Since 2009, I’ve been consulting as a technology consultant, returning to my roots as a programmer. I’ve since done various work on sites for Gnomon and other folks in the computer graphics industry.
Architectural 3D Awards Site, 2011
I recently delivered the Architectural 3D Awards website for CGarchitect.com. The new awards website is a custom built site that enables users to upload image and video entries to the contest for judging. The system takes care of large file uploads, video compression, image handling, judging, etc. making the whole process of doing a call for entries, managing the entries, sorting and judging them much simpler. CGarchitect was able to secure more sponsors than ever before, making this the largest architectural 3D Awards contest to ever have been run.
Architectural 3D Awards Home Page
Entry submission page with large file uploader
Entry Validation Page
Entry Management Backend
Gnomon School of Visual Effects Courses Section, 2010
The new Gnomon School of Visual Effects courses section enables users to easily browse and find courses offered by the school. I got to work with the super talented Eric Carl, who did all the design work and HTML implementation. The courses section is powered by the Expression Engine content management system. I wrote a module that imports data from the school’s database and automatically updates information on the public website, as well as the online shopping cart system. Previously, registration periods were tedious for the web team as they had to update all this data by hand whenever it changed (which was on a daily basis). Now, the process is automated and updated with a few clicks. 
The new Gnomon School of Visual Effects course section.
The new Gnomon School of Visual Effects course pages. Information such as instructors, availability, pre-requisites and more are automatically updated.
All courses can even be listed in a convenient table now.
CG Architect, Autodesk, NVIDIA GPU Rendering Contest, 2010
CGarchitect.com held a GPU Rendering Revolution Competition in conjunction withAutodesk and NVIDIA. The Rendering Revolution contest is a global still image architectural visualization competition in celebration of the Autodesk 3ds Max 20 Anniversary and advancements in GPU-accelerated rendering solutions.
I developed the submission system that enables participants to upload large image files in a slick way. Previously, it was always very difficult to handle large file uploads (some of these files go into the hundreds of MB), so I implemented a chunked file uploader system, which breaks up a file into small chunks, sends them to the server and reconstructs the file on the other end.
CG Architect Gallery, Web Development, 2010
CG Architect contracted me to develop its gallery system. We decided that the best thing to do, rather than build out an entire new gallery, was to integrate it into the VBulletin forum system that was already implemented. This project involved developing a VBulletin plug-in for the gallery system, and migrating tens of thousands of gallery entries and users from the previous gallery into this one. The gallery enables people to submit their work, create portfolios on their profiles, edit their posts and submit custom fields such as the client, genre and software.
CG Architect Gallery - Images are fully integrated into VBulletin. For users, it is no different from posting on a forum and users can view the gallery within the forum.
Once a user submits an image, it automatically appears in their profile. Users can host a portfolio this way.
Thumbnails are automatically generated and shown on forum threads, making it really easy for people to browse the gallery.
Peoples Church of Montreal, Web Development, 2010
I’m a member of Peoples Church of Montreal, and I was asked to build a whole new website for the church. I’m not the best designer in the world (I’m mostly programming), and the church needs a serious re-branding effort, but my goal was to get up a functioning website that the church staff could update themselves. I built the site using WordPress and wrote my own theme and JQuery bits, and basically set up the site so that it could be updated by the church staff.
CG Channel, Web Development, 2010
CG Channel, an online destination for entertainment production artists, was acquired by Gnomon in 2008 and it had floundered for a couple of years. I joined Gnomon in November 2009 and had a side task of revitalizing this business. Leading a small web team, we re-launched CG Channel in February 2010. Completely re-vamped the business – core mission, positioning, business, organization, workflow and technology. The site was aligned to Gnomon’s goals and is now a core part of Gnomon’s outbound marketing program.
For this project, we used various off the shelf technologies: WordPress CMS, VBulletin forums, Shopify e-store. I wrote all the plugins that pulled the site together, including Shopify integration of the CG Channel store with The Gnomon Workshop’s order processing system. Sanaa Khan from Gnomon School of Visual Effects did all the graphic design work for it, based on original art direction from Eric Carl.
I implemented most of the technical aspects of the CG Channel website including setting up the CMS, dynamic portions of the HTML/CSS using JQuery, etc.
The CG Channel gallery uses a custom gallery plug-in which I developed for VBulletin. This same system is also used in the CG Architect project.
I wrote an Ajax widget that shows the gallery postings on the front page of CG Channel in PHP and Javascript. It lets users see and filter gallery images, using Ajax to retrieve the gallery data and display it interactively.
I wrote an integration system that links the CG Channel store with The Gnomon Workshop's fulfillment system, so that orders from CG Channel can be processed via The Gnomon Workshop in an automated fashion.
Softimage Website, Product Marketing Manager, 2006-2008
I worked at Softimage as Product Marketing Manager. During that time, I also got to lead the web team for the launch of SOFTIMAGE|XSI 7. Pasquale Volpintesta did the art direction and design work. Ghina El-Chemali was responsible for making it work in HTML/CSS. Jamal Rahal and I produced the marketing copy.
Marc Stevens, Vice President and General Manager of Softimage had this to say, “Leo was the architect of rebuilding the web and community presence of Softimage and turned it from a dying site to something which ended up being a model for the industry. This work played a key role in helping us turn around the Softimage business.”
The Softimage.com homepage at the launch of XSI 7.
SOFTIMAGE|XSI 7 Launch Page
3D Festival Website, Manager/Developer, 2003-2004
I got to work on the 3D Festival website from 2003-2004. The 3D Festival was a conference for the 3D industry in Europe and was a major conference in its day. Bonnie Kain worked on the designs for the website and I built the content management system. Robert Mibus took over much of the technical aspects of the site as I moved to business development.
CGSociety, Owner, Developer, 2001-2006
I was the founder, and co-owner of CGSociety from 2001-2006, selling my shares and moving to Canada where I currently reside. During that time, I led the web development team and did a lot of the initial development and system administration, which was later taken over by Robert Mibus and Anton Fletcher when I moved on to business development. Tim Downing, Mike Hepburn and Bonnie Kain were designers on the website.
CGSociety is pretty big…when I left, the website had 250,000 members and millions of page views per month. It still continues to be a high traffic website. The main areas that I worked on were the content management system and gallery.
CGSociety in its current state in August 2010. It's changed since I left, so I'll only take credit for building the original CMS.
CGSociety Gallery
