Hi, I’m Joe Harper, a visual effects student from Liverpool, England studying at Bolton University. I love programming, 3D modeling and lookdev.
Programming (C#, Python).
Hard Surface Modeling (Maya, 3DS, Blender, Houdini, Unreal)
Texturing (Substance Painter, Mari)
Compositing (Nuke X, Adobe suite)
2021
During college I entered a national competition, and after submitting my work and interviews, I was proud to be the person chosen to spend a month working at the ILM office in London. This was a truly amazing opportunity to spend time with some of the industry's leading developers at the company synonymous with ground breaking innovations and technology. My only regret was that due to the covid pandemic, this experience had to be remote, This was still one of the most rewarding experiences, getting to work with the teams developing blockbuster movies and gaining an insight into the day to day processes of a truly remarkable studio.
January 2022 - present
Over the pandemic I taught myself to play piano and to DJ, I used these skills to make a few songs and also I started live streaming myself DJing on a site called twitch.tv for fun. Not long after I started live streaming I managed to gain an audience of around 400 members. This has taught me so much about creating a business and marketing myself. I also have designed websites logos and graphics for this which has taught me alot. I still regularly stream myself doing this as it provides a different type of outlet for my creativity.
September 2022 - present
I am currently studying Visual Effects at the University of Bolton and I am loving it. I have been able to work on some really fun and engaging projects while being taught the industry workflow and pipeline. It was on this course I fell in love with Hard Surface modeling and programming.
September 2019 - June 2022
In college I was part of the prestigious "Next Gen" games design, visual effects and animation level 3 diploma, offered only by very few colleges in the UK. This is a course that works closely with many industry giants, such as; ILM, Framestore, DNEG, Sony Interactive and Ubisoft, offering projects with real world scenarios. Throughout this course I had opportunities to attend lectures from industry leaders and work on projects set and mentored by the aforementioned studios, allowing us to build connections and develop our skills with the help of these mentors.
September 2016 - June 2019
At the age of 13 I decided to make a huge decision and move schools from my local secondary school to a technical college in The Baltic Triangle, Liverpool, called Studio School. This ended up being one of the best and most invaluable decisions I have ever made. It has provided me with countless opportunities and experiences that have helped me grow and learn, not just educationally but as a person.
Here are a few of my projects that I have done in University and in my free time.
click the images for more details
For this piece I created a set of speakers and a stand for them within Maya. This was done to use as graphics for my DJing. I really enjoyed this project and was very happy with the photorealistic outcome.
In this piece I wanted to make a prop with many complex shapes that were challenging to model. I settled on a weapon from a show I watched as a child, I was really proud of the difficult detailing I managed to capture here.
This piece was for a University project that I had a lot of fun with. I started with a 3D model of a Subaru Impreza. I then directed and filmed the live action footage in the National Centre for Motorsport Engineering. With the filmed clips I used matchmove techniques in NukeX to track the car onto the camera footage, I then used a HDRI I had taken during the recording to match the lighting. I was extremely pleased with the outcome.
For this group project in university, my role was working on hard surface modeling and texturing, I was very pleased by the outcome of my work and I felt that the tank I had created delivered exactly the right aesthetic with the texturing and lighting that the project brief was looking for.
At the start of this year I decided to teach myself to use unreal engine. This was my first forray into the package where I created this dark and atmospheric scene.
This project piece is a program written in Python using PyQT for UI, it works inside houdini and creates a scene where a cloth is simulated falling onto an object, the script allows the user to precisely control all the variables of the script in an easy to understand and user friendly UI.
Feel free to use this fourm or directly email me for any questions or enquiries, I will try to respond ASAP.
harper@eeu.jp
Phone: (+44) 7446 444537
