Herbert Elwood Gilliland III
creative
In 2005 after 9.5 years of undergraduate strife I became a Bachelor of Science: Interaction Design, the first of its kind from Carnegie Mellon University. During my studies I learned extensively about making creative software in the forms of electronic media, websites, video games and virtual reality experiences. I fought my way through school first as a chef and later as a web developer. The lengthy stay allowed me to take advantage of a self-defined course of study that was pieced together from graduate level courses. I ended up with two minors and a load of debt to pay.
After leaving school I became a technical writer, QA analyst, full-stack engineer and PHP guru. In 2005 I began to become disinterested in only working on websites and web back-ends. I sought a career in the graphics industry, as one of my first passions was to create tools for artists. As a stepping stone from web design to graphics engineering, I became an image analysis specialist working on computer-aided diagnosis of renal cell carcinomas in the University of Pittsburgh Department of Pathlogy under Dr. Zoltan Oltvai.
Starting in 2006 I began working in C again (I first learned it in 1991) and taught myself C++ while working on the "eC" compiler and IDE for Ecere.org. In 2014, after spending 6 years moonlighting as a graphics engineer and still working primarily on web applications, I brought my personal efforts to bear and helped win a contract for a small startup called PieceMaker Technologies Inc. By that time I had built a powerful game engine for Windows and it was licensed to the startup. We went on to win Popular Sciences' Best in Toy Fair 2016.
My goal in contacting you is to find a way to do what I do best: the things I love: graphics, product, and experience. I love to design the interactions between people, machines, and both.
I have spent some time in managerial roles and hope to bring that experience to your organization. I want to help shape and motivate great teams, without whom there would be no great products.
Proficiencies
Skill metrics are relative strengths unless otherwise noted.
C++11 ISO IKM assessment: you can download the granular results here. I feel I actually scored higher due to the number of poor questions and the fact that I received several phone calls while taking the test.
I've been over-tested before in interviews and I've been whiteboarded-to-death. You can read my opinions about this in old PopBangZip snippets.
Experience
Graphics Developer
I focused on developing a Windows Desktop-based OpenGL for over 10 years and it grew to 400000+ lines. I also worked on THREE.js in its earlier years, and used WebGL to win a contract with Toys-R-Us for PieceMaker. I like Javascript game engines, though C++ makes a faster one. I'm also experienced in GLSL and have released over a hundred shaders for GameMaker open source.
Foci:
- Multi-context OpenGL, Multi-Threaded
- Procedural manifold geometry (CPU)
- Systems integration (audiovisual)
- Game systems (2D physics, large world concerns, procedural generation)
- Ground-up UI engineering
- GLSL (multiple versions and workflows)
- FBO, VBO (IBO/EBO/VAO), texture handling, multisample, atlases
Experience:
- Unified Windows Device Interface (WinTouch, XInput, DirectInput, DirectInput8, Logitech Kit)
- An expansive engine with 1800+ classes written over a decade
- Procedural animation
- Experience developing custom visual effects: Lightning, cracking, destruction, breaking, fading, shattering
- Dozens of game editor panels
- Source loading, mixing, long-form audio streams,
- Cloud integration, Steam API, GLM
Web and Cloud Developer
New York, USA
Using web technologies since 1997
Skills:
- knowledge of Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign
- HTML5, CSS3, JQuery, Javascript ES6, PHP versions 4 to 7+
- knowledge of W3C standards, API development, Full Stack
- Frameworks, frameworks, frameworks. Meh.
- Linux systems administration
- AWS Cloud (EC2, Lambda, S3, IAM, etc)
- Some Nodejs
Experience:
- Worked for Garrigan Lyman Group (top web advertising firm) (ToyoTires.com)
- Zend Framework, Drupal, Wordpress Developer
- Experienced REST Engineer (Middleware) with Docker
- Python experience (Flask/Swagger)
- Freelanced for over 30 organizations
- Web developer at Fortune 500 and Fortune 100 companies
- WebGL / Pixijs, THREE.js and more
Education
Carnegie Mellon University
B.Sc. Interaction Design, 2005
Minor: Art
Minor: Multimedia Authoring
Career Highlights
-
1996Fox Chapel Area High School
Graduate; Key Club International, Chess Club, QUEST, TSA (Technology Students Association), Accepted to Creative Writing program at Carnegie Mellon University -
1997MSI
At my first job in Tech I worked at a satellite company (Microsoft Solution Provider) that served Respironics (now Phillips) helping with a prototype Sleepware Device, and Medrad, Inc. (now Bayer) an MRI injector -
1999-2002STUDIO For Creative Inquiry
Project Assistant, Nine Mile Run Greenway Project; web designer, illustrator, multimedia authoring, project assistant to other resident artists Frank Garvey (Omnicircus mixed-mode CD-ROM), Clifton McGill (nature photography CD-ROM), Interactive Ancient Egypt / BNAVE VR environment (Consultant), Platform Digital LLC, Project Club, Project Escape; ArcGIS, PHP, Macromedia Director -
2002Building Virtual Worlds with Randy Pausch
Part of the 2002 class of Building Virtual Worlds -
2002-2003Carnegie Mellon University Staff, Media Design Center, ECE
Work for school-wide interdepartmental media services, and later as a full-time webmaster in the Electrical and Computer Engineering college; Perl/Oracle, HTML/CSS, PHP and Photoshop -
2004Index Tools
San Diego, CA; Software Strategist (Sales/Technical) for Index Tools (now Yahoo Analytics) online SEO and advertising management platform for Omniture and Google Advertising -
2005Graduated!
I finally graduated with a Bachelors from Carnegie Mellon University -
2007Medrad, Inc.
Usability Analyst working on top-line cardiovascular imaging systems; Visual Basic -
2007Technical Writer
Provost Systems (now a part of Edison Learning); primary author of 11 technical guides with some QA on the side -
2007-2011Founded Ganos LLC and Gudagi.com
Began working on a website and sales business "Gudagi.com" and eventually formed an LLC -
2008University of Pittsburgh Medical School, Department of Pathology
Image analysis tool for computer-aided diagnosis of renal cell carcinomas, and consultant to Intel-funded Whole Slide Library; Processing IDE, Java, C++ -
2008-2013Ecere.org
Contributing Developer; eC and Ecere SDK -
2009Actual Size Creative
Web developer; CodeIgniter (PHP), social media and music sharing website; a follow on personal project was creating HerbIgniter -
2009Lost Astronaut Studios
Founded a DBA (Doing-Business-As) in Pennsylvania as an independent games studio; C++ / OpenGL -
2011TeleTracking, Inc.
Fortune 500 Company; Health-care (HIPAA), PHP Developer; Zend Framework -
2012Ganos LLC
I founded Ganos LLC ("Bright" in Greek) and launched Gudagi.com, a multi-purpose website for hosting files and projects, sharing media and making websites easily; LAMP stack / PHP / jQuery -
2012-2013Garrigan Lyman Group
I briefly worked in Manhattan for the top web advertising firm, specifically on the ToyoTires.com website among some others; Django, Wordpress, PHP -
2014-2016PieceMaker Technologies Inc.
Director of Software; Lead Software Architect of a retail 3D-printing "factory-in-a-store" experience that debuted at Toy Fair 2014 and won Popular Science's Best in Toy Fair 2016; C++, OpenGL, AWS, PHP for additive manufacturing -
2017-2019Smith Micro Graphics
Lead Graphics Architect, Lead Engineer; Poser 3D Character Creation Studio and Moho (formerly Anime Studio); international team; travelled to Portugal; OpenGL / Cross-platform Desktop Application Development; C++, OpenGL, xCode 3.6 -
2020Bloomfied Robotics Inc.
Lead Software Engineer; Employee 1; built a prototype image-heavy analytics application for web and mobile used reviewing output of the BLINK portable microscopic camera for agronomic data collection; Mapbox GL, PHP, LAMP Stack, AWS, UI/UX, Data Science -
2021Bohemia Interactive Simulations
Senior Software Engineer for DOD subcontractor and creator of tools and simulations for "Serious Games"; Development of middleware automation for graphics data pipeline, mapping, Cesium 3D Tiles, ArcGis I3S and other formats; Linux, Docker, AWS, Python, REST ApIs