effects, cartoons and computers all through elementary school and high school. Eventually he moved onto the big world of college in the heart of New York City.

Steven Zaharakis graduated in 2000 with a Bachelors degree in Computer Science from NYU. Immediately after graduating, he began working at Computer Associates as a Software Engineer until 2002, when he decided he wanted to begin studies in computer graphics and animation. In the Fall of 2002, he enrolled at graduate school to obtain a Masters in Digital Imaging and Design, and graduated May of 2004. After graduating, he worked at various studios in NYC doing internships and freelance work for roughly a year... and soon afterlanded a full time job at Viewpoint, as a 3D Artist/Developer.

After spending roughly 2 years at Viewpoint, it was time to move on to bigger and brighter areas. So he made the decision to pack his bags, and fly to sunny LA. He is currently residing in Los Angeles, and pursuing freelance and full time work as a 3D Artist. His aspirations are to specialize in character rigging and setup, with hopes to eventually become a Character TD.

The Jim Henson Company [04/08 - present]

Rigging TD for Sid the Science Kid, a childrens television show airing on PBS
Rigging TD for Havoc, a show for FOX
Animation Cleanup and Scene Assembly artist for Sid the Science Kid

Halon Entertainment [9/07 - 02/08]

Previs Artist/Lead Rigger on feature film GI Joe: Rise of the Cobra

Viewpoint [3/05 - 3/07]

3D Generalist responsible for modeling, animation, rigging, lighting, texturing, rendering for use in video and web. Also responsible for Flash design/animation and XML (Vet).

New York University [1/05 - 5/05]

Teaching assistant responsible for teaching graduate level students a variety of programming languages for use in 3D applications. Course entails a foundation in C, OpenGL, Renderman shading language, Perl, Mell, Cshell, and UNIX shell.

Mechanism Digital [11/04 - 1/05]

Assisting production team with wide range of various duties, ranging from modeling, animation, motion tracking, rotoscoping, converting files, rendering shots, etc. on clients such as Ford, iJoy, and Getty Images.

"Steamed" Independent Short Film [9/04 - 1/05]

Responsible for rigging/skinning of Lenny character and 4 animated shots.

Croog Studios [9/04 - 10/04]

Worked as a generalist on Jim Breuer's Jefferson Avenue , a 2D/3D cartoon. Responsible for modeling, texturing, and other 3D aspects.

New York University [9/04 - 12/04]

Teaching assistant responsible for teaching graduate level students advanced character animation principles and answering technical questions related to rigging.

Furnace Media Group, Game On Project - Volvo V50 [July 2004]

Responsible for animation of Jack character on two shots for Volvo's new ad campaign for the Volvo V50, to be used in a game scene within the full film. (http://www.gameonproject.com)

Computer Associates [6/00-8/02]

Maintain source code, investigate/debug/create code level fixes for the eTrust Access Control security product on Unix and NT platforms. Assist and answer any client's problems or questions regarding the product.