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Christopher Heckey

Pipeline Developer · Los Angeles area · chrisheckey@gmail.com

Summary

Pipeline developer with more than a decade in feature and TV animation. I build artist-facing tools, studio microservices, and the delivery workflows that connect in-house teams with partner studios around the world.

Experience

Pipeline Developer — Netflix Animation Studios

Jan 2022 – Oct 2026

  • Developed and maintained feature animation tools for Art, Story and PreVis.
  • Built microservices on Netflix's infrastructure platform to support a globally distributed workforce.
  • Coordinated with vendors to test and integrate off-the-shelf tools (Foundry Flix, Toon Boom Storyboard Pro, Adobe Photoshop, Maya).
  • Developed and maintained delivery, ingestion and "round-tripping" tools for partner studios and internal departments.

Pipeline Developer — Buck Design

Sept 2019 – Jan 2022

  • Developed and maintained the CG Animation group's pipeline tools (Maya, Houdini, Nuke, Cinema 4D).
  • Explored cloud platforms for distributed studio pipeline solutions (GCP, AWS).
  • Developed and maintained Adobe plugins (Photoshop, After Effects).
  • Moved the pipeline onto industry standards (Rez, USD).

Lead FX Pipeline TD — DreamWorks TV

May 2017 – Sept 2019 · Fast & Furious: Spy Racers, Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous

  • Automated and improved FX workflows with new tools and cross-department collaboration.
  • Maintained and tracked libraries of VFX assets, presets and setups.
  • Developed standards and tooling for partner studios to keep overseas results high quality and asset shipping smooth.
  • Worked with Operations and Engineering to improve render farm (Deadline) usage and troubleshoot issues.
  • Supported in-house and overseas FX artists by removing technical blockers, automating work, and helping adopt new software (Houdini, Chaos Phoenix).
  • Reviewed code from FX TDs and trained new FX artists and TDs.

Pipeline TD — Blur Studio

Sept 2016 – May 2017

  • Developed and maintained in-house tools and frameworks for 3ds Max (Cross3d).
  • Kept tool and workflow documentation accurate.
  • Integrated tools with asset tracking through the ShotGrid APIs.

Pipeline TD — DreamWorks TV

Jan 2015 – Aug 2016 · King Julien, Puss in Boots, DinoTrux, Voltron, Spirit

  • Built artist workflow automation tools with the Maya APIs.
  • Taught artists evolving workflows through documentation and presentations.
  • Integrated with studio asset tracking through the ShotGrid APIs.
  • Developed for both Windows and Linux.

CG Generalist — DreamWorks TV

May 2014 – Jan 2015 · King Julien, Puss in Boots, DinoTrux, Voltron, Spirit

  • Kept CG asset quality high as assets moved through the pipeline.
  • Scripted scene and asset assembly workflows with the Maya APIs.

CG Generalist — Nickelodeon Animation Studios

Jan 2013 – May 2014 · Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

  • Kept CG asset quality high as assets moved through the pipeline.
  • Created low-resolution and proxy geometry from high-resolution assets.

Skills

Pipeline development

  • DCC tools and plugins (Photoshop, Maya)
  • Quality assurance and partner delivery/ingestion
  • Asset and shot tracking (ShotGrid / Flow Production Tracking)
  • Dependency and configuration management (Rez)
  • Multi-platform development (Linux, Windows, macOS)
  • User interfaces in PySide / Qt for Python

Web development

  • Web frontends (React, TypeScript, Apollo GraphQL)
  • Microservice backends (Python, Go, Docker)
  • Cloud platforms (GCP, AWS, Cloudflare)

Education

B.F.A. Animation/Illustration — San Jose State University, 2007 – 2013
Focus in computer graphics

Contact