My name is Austin. I'm a software developer currently employed at Laika Studios in Portland, working on tools to help automate and manage the production of movies!
I've been programming since I was around 10 years old - starting with making video game clones in Macromedia Flash, and making a website to put my games on. I was very popular in the computer lab at school considering my website was the only game website that wasn't blocked by the school's firewall!
Later, in high school, I got heavily into making Minecraft server mods, and was one of the first people to make a "survival games" mod after the release of the first Hunger Games movie. I don't have any hard numbers, but my mod was probably used by tens of thousands of players over the few years it was used.
After high school, I worked at the local television/news station "KRCR" in Northern, California, where I was a commercial producer. At that job, I wrote an internal website in PHP to manage the production of commericials, coordinate departments, and manage client billing. They used this system for almost a decade. (Although nowadays, I'd probably just use something like AirTable!)
Lately, I've been working at a few different VFX and film production companies helping to make tools and automate the surprisingly complex film production pipeline!
Throughout my programming life, I've had the opportunity to use the following languages:
- PHP
- ActionScript 2
- Java
- Javascript
- Typescript
- Python
- Rust
- SQL
I went to film school at the Academy of Film, Theatre, and Television in Sydney, Australia! Whether in hollywood or independently, I'd love to get to a place in life where I can regularly write and direct movies.
Outside of work I enjoy writing music, running, playing with animals, and generally making things!