Tilghman Wendel - NEW_A Brief History

Person of the internet,

My name's Tilghman, and my job is to cook, bake, and drip pixels for companies like HBO, Twitch, and Ford. One day I realized that sifting my hands through rice is about as satisfying as pushing rocks around a physics simulation. I decided to pursue a career in one of those, and fake the other.

The website you're staring at is an homage to sushi temples, which are about as real as flying monkeys. The reason I created a fake establishment was to veer away from making senseless spec animations, and instead, build the restaurant of my dreams - The Akami Gold Sushi Temple.

As a lifelong student of illustration, film-making, and lettering - I began studying my parent's signatures as a kid. I was naturally drawn to elements of design while never pursuing it head-on. Fast-forward a few Playstations, and my work has encompassed animated typography, sports packages, motion graphics, and, of course, dynamics.

Somewhere along the way, I began exploring 3D programs to achieve motion that was elsewhere undoable. Early in the pandemic, I rewired my DNA to the likes of the mythical Houdini. Now I bang down doors and spread the procedural word, like any good FX artist should.

When I'm not burning holes in my eyes, I enjoy snowboarding, riding my bike, and making sushi. I also like drawing on paper, building corny websites, and screenwriting.

Focus & Effects

Particles, Grains & Rigid Body Dynamics

stackable sand, snow and gold bits with animated colliders.

temporally deintersected rigid bodies with organic physics and rotations.

Fluid Effects

small-scale, high-viscosity fluids, slow-motion, bubbles and gooey gold drips.

Volumetrics & Fields

vapor, smoke, clouds, VDB booleans and procedural volume modeling.

Cloth, Wire & Rope

dynamic chains, soft-body simulations with colliders and procedural constraints.

Procedural Modeling

infinitely random copies generated through VEX scripting and sub-networks.

Explicit Motion Graphics

getting across the finish line when other DCC's struggle.

propagated growth, temporal masks and custom velocity fields. solaris & USD integration.

extensive instance control for modeling, UVs, motion & high-poly count scenes.

Graphic & FX Integration

merging dimensions (2D & 3D) through dynamics and in-render compositing.

procedural vector modeling for bitmaps, type and hero assets.

Proficiencies

SideFX Houdini

preferred DCC for modeling, 3D motion, and FX.

familiar with Solaris (USD) pipeline - rendering Redshift & learning Karma XPU.

Maxon Cinema 4D

my relationship with Cinema has lasted longer than 30% of American marriages.

rendering Redshift & Octane.

Adobe Suite & Substance

the usual suspects: AE, PS, PR, AI - plus a bit of Substance.

yes, I'm one of those Houdini guys who still loves After Effects.

The Foundry Nuke

basic understanding of 3d multi-pass compositing with color correction & grade.

comfortable with Nuke pipelines, but I am not a Nuke wizard.

Procreate + Rough Animator

my go-to tools for previz, animatics, sketching, and the occasional cel animation.

Artificial Intelligence

I have not used generative AI beyond the point of making silly jokes.

I use, and (mostly) recommend, AI for debugging VEX, python, and just about any coding language.

In the past, I've used AI for upscaling, duplicate frame removal, and photo fills.