Project Involvement Timeline

I started collaborating with the Dark Universe team during the concept phase of the project in September 2018. The ride system had yet to be determined. The team was struggling to visualize how the different options would look and feel while moving through a show and it was holding up attraction development.

Because of my previous experience with robotic ride systems, I was asked to model, rig, and animate some of the vehicle concepts. I was also asked to pitch ideas for unique show moments. I generated lots of animatics showcasing the opportunities each ride variant afforded us. I also built our first concept model working with the illustrators and our engineering team to ensure that the design was both visually appealing and technically feasible.

Once an initial ride vehicle concept was approved, I was able to animate our first prototype with ridership. Those tests gave the team the confidence they needed to go into full production on the ride system.

While the ride system was being produced, I coordinated the show 3ds max model and our Unreal Engine technical visualization tools. I was in constant collaboration with our media team, showset vendors, attraction designers, and engineering staff, to ensure everyone had up to date digital assets of all show elements.

Since we were playing in the horror genre, and looking for ways to differentiate ourselves from both past attractions and the Horror Nights maze offerings the challenge to create new tactile sensations was put to the team. Haptics were quickly adopted as a new tool in the arsenal to startle our guests. Dante Bruno and I came up with a new way to embed haptic actuators into a ride restraint system. That contribution resulted in a patent we share. I also built the first pass of the haptic animation pipeline used in the attraction.

This project had numerous scenic mockups to test out the illusions you see throughout the show. I worked on several projection mapping tests in late 2019 and early 2020 lurking in dark rooms with our media team to get their content mapped onto all sorts of physical gags.

In early 2020, I handed off the attraction to Andrew Carbonar and Thomas Stoeckert. They developed the attraction from that point until it opened with Epic Universe in Orlando in May 2025.