Sound Alumni Panel

10:00 am -12:00 pm
East End Lecture Area

Sound Arts – Guest Speaker
Peter Anton
Pixar Animations Studios, Project Manager

Born at Stanford.  Went to Los Altos High School where I was a mediocre water polo player and swimmer.  Went to UCLA where I was a star beer drinker.  Graduated.  DotCommed. Layed-Off.  Applied to Law School.  Went to Burning Man on a whim.  Burning Man produces significant doubt in Law School plan.  Went to Ex’pression College for Sound Arts/Engineering Degree.  Graduated.  Interned at American Zoetrope while the studio performed Post-Production on Lost In Translation and then worked in music discovery/search technology startup Siren Systems.

Detour into Sales for a few years.  Experienced late 20s “Wait, this isn’t where I want to be headed” course-correction.  Back to QA for Japanese gaming company Konami focusing on Music & Rhythm Games (DDR, Karaoke Revolution).  Associate Producer and Producer for EVB in SF (campaigns produced for adidas, 2KSports, Adobe and LeapFrog). Currently I am working at Pixar Animations Studios as a Project Manager in the Tools division.  My team is developing Pixar’s next generation of 3D software.

Sound Arts – Guest Speaker
Safar Bake
Sound Design & Implementation, Music Production

Safar has over fifteen years experience in music production as an artist, composer, producer, re-mixer, recording, mixing, and mastering engineer, with major label credits and international releases on EMI, Virgin, Capitol, Warner Brothers, Reprise, Mute, and more. While being a part of The Recording Academy as a Grammy voting member, he’s currently the Audio Designer at Hyperpia, an online casual gaming company which will be launching later this summer. His roles as the Audio Designer include everything from sound design, voice and dialogue, to composing and music production, and the audio implementation.

Over the last nine years Safar has worked in post-production for film, TV and radio, working at a variety of studios such as; Ripe Sound, Robert Berke Sound, Crescendo Studios, One Union Recording, Fantasy Studios, The Saul Zaentz Film Center, Wave Group, SNP Communications, and Electronic Arts. At those studios he was doing sound design and music for national and international ads, short films, animation, video games and multimedia, as well as doing data base management, operating system optimization, software and hardware installations and upgrades, system maintenance and technical support.

While doing freelance and contract work as an Audio Engineer, Sound Designer, Editor and Music Producer, working on titles such as “Guitar Hero,” and “Karaoke Revolutions,” in the gaming industry, Safar was also a Sound Arts Instructor at Ex’pression College for Digital Arts, teaching Digital Audio Workstation, Audio Post Production, Game Audio, and occasionally Midi classes.

Most recent projects include sound design and implementation on “The Simpsons Game” for EA, with additional music production and remix of “Rock You Like A Hurricane” by Scorpions for the game.

Sound Arts – Guest Speaker
Chris Spilfogel
Independent Recording/Mixing Engineer

Just seven years after graduating from Ex’pression College for Digital Arts with a degree in Sound Arts, Chris Spilfogel, now a respected recording engineer, has a deep client list that includes work with Beyonce, Luther Vandross, Nelly Furtado, and Fantasia.  His first big movie project came in 2004 during his Chief engineer tenure with the Underdogs, in which he was contracted to record all the music for the movie Dreamgirls. Dreamgirls acted as a springboard into the Movie Recording scene. Since then he has worked on many other movies including the motion picture “Hairspray.” Recently Chris recorded, Mix and Co produced a massive 55 song rock opera for Lionsgate/Twisted Pictures called “Repo The Genetic Opera.” Currently he is recording the R&B artist Tank new record, JoJo’s record, and recording music for Paramount.

When Chris is not working on other clients projects he is Producing, Engineering and Mixing Bands and artists he is interested in creatively. He hopes to be exclusively doing this in the near future.

Sound Arts – Guest Speaker
Brian Webb
DreamWorks Animation,
Audio/Video Engineer

Brian is a recent graduate of Ex’pression College.  On the day of graduation Brian accepted a job at DreamWorks animation in Redwood City as an Audio/Video engineer.  Brian is a Sound engineer, producer, writer, editor, and singer.  He has credits on the up coming movie Madagascar 2 by DreamWorks, for voice talent and technical support.  Before and after school Brian has had music placed and has worked with people like Brian McKnight, Take 6, 2 of the producers from Dream Girls, Jennifer Hudson, The Debarge family, and many others.  Brian was fortunate to have his music placed in the up coming CD release from Ex’pression College.  Brian welcomes all opportunities and tells everyone he meets, “What ever your passion is, that’s what you will do well in”.

AVE, 9:00 - 11:00 am

Meyer Hall

Animation & Visual Effects – Guest Speaker
Huck Wirtz
ImageMovers Digital,
Associate Animation Supervisor

Huck Wirtz learned animation on the job at a company called Danger Productions in 93-94 working on a stop-motion series called “Bump in the Night”. From there the opportunity arose for me to work at Industrial, Light, and Magic, I animated there for 11.5 years, my first project being “Mars Attacks” my last being “Evan Almighty”; I’ working on around 20 films in that time. Currently I’ve taken a position with ImageMovers Digital as one of the animation supervisors working on pushing the envelope in the Motion Capture field.

Animation & Visual Effects – Guest Speaker
John Root
ImageMovers Digital,
Sr. Motion Capture Artist

John Root has been working with Motion Capture for nearly 15 years. Originally hired into The Software Toolworks as a 2D animator in the early 90s he moved on to become the leader of the Motion Capture team at Midway Sports in Chicago. After Midway he worked to setup the motion capture pipeline for Epic Games, iD Software and his own company Outlaw Studios. In 2007 John Root left games to join the movies and can currently be found at ImageMovers Digital in Novato California where he leads the Solving Team.

MGD, 1:00 - 3:00 pm

Meyer Hall

Motion Graphic Design – Guest Speaker
Brian Diecks
PRN, Executive Creative Director

A 16 year veteran of Entertainment Marketing and Design, Brian founded The Diecks Group in 1993 with the on-air design package for The Independent Film Channel. Over the years, his firm quickly grew to become one of the most respected creative agencies in the Entertainment Marketing arena. With a focus on broadcast, interactive, print advertising, collateral and graphic design, The Diecks Group served a wide array of clients in Broadcast, Cable and Sports, such as ESPN, Comedy Central, HBO, Showtime, Discovery, TNT, Turner Sports and Major League Soccer. Garnering many of the industry’s most prestigious awards year after year, Brian’s work has been regularly featured in Millimeter, Shoot, Post, Videography and Creativity, and he is a regular speaker at industry conferences such as AIGA, HOW and PROMAX/BDA. Brian spent 2 years teaching the Graduate program at Parsons in NYC. Brian lives in Marin County with his wife and 4 children.

PRN has hired several Ex’pression graduates for various motion graphic Designer/Animator positions. Don’t miss this opportunity to meet Brian and learn about this company.

GAD, 4:00 - 6:00 pm

Meyer Hall

Game Art & Design – Guest Speaker
Stone Perales
Emergent Game Technologies/Gamebryo, Art Director

Stone Perales is a Southern California Sci-Fi and Fantasy video game Art Director/Character artist with over 12 years of experience. He has worked for EA, Sony Online Entertainment, The Collective, Interplay (Black Isle Studios), Westwood Studios, and most recently as Technical and Creative Art Director of Gamebryo in the Los Angeles area.

Stone began his gaming career working on Aeon Flux and Deep Space nine for the Unreal Engine as a character lead at the Collective and continued his work at Westwood studios in Irvine as the Studio art lead with a focus on environment art. He went on to work with Black Isle Studios as an environment lead on the Dungeons and Dragons based Icewind Dale series working on pre-rendered backgrounds. He continued his career as the production and brand Art Director for Sony Online Entertainment’s Everquest series, as well as being awarded a patent for Terrain Simulation on the PS3 in 2005. During 2006 and 2007 he contributed user interface design work for EA LA’s Tiberium.

At times his art skills take him beyond gaming and Stone is the artist behind the Current Toyota Trucks logo which first aired during Super Bowl XLI in 2007.

In Stone’s free time he utilizes his background in gaming to help young artists and students to polish their skills and to learn the ropes of breaking into the video game industry.