Work

VFX

I’m a Visual Effects Supervisor with 10 years industry experience as a Digital Compositor, Nuke tool developer and Compositing Supervisor.

Working on the VFX Compositing of films such as Star Wars: The Last Jedi, The Jungle Book, Captain Marvel, Wonder Woman or The Martian, in studios like ILM, Dneg, MPC or Weta Digital and countries such as Canada, New Zealand, the UK or Germany, I was able to learn alongside some of the best artists in the world and help push the latest developments on such a fascinating industry.

 

In 2019 I moved back to Spain and jumped into VFX Supervision, with the new challenges that come with planning, client-facing work and team leading, which have since entered the list of my main passions.

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As a digital compositor I specialized in high-end visual effects for feature films, working through the years under many different setups, pipelines and teams. Every team and project is a different world and comes with a set of new challenges, so I’m really grateful for the opportunities I had to work with such awesome artists, leads and supervisors who were also great leaders and from whom I learned a lot, before considering myself a capable VFX artist and supervisor.

 

My VFX experience is combined with photography and lighting fundamentals and a strong background (obsession) in filmmaking, 3D, maths, programming and color workflows.

You can find some articles and interviews I’ve done related to Visual Effects under the following links:

Virtual Production

I work as VFX and Virtual Production Supervisor in Orca Studios, which took me down a rabbithole of completely new techniques and developments.

In this novel area of film technologies, being trailblazers meant we had to find new hybrid areas to specialize in and unforeseen challenges to solve in order to blend the lines between production, pre and post.

 

My compositing background is really useful for In-Camera VFX Supervision, so soon after starting in Orca Studios in early 2020 I also took on the responsibility for the Virtual Production area, specialized in In-Camera VFX for shooting in LED volumes.

Meet Orca

The Spanish-based Trailblazers in Virtual Production

Orca Studios is at the forefront of virtual production and real-time rendered In-Camera VFX and was among the first studios in the world to embrace and implement it for high-end productions, currently leading the Spanish market and helping set new industry standards in this exciting area, while collaborating with leading manufacturers, production companies and other virtual production houses.

For the last three years I’ve been working as Virtual Production Supervisor in parallel with VFX supervision, and this new path has entailed delving deep and developing pipelines for color management and screen calibration, testing and implementing all sorts of gadgets for real-time camera tracking, image processing, signal sync and dynamic metadata, real-time rendering and a myriad of other topics that were being put together for the first time.

Once we had a functioning and flexible-enough system we started taking on the virtual production of top tier film and TV projects as well as lots of advertising, which I’ve been lucky to supervise.

You can learn more about Orca in the studio website, and a lot more about our exciting adventures in the following links:

A decided commitment towards VPX

Article in TMBroadcast International

A W A R E

Short video we made last year...

Through My Window

Recent article in Variety about our contribution to this film.

Tool Development

Developing tools and sharing them with artists is a big passion of mine, and what started out as a hobby has become a big part of what I do now.

Ever since I jumped into the VFX industry, programming and tool creation for VFX has been my main hobby basically for the hours that I wasn’t working or sleeping.

While working as a digital compositor I developed tools that were implemented in pipelines like Weta DigitalILM or Orca Studios, and I’ve also worked sporadically as freelance Comp Tool Developer for studios such as Trixter or Isar Animation.
Throughout the years I developed a great number of Nuke tools to automate workflows or solve compositing challenges I found, and I was able to publish a number of them for the Nuke community and studios to use for free. It’s been great to see all the usage and feedback from all over the world and big studios who have implemented them in their pipeline, and I’m honored to have the most +1000 download tools published on Nukepedia.

Tools I’ve published include Stamps and KnobScripter, and gizmos such as aPMatte, apDespill, apChroma, apGlow or ColorSampler… You can learn a lot more about these gizmos in the Nuke Gizmos section.

OpenVPCal

Open-Source screen-to-camera calibration for Virtual Production LED Volumes

OpenVPCal is an Open-Source LED-to-Camera color calibration tool for Virtual Production stages, that I developed over the last 3 years in Orca with Francesco Luigi Giardello at Netflix.

OpenVPCal was presented on Siggraph 2022 and is now in an open beta, getting tested in a number of stages around the world. I learned so much about color science through this process thanks to Francesco and the amazing people involved. 

On my blog you can learn more about The Creation of OpenVPCal.

You can find more information about my tools and dev projects in the Tools section.

Teaching

The only occupation I probably like as much as my work is teaching about it.

  • Masters in Digital Compositing

    I am Director at U-Tad’s Masters in Digital Compositing, an intensive 1-year program I developed for the Spanish university, focused on in-depth training for aspiring digital compositors and where I also teach VFX on-site and online for 200+ hours every year. Read more...

  • Online Teaching

    After many requests from colleagues I recently embarked on the journey of advanced online teaching. Through this website I aim to prepare thorough, advanced and well-structured courses about the subjects I have a passion or understanding about. Read more...

  • Senior Mentoring

    Upon request I also work with reduced groups of senior compositors, leads or 2D supervisors looking to advance their skills at the technical side of compositing, scripting, color management for VFX or other areas I might be able to help with. Read more...

Here’s some recommendations from former students:

Rubén Arenas
Rubén ArenasCompositing Supervisor
Senior Mentoring (2022)
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Super useful course to go one step further as an expert compositor. There's things I didn't even know existed. I spent all sessions asking myself "how on earth did Adrian arrive to this technique". He has an internal view of how Nuke works I envy and thanks to these sessions I've been able to learn different tricks and methods to go further in solving complex problems.

You'll find many of the tips useful for creating tools and to solve problems that you previously found too complicated. You'll discover many things you previously did wrongly and now you can do in a more correct and optimized way. Highly recommended.
Aitor Echeveste
Aitor EchevesteDigital Compositor
Masters in Digital Compositing (2019-20)
Read More
In all my studying years I can say Adrian has been the best teacher I had and the person who made me grow the most as a professional.

After completing my degree in compositing and starting to work in the VFX industry I can say that studying with him was the best decision I could have made. His courses have the most advanced and specialized content in digital compositing that you can find today. Without a doubt it was a turning point in my professional career and I can say very proudly that Adrian is my mentor.
Pablo Ibañez
Pablo IbañezDigital Compositor
Masters in Digital Compositing (2020-21)
Read More
Since I started working in compositing and learning, there has been no one who has made me understand this job better than Adrian. He has changed my way of understanding VFX and has made me grow professionally.

Adrian is an incredible person, who has a very technical knowledge of VFX about what he does and why he does it, and in the world of vfx and compositing this is very important. He has an amazing trajectory and is a person who knows how to teach and transmit his knowledge, as he did with me.
Guillermo García
Guillermo GarcíaSenior Compositor
Senior Mentoring (2022)
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I have been lucky enough to meet Adrián in the advanced Nuke mentoring course he has taught, and the technical knowledge he has goes beyond the normal skills of any compositor.

It is highly recommended to learn everything this artist has to share and teach.
Nacho Hoyos
Nacho HoyosDigital Compositor
Masters in Digital Compositing (2019-20)
Read More
I recommend Adrian 100% as a teacher, as a compositor and as a person.

Working with him is like booking an insurance for solving "impossible" shots!
Arturo Fdz. de Castro
Arturo Fdz. de CastroSenior Compositor
Senior Mentoring (2022)
Read More
Totally recommended. Many times we think we have the solution on how to face a job, and it may be that the time and resources we have make it impossible to deliver a decent shot.

Adrián has taught us many resources, tricks and ways to optimize our work that make us more complete as compositors, with examples, stopping to explain and speaking to us from his work experience. I recommend this to anyone who has been compositing with Nuke for a while and wants to expand their knowledge by improving their work technique. Thank you very much for the classes and the close environment!
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Masters in Digital Compositing​

In-depth one year program on digital compositing for Visual Effects

I am Director at U-Tad’s Masters in Digital Compositing, an intensive 1-year program I developed for the Spanish university, focused on in-depth training for aspiring digital compositors and where I also teach VFX for 200+ hours every year alongside a group of awesome artists, all working full-time in the industry.

The Masters in Digital Compositing is the most thorough program I currently run and it is a full introductory course that brings students up to speed with digital compositing throughout a full year. Currently taught in Spanish, on-site and online, in collaboration with U-Tad, a flagship university in Animation, VFX and Video-games among other areas.

We have been running this program since I developed it in 2019, and former students of this course are currently working all around the world, for studios such as Weta FX (NZ), Rising Sun Pictures (Adelaide), Image Engine Design (Vancouver) or Trixter (Munich).

Me with my 2019-2020 students.

You can find some works from the previous students of this course here:

U-Tad is a university of reference for studies on Engineering, Design, Animation & VFX, VR and Video-games, located in Madrid (Spain) which offers graduate and post-graduate studies of the highest quality, on-site and on-line, and taught both in English and Spanish.

You can visit the website for more information.

Online Training

All-level online courses about the topics I love

After many years of requests from colleagues and as you probably already noticed on this website, I recently embarked on the journey of online teaching.

I try to prepare thorough, advanced and well-structured courses about the subjects I have a passion or understanding about. Currently preparing the courses both in English and Spanish, and in different formats of length and complexity.

My first full course is now available, Introduction to Python for Nuke Artists. Was a long journey and I am really happy with the course! Feel free to explore the course page and if you’d like to enrol, you’ll join the global community of Nuke artists also starting to learn Python.

If you’d like to get an email when I get a new course published, you can also subscribe on the link below:

Senior Mentoring

Advanced online mentoring for professionals

Upon request I also work with reduced groups of senior compositors, leads or 2D supervisors looking to advance their skills at the technical side of compositing, scripting, color management for VFX or other areas I might be able to help with.

This is a way to share some advanced bits of knowledge I don’t really get to talk about to new artists or I haven’t included in any pre-recorded course. If this is something you’d be interested in, feel free to drop me a message and based on interest and availability I organize a little group every once in a while, for 5 to 10 sessions. If you’d like to consider joining one of next iterations of these groups, please feel free to express your interest here!

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