Michael
Tanzillo

I started my 3D career at a dream job. I spent 13 years at Blue Sky Studios working on 10 feature films, from the Ice Age franchise all the way to Nimona. Most of that time I was a Lighting Artist, and it shaped everything about how I think about craft, storytelling, and what it means to do technical work with real artistry. Along the way I co-wrote a book, Lighting for Animation, and started teaching.

The longer I was there, the less I thought about individual shots and the more I thought about the pipeline the whole team ran on. That led me to becoming Head of the Training department at Blue Sky, teaching artists how every piece fit together. When the studio closed in 2021, I started to see just how far 3D reaches beyond entertainment. Architecture, product design, e-commerce, marketing... the demand for people who actually understand this stuff is everywhere.

At Adobe I led the Technical Artists team for Substance 3D, and that's where the business side clicked for me. I was working with companies not just on how to use a tool, but on how their whole 3D workflow should run end to end, and helping their leadership see why it was worth the investment.

Now I'm Senior Director of Business Development at KitBash, the company behind KitBash3D, Greyscalegorilla, ArtStation, and Sketchfab. It's the same instinct I've had all along: match the right tools to the right people so they can go build something great. Now I just get to do it for a lot more companies at once. And alongside all of it, I'm building communities and resources to help 3D artists figure out where they fit in this expanding world.