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Ruaan.grobler

3D Animation diploma | PSM-1 Scrum Master | TEFL-qualified teacher
Content Creator and Rich Media specialist in the eLearning industry

Need a static version with more detail? Download it here.

16 September 1984


Johannesburg, South Africa 
(willing to relocate)

16 years of experience


Availability – one calendar month

  • Tiger herder (creative lead)

  • Client facing, pitching and stakeholder engagement

  • Comfortable in both corporate and creative environments

  • Meticulous where it matters but always deadline focused

  • Passionate about andragogy 

I’ve been creating and overseeing Rich Media content for more than 16 years. This has ranged from feature film, VFX, animated series and commercial 3D work; to engineering visualisations, marketing content, advanced communications and rich (audiovisual-heavy) eLearning courses - including work on VR learning and business games.

Much of my career has seen me in leadership positions - developing and guiding my team to meet client demands. Building smarter pipelines and asset-focused workflows have been a big part of my success. 
My strong language skills and attention to detail have often seen me in a quality-control role. I’ve worked as a Lead Animator, CG Supervisor and Rich Media Manager, both on the Agency side and embedded with the client’s marketing teams. 

 

Creating content with fairly fast turnaround times is my specialty and essential to the work I produce both personally and professionally. This means I can produce on tight budgets, as well as deliver faster iterations on bigger budgets. More iterations typically mean higher quality.

Below is my showreel of my 3D animation work.

For a little over 4 years now, I’ve been designing and building learning solutions for various industries, primarily focused on the big banks but also extending to HR, Aviation and the Industrial sector. The budgets in Learning are much smaller, but I love the autonomy and often produce the entire piece, from inception and writing to delivery.

Below is the showreel for the team I currently work with to produce some of South Africa's top learning content.

Skillset

There is no humble way to say this: I have a huge technical skillset. I'll try to be concise and only list my favourite tools in order of preference:

3D

2D

eLearning

Realtime

Live Action

Productivity

Programming

Additional

Houdini; Blender; Substance Painter and -Designer; Softimage; Maya; Max.

The entire Adobe Production Suite, especially After effects, Premier and Illustrator; Clip Studio Paint for sketching. Learning Blender's Grease Pencil next.

Articulate Storyline and Rise; Adobe Captivate. Working knowledge of LMSs and keen to transition to LRSs using xAPI, though the market around me isn't ready for this yet.

Unreal Engine; some Unity.

Lightroom; Photoshop; Capture One. DaVinci Resolve, Premiere.

The Office 365 suite, extensive knowledge of Teams and most of the tools integrated with it, not to mention daily items like Powerpoint and Word.

My use for programming is usually workflow automation, not traditional dev work, but I know my way around most languages, enough to troubleshoot with google. I have a preference for Python, but I'm rusty if I'm honest. Unreal Engine's blueprint system (which I'm getting pretty savvy with) is built on C++ logic. Some C# for Unity, and a dash of beginner PHP for the essentials. I'm also quite comfortable with Javascript (and of course HTML but I would hardly call that programming).

I also have a working knowledge of Adobe XD for prototyping, Power BI for Data visualisation (I love data) and reporting, and some of the AWS systems like S3 and Pinpoint.

Along with the technical skills, I have extensive knowledge of creative writing for entertainment, specifically character development and several tools for pace and plot structure. I'm also a big proponent of Gamification, and I've studied two short courses on the topic. Finally, my love for Agile methodology drove me to get my PSM-1 certification (International Scrum Master). In terms of Live Action, I have extensive knowledge of cameras, sensors, compression algorithms, lenses, lighting and gear in general.

I guess I should also mention I speak English and Afrikaans fluently, and I have a fair understanding of French. I love languages, so I'm also learning basic Spanish and Dutch.

For more on short courses and certifications, check my ever-growing certification section on LinkedIn.

Below is a fun little interactive dashboard of my skills aligned with conceptualisation and production work processes. Feel free to adjust sliders, click on content or simply hover over data to learn more. Unfortunately the PowerBI viewer isn't mobile-friendly, and this is only viewable on desktop browsers.

PowerBI

Some Career WINS

  • Team Lead: South Africa’s First HD Animated Children’s series, Ed & Eppa in the Wild - Red Pepper Pictures

  • Lead Animator: South Africa’s second Animated feature film, Adventures in Zambezia – Triggerfish Animation

  • Technical Team Lead: Special Effects for India’s largest budget action film at the time, RaOne, as technical team lead in South-Africa – Luma Animation

  • Incredible amounts of vastly successful local and international advertising campaigns in various capacities, mostly as Animation team Lead and CG Supervisor

  • Immensely successful training animation campaigns for local top tier banks with an animated short film instead of the usual boring click-throughs

  • Leading the visual design of multiple projects in the Learning and Development space which have been recognised as some of the best from the company

  • Involvement with and facilitation of Safety Training initiatives, including the design of Brochures, photography of events and much more

  • Certification as international Scrum Master (PSM-1)

  • Regular assistance to marketing teams wrt filming directors’ messages, interviews, business rescue initiatives during Covid and more

  • International narrative driven OHS training, including co-authorship of article published on trainingindustry.com

  • Development of assets and technical assistance for several realtime learning solutions including games and Virtual Reality products

  • Graphics pipeline development for a game to achieve character customisation using 3vector colour math on sprites

  • Development of the Rich Media pipeline for one of South Africa’s biggest apps

  • Development of the HTML targeted mailer comms pipeline for the above app

Testimonials...after a fashion

It's no use being good if nobody enjoys working with you. I pride myself in healthy relationships with clients, team members and Leadership​. Here are just some of the messages from my last contract as Rich Media manager for a local fintech's super app.

Me as a person?

My personal life also revolves around my creative skills. I'm always developing some project or learning new skills. I really, truly, love what I do. I have an immense passion for science, philosophy and psychology; and I'm at my happiest taking photos of the beautiful world around us - whether it be architecture, wildlife, or simply good humans.

Career timeline

Career Timeline

2002: School done

I finished the national school curriculum. Subjects included Mathematics, Science and French, all higher grade and a distinction in English. Of course, I drew in every class.

Career Timeline

2003: Got paid

I got my first official job as the casual manager of a pizza restaurant while studying. I can still recite the menu. I used to practice my drawing on a table near the ingredients...the scent of canned pineapple still makes me reach for a pencil.

Career Timeline

2005: Head hunted

I was head-hunted out of college and soon promoted to team lead for South Africa's first international CG animated children's show, Ed and Eppa in the Wild. Sadly this was before the internet hit South-Africa, so I'm having a very hard time finding a relevant link. Last I heard it was dubbed into 9 languages and sold in 11 countries.

Career Timeline

2005: College Done

I completed my Animation diploma at Boston Media House under the best lecturers I could've asked for. Instead of just software training, our course was built on character development, plot, hookah smoke and a lot of the other skills that make work good. Also, my male lecturer surprised us in a bikini one day for breast-cancer awareness. There are some things you'll never forget.

Career Timeline

2007: Commercials

We completed production on Ed and Eppa, and I had a brief stint in a think-tank/brainstorming hub where I first fell in love with ideation. Sadly, we couldn't secure the funding we needed to keep going, and I moved into commercial work at Luma Animation. There we created many of South Africa's favourite animated commercials. I also developed my Fooseball skills to black-belt.

Career Timeline

2009: Film work

Head-hunted for an Animation Lead role on Adventures in Zambezia, South Africa's first internationally successful 3D animated feature as far as I know. I moved to beautiful Cape Town for a while and worked with some incredible people. I had my first rear-wheel drive car and was watching Initial-D at the time. Mountain passes had a special allure.

Career Timeline

2010: Freelance

I helped to grow small animation and design studios and elevate the status of bigger ones. I saw amazing growth and awesome international work including special effects for Bollywood.

Career Timeline

2015: Stability

The animation industry took a massive knock, so I joined forces with my favourite client Luma Animation. With Softimage discontinued we were learning Houdini. What an exceptional tool. It was the god of 3D packages...probably still is.

Career Timeline

2017: Wanderlust

With the animation industry still having a bad time I decided to join the world of business. I figured maybe I could learn a thing or two. I was picked up by IQbusiness and got stuck in immediately, creating a short animated film as a training piece that won us much acclaim. This was my first exposure to a big company and I love this place. The enthusiasm, sense of purpose and room for growth is only outweighed by the incredible people; all so keen to make the world a better place.

Career Timeline

2018: Learning

With a renewed passion for learning, I attacked Udemy and Coursera. Some highlights were Gamification courses and a comprehensive Game Design course. Details on LinkedIn.

Career Timeline

2019: Agile

With exposure to Agile through my employer, I decided to get my PSM-1 Scrum Master certification. I also published an article or two this year. One was on the case for Agility in the graphics industry, and it was pretty well received.

Career Timeline

2020: To infinity...

This year kicked off with a bang as I was involved with IQbusiness BasIQs, an exceptional internship programme. I worked with a team of absolutely incredible humans as we prepared for and received, up-skilled and fell in love with some of the brightest young minds South Africa has to offer. This was honestly some of the most fulfilling time of my life. Incredible people, incredible learning curve...just incredible. Now I'm attacking my personal work relentlessly while also pushing the quality of my work for the business to new heights using more and more of the skillset I've been developing on my personal projects.

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