VFX and Animation Panel featuring UNM Film & Digital Arts alumni on Friday October 20th at 9am

VFX and Animation Panel featuring UNM Film & Digital Arts alumni Donovan Heimer (Stranger Things, Dark Winds), Jaxon Sorby (The Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), and Michael Romero (Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Hocus Pocus 2) on Friday October 20th at 9am.

Register in advance for this event:
https://unm.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJApdO-grTotGNeIjeLf–66Bcf-hfGs7p2u

Donovan Heimer (Stranger Things, Dark Winds)
While studying cinematic arts at UNM, Donovan discovered his passion for visual effects and animation. During the last year of his studies, he worked on visual effects for Iron Man 3 and kicked off his professional career in film and media. Donovan continued honing his 3D modeling and animation skills by creating 3D assets for interactive training applications at Los Alamos National Laboratory for several years. After his run at LANL, he joined Crafty Apes in Albuquerque and returned to the entertainment industry. Since then, Donovan has worked as a compositor and 3D artist on shows including Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Dark Winds, Stranger Things, and Loki. https://www.imdb.com/name/nm4695250/

Jaxon Sorby (The Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles)
Jaxon Sorby is a storyboard artist whose most recent credit was action boarding on ‘The Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ series. He grew up between Los Angeles and Albuquerque and attended UNM where he graduated in 2017, receiving his Bachelor’s of Art in psychology. After working at Northrop Grumman as Multimedia designer he decided to move back to Los Angeles to attend the CalArts Animation Summer Residency in 2018. Two years later he began his career working in animation working at Titmouse as a revisionist. Since then, he’s gone on to work as a storyboard artist working at Bento Box, Shadow Machine, Titmouse twice and most recently at Nickelodeon. When he’s not storyboarding, he’s writing comics, rock climbing and traveling nonstop.

Michael Romero (Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Hocus Pocus 2)
Michael Romero is a digital compositor working at Crafty Apes VFX. He graduated from UNM with a BFA in Film Production. Michael has worked on projects like Hocus Pocus 2, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (all seasons), and Dark Winds (season 2), specializing in 2D compositing. He also owns a company focusing on 2D animation for companies such as SalesForce and Geneious. In his free time, he likes to paint stills from his favorite movies and read horror novels. Michael’s Imdb

The Department of Film & Digital Arts Mentor Series was inaugurated to celebrate thirty (plus!) years of film education at UNM. Each semester we invite a distinguished group of alumni and film luminaries to talk to our students and the community about how they found success doing what they love. If you want to work in the digital media fields, this series is a fabulous source of advice and useable strategies. All events are free and open to the public.