About

Ron Schab

Born in 1979 in Dresden, East Germany, my family and I fled the communist system when I was nine years old and then lived for most of my childhood in Aschaffenburg near Frankfurt/Main.

Whilst in school year 10 in 1996 I was granted the PPLT scholarship by the US Congress and the German Bundestag to study the following 12 months in the USA.  Based on a test in school there I skipped Year 11 and entered Year 12 to graduate American High School in 1997 with majors in English, History, Math and Arts.

Upon my return to Germany, I had to complete all final tests of the missed Year 11 (in one month) and thereafter undertook Years 12 and 13 to graduate German High School in 2000 with majors in  English, Sports, Physics (Astronomy) and History.

My 11 months of mandatory social service followed, wherein I enjoyed working with intellectually impaired kids.  I also joined a team of successful tattoo artists and rediscovered my love for art.

Around the same time I was introduced to the potential of digital design and enrolled in a Multimedia Producer course at a University in Frankfurt whilst gaining international exposure on major projects as 3D Artist, Art Director, Compositor and Team Leader through my work on CG freelancing projects and commencing my own Multimedia company in 2003.  Within 18 months I graduated with High Distinction and extended my professional experience to work full-time.

Passionate about my field, I soon subscribed to another University Course, which then led me to Sydney in 2005.

Whilst studying I was fortunate to gain a deeper insight in the film industry in my employment with Animal Logic in the capacity of  a ‘render wrangler’ on the feature films ‘Happy Feet’, ‘300’, ’28 Days Later’and ‘WTC’ in addition to a few TV commercials.

In 2007 I graduated my long distance education as top of my class with a Bachelor of Multimedia Arts (First Class Honors) from Middlesex University, London, during which I had lectured a few modules for other Middlesex University courses.

During a brief return to Germany in July of that same year, I was then solicited by a New Zealand based audio-visual company and engaged as a 3D Artist, Art Director and CG Designer.  In my time in Aotearoa I not only had one of the best times snowboarding, surfing, saw some of the most breath-taking places, made friends with amazing people but also got to work on a bunch of high profile projects for clients like Porsche, Lexus, Toyota, Dewars, Smirnoff, Adidas, the mighty AllBlacks,… to only name a few.

I absolutely loved the fast-paced diversity and quality of my life there but the film bug had bitten me and so I decided to devote the majority of my time to consolidate and extend upon my core competencies undertaking in-depth studies of the latest procedural work-flows and physically accurate simulations using Houdini, Maya, Realflow, Nuke and Terragen while simultaneously feeding and recharging my creative brain through extended worldwide travels.

Lifestyle as well as great projects led my path back to Australia soon after where I continued my studies of fluid simulations in front of my computer as well as from top of my surfboard financing my time through my old job as render wrangler on movies like “The Knowing” and “Australia”.  Finally feeling ready, I took on the role of a character fx artist on “Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole” working on one of the best looking and most underrated animated features of all time.

The following years saw me working as an fx td/artist on films like “Green Lantern”, “Thor”, “Happy Feet Two”, … as well as a diversity of high profile TV commercials for international companies like KFC, ADIDAS, LUX or PORSCHE .

In 2012 family health issues have brought me back to my geographical roots however my experience as an international VFX professional and my passion to deliver photorealistic imagery, sometimes breaking the laws of physics to make the impossible look probable, continued to grow exponentially no matter where I was. In the following years, I have worked remotely on a variety of international TVC’s (Coca Cola, theNorthface, Cisco, Adobe, …, …), tv-series, short-films, Intel’s CES presentation or theme park installations as well as on bigger feature films like Jet Li’s “Feng Shen Bang” aka “The Investiture of the Gods”, “RAMS”, “In Like Flynn” or “Skyfire”.

In 2020 I have worked for over a year remotely for an Australian startup creating realistic VR applications teaching medical personnel how to perform operations and other procedures. My responsibility was to set up a Houdini <–> Unreal Engine pipeline to bring in and render procedurally modelled hard and soft surface assets as well as humanoids for use in real time rendering and interaction. Implementing Houdini simulations in UE was also part of that work.

In 2021, I started working remotely for Weta digital – now Weta FX – in Wellington New Zealand.
In 2022 I have moved to New Zealand to be in sync with the office’s time zone, but kept working remotely from Mount Maunganui. Projects worked on include Marvel’s “Moon Knight”, DC’s “Black Adam” & “TheFlash” as well as “Avatar2”.

Working remotely accommodates my self driven and disciplined style of work and has been a new interesting challenge which without the usual shared workplace distractions in combination with optimized work-flows has made me even more creative and productive than ever before.

Today, I am an experienced and highly motivated VFX and Unreal Engine professional, ambitious to further focus and develop my career across VFX Feature Film, TV landscapes and Game Engines. It has been the most engaging field, its challenges conducive with my aptitude for exploring cutting edge techniques and reward in client satisfaction. It is also one of the very few professional areas where my personal attributes as perfectionist, my attention to detail, my artistic eye and laugh for maths are appreciated as strength.

I am eager to apply the breadth of my visual effects skills, knowledge and experience to the cutting-edge level of VFX projects in both a creative and technical capacity.  I thrive on anomaly resolution and personal development whilst working in a strong team environment or as a one man army on challenging and fast paced projects.  Employing articulate communication, strong interpersonal skills, strategic planning and attention to detail in tactical execution whilst managing competing priorities to a deadline in an extremely responsive and demanding environment is my path to meet deadlines.

Please find some of my work here

Qualification:

Bachelor of Arts (Honors) (2005-2007)

Major: Multimedia

Middlesex University, London/England in collaboration with SAE

Sydney, Australia

Diploma Multimedia Producer (2003-2005)

Major: Multimedia

SAE Frankfurt, Main/Germany

Hanns-Seidel Gymnasium (1990-2000)

Major: A comparison between sports in US high schools and German Gymnasiums

Hösbach, Germany

Archbold High School (1996-1997)

Archbold, USA

Most influencing Artists: MC ESCHER, HR GIGER

Key Competencies:

Communication:  articulate verbal and written communication; strong interpersonal skills with the ability to foster relationships; strong analytical and anomaly resolution skills

Organizational: a thorough understanding of pipeline and workflow management; project management; ability to manage competing priorities to deadline in an extremely responsive and demanding environment; passion for detail; capable of working both autonomously and seamlessly with a team

Creative Aptitude: thorough knowledge, skills and experience in the application of lighting, perspective, color and mood to effect realistic and artistic imagery; remarkably developed eye; perceptive faculty; ongoing professional development

Languages: German, English (fluently), French (basic knowledge),

Computer literacy & Proficiency:

Coding (MEL, Python, PHP, JavaScript, ActionScript, CSS, XHTML,…);

3DModelling/ FX/Animation/Texturing/Rendering (Maya, Houdini, Realflow, Marvelous DesignerC4D, Mudbox,Terragen, Mantra, Renderman, Unity, SubstanceDesigner, Photoshop, Gimp, …);

2.5D & 2D Compositing/Design/Animation/Motion Graphics (Nuke, Shake, AfterEffects, Photoshop, GIMP, Flash,
Director, Premiere);

AudioEditing (SonySoundforge, Audition)

additionally proprietary packages

OS: Windows, MacOS, Linux

Accreditations|Certificates

– Maya Advanced, CGC College, Sydney/Australia
– Shake Compositing, Silicon Graphics Center, Sydney/Australia
– Typo 3, MittwaldMedien CMS Service, Espelkamp/Germany
– Windows System Administrator, T-Online, Darmstadt/Germany

I N T E R E S T S

Surfing, Kitesurfing, Wakeboarding, Snowboarding, Travelling, Cultures, Tattauing, Photography, MartialArts, Pool, Philosophy, Moko(MaoriDesigns)

RonWakeboardSelfieTurn RonSnowboard RonTattauing RonBillard RonWakeboardStandingTall

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