Well hey there, thank you so much for your interest in my work! If you'd like to get in touch, feel free to fill out the contact form below, or you can always reach me in the following ways:
phone | 843.801.2791
email | dhale@g.clemson.edu
post | 1505 Morgan Campbell Ct. Charleston SC 29407
Thank you!
Telling stories just comes naturally to me. It’s something I find myself driven to do every minute of every day. Some of my stories are as honest and true as they can be like the ones I told as a newspaper photojournalist. Some stories, like the animated short Phooled, are a total fabrication taken from a corny dad joke I made up earlier in the day and roughly sketched out at 3 o’clock in the morning.
Being a visual learner, I have always felt drawn to not simply tell someone a story, but rather to show them. I began my journey as a filmmaker. While working with a 16mm Bolex camera and studying the art of the moving image at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro I told stories about street hustlers and evil kung fu bananas. Fun as it was, I decided that I wanted to delve into something more serious, so I enrolled at Randolph Community College to pursue a career in photojournalism. Following a successful run at two of the top 50 circulation papers in the country and telling stories about C130 crews during the Iraq War and an amazingly courageous young man named Justin playing his last football game, we decided to move back to the east coast to Charleston, SC. There my partner, Amelia and I started our wedding photography business in 2008. For the last decade we have documented well over 300 unions together, and telling each couple's story of love and commitment continues to fill us with joy. It also motivated me to begin teaching others about what I have been so fortunate to have as a career. Starting at the Charleston Center for Photography, I led photographic and multimedia workshops and even headed up the week-long teen summer camp. As an adjunct instructor at Trident Technical College I taught courses in Photoshop and digital photography, and have watched with pride as a number of my students have gone on to become amazing creative professionals that I now look to for inspiration.
It is that very same inspiration that led me to return to school in 2016 in pursuit of a Master of Fine Arts degree in Digital Production Arts through Clemson University's program located here in Charleston. I have long appreciated the true storytelling freedom that animation offers. Being able to create worlds straight out of your imagination and not be bound by the constraints of reality was a dream come true. Fortunately, most of the skills I have spent the last 20 years learning translate perfectly to modern 3D animation. Having an understanding of composition, light, and gesture is universal. As a result, my production jobs often center around cinematography and layout, lighting, and animation. I have also worked on surfacing, and continue to improve my proficiency with 3D painting tools like Substance Painter and Substance Designer. Currently I am entering my 3rd and final year, and beginning work on my thesis film.
