When not working or taking classes, Dennis taught himself Strata on a painfully slow Mac. Dennis created an Honors course with Professor Dan McLaughlin (the head of UCLA's Animation department). The result of this study was a 3 minute animated short entitled "Meet Your Maker."

Armed with this very primitive animation and his Photoshop expertise, Dennis applied to Viridis - a local game company. Despite volunteering to work for free and vacuum their floors while he proved his abilities, they told him they'd call him some 'other' time. That call came two weeks later, when they asked him to come in over his Christmas vacation and model a shark and animate it swimming. He taught himself 3DS4 and finished the work in 1/4 the allotted time. He was hired on the spot, and 4 months later made lead artist. Here he worked on various games including Jester (Playstation), BattleSphere, and as Art Lead on Firewolves. Dennis was also in charge of modeling, rendering, editing and creating audio for the company demo reels, as well as all print ads and logos for the company and it's game.

When Viridis inevitably went the way of the dodo bird, Dennis spent six months teaching himself, studying every book he could find, and basically honing his skills. "At a company, you generally get hired to do the things you already know how to do. I wanted to break out of the box and really focus myself on character work, and specifically, character animation." During this period, he started 3DStorm... his own little pseudo company. He also spent 12 hours a day on his own projects, teaching himself new techniques. The fruit of this work was landing a gig writing the first 4 chapters of Inside 3DStudio Max 2 Volume III: Advanced Animation book. Dennis also has a shared credit for the 3DStudio Max 3 Bible cover art. Next, Dennis modeled and animated all the characters for the N64 game, Charlie Blast's Territory, then created architectural fly-throughs for Boston University's Architectural School, and modeled the main character for a national CircleK commercial.

Dennis then took another 6 month learning hiatus and futher developed his character skills. It was this time period where he really advanced his animation skills, which he would need for his next job...

Dennis was seduced away by the dark and pungent powers of Dragonstone Software for their crowing project: Dragon's Lair 3D. In charge of the character work, he was quickly promoted to the company's Director of Art and Animation. It was during this time that he had the opportunity to work directly with Don Bluth on his animation on two different occasions. He also got pointers from Gary Goldman and John Pomeroy... This was a huge honor, and a great learning experience he won't soon forget. The project was a demanding one, and Dennis alternated between working 120 hours a week on animation, modeling, direction and recruiting, while acting as a stand in lead designer to keep the project hitting it's milestones. He spent 10 months of sometimes 120 hour weeks, showing at a gym, and sleeping on an air-mattress at work every night in an empty cubicle with a cardboard monitor box over him like a tee-pee to keep the lights out. The rare occasions he did go home greeted him with a 120 mile commute.

Following the old addage "slavery... bad", Dennis left Dragonstone. Tired of the computer-geek/homeless-person-lifestyle, Dennis took a job as Creative Director for the internet application company iPal, Inc. At iPal, he was in charge of design and implementation of the website, flash demos, interface designs, and user testing.

Dennis left iPal in the fall and is cocooning again, working his evil magic and preparing to burst back into the animation world. He's focussing on 3D character animation, and experimenting with exporting the characters to Flash and making them interactive. "It's what I love to do. There's nothing I'd rather be doing than breathing life into characters."

Dennis' Thoughts On Production:

Anything that comes between those that produce and their product is truly evil. I've seen a lot of poor management in my time, and the botchery I see continually is hiring qualified people and then not letting them do their job. Management should augment the flow of production... not impede it. One of the best managers I ever had just doled out the work, got us what ever we needed, and left it up to us to live up to our commitments. He was a total stand-up guy, and you didn't want to let him down. He wouldn't go home until everyone else went home, even if he just stayed to get you food and keep you company. When things went well, he'd give credit, and when things got behind, he'd take responsibility. To me, as management, that's the job description. Get the respect of your team, and they'll follow you into hell. That's how you get a team that'll produce.