I started on Madagascar 3 as a Lighting Artist in November of 2011. My first task was to help with a sequence that was backburner for many departments. While completing work on the sequence, I also began work on another sequence with Stephano and Alex in the train car. This was the first production sequence with Stephano the sea lion. They were reworking his surfacing to make him look younger so there was a lot of back and forth with the art director on nailing his look for the film. For the sequence, the art directors where interested in transitioning from night time ambient lighting to fully lit traincar in the beginning of the sequence. Many of my shots occured during the transitions but after some back and forth we were able to nail the look they wanted. The hardest part of this sequence was getting the brown sea lion to stand out from the brown wainscoting.

I later began work on the breakup sequence in the bear's train car. I took over development of the look of King Julian in the beginning of the sequence as well as the bear in her "sad" corner. I was able to nail both looks pretty early so I was also tasked with handling the exterior one-off shot that required all new lighting for the train car and adjusting an existing rig for the circus tent which was unfortunately installed in an entirely different position for the one-off shot.

My final sequence was also one of the last sequences in the movie. The showdown at the zoo was a particular fun sequence for me to work on as I was given more responsibility in the sequence than usual. I developed the rig for the crowds, including adjusting regioning per shot to expedite rendering by implementing level of detail. I also worked on developing the look of the camera flashes. This was done through a light "matte" render that was rendered out and all timing was done inside Nuke. This made is much easier and faster to adjust specific timing and also gave the desired result. During the last days of production the art director wanted to work to have my last show match up more with the first shot of the next sequence. I was able to make the changes and add a new pink rim to end of the shot quickly.