Kai is currently studying at Animation Mentor while working as Technical Support Manager for MAXON Computer Inc.

Kai originally studied at a Victoria School of Performing and Visual Arts, and very unique high school in Edmonton where he didn’t focus just on animation but Technical Theater, Drama, Directing and yes even musical theatre and choir. He studied English and Social during summer school to make more time for studying the arts during the regular school year, and managed to enjoy a fairly easy going arts focused final year with no academic courses as they were all complete already.

Upon graduating Kai stayed around at Victoria school to help develop the animation curriculum at Victoria for a year before moving to Vancouver to study Traditional Animation at Vancouver Film School in 2002. Upon graduating from VFS and with the harsh reality that feature studios were getting out of 2D and TV studios were mostly moving to flash, Kai ended up moving Back to Edmonton to Freelance and teach workshops for 3D studio Max, Animation, Premiere, and After effects at most of the major Edmonton Institutions including Grant MacEwan, University of Alberta, NAIT, Guru Digital Arts, and of course his old high school.

Kai ‘s then met his now Fiancé Amanda, an aspiring 3D artist and they moved to Vancouver so she could pursue her studies in 3D at Vancouver Film School as well. Back in Vancouver Kai worked for a short while with Resolve Software Solutions, a reseller of Cinema 4D and VectorWorks, where he helped to write some of the VectorWorks training material, particularly on rendering, and taught several of Resolves renowned VectorWorks workshops.

After a brief time with Resolve, Kai longed to get back into freelancing and found an opportunity at SIGGRAPH, working with a studio called Bent Image Lab, a stop motion studio anxious to try a productions in CINEMA 4D. Kai worked for 6 weeks on a Viral HP commercial in Portland before moving on to New York to assist in the final revisions of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Woman in White on Broadway.

Immediately after New York, Kai settled back in Vancouver and started production on tutorials for a new site called Cineversity founded by MAXON Computer Inc. in the US.  Kai continued to produce tutorials for the next year along with occasional smaller freelance projects for commercials to in house visualizations and even architecture before working on Diamond dog Caper’s/Dog Gone, a feature film directed by Mark Stouffer. Kai served as Technical Director and Squirrel hair expert, providing rigging, shading lighting and fur, essentially everything except animation and compositing and the initial squirrel model.

After this Kai and Amanda moved back to Edmonton for a few months to relax and revaluate. Kai, finally accepted an offer by MAXON to work in Newbury Park as Technical Support Manager to help rebuild the tech team and further develop studio relations.

Since moving to Newbury Park, Kai has decided now is a perfect time to take advantage of the steady 9-5 and focus on getting back into animation instead of the technical side of things by studying with Animation Mentor, and online school. Amanda has also decided to continue in her studies, as she has now landed a tattoo apprenticeship at Danny Black’s Art of Life Tattoo Studio.