Christian Castaneda is a professional CG Generalist with a penchant for Visual Effects. While studying at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, he majored in Animation and Visual Effects with a focus in Lighting and Compositing.

From a young age, he was captivated by the magic of "Toy Story" and since that time, everything about the visual effects world has inspired his passion for computer graphics. From old school favorites such as "Jason and the Argonauts," "King Kong," "Metropolis,", and "Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan", to modern day films with breathtaking visuals such as "Avatar," "Inception," and "Tron: Legacy."

Christian has been fortunate to work on a number of short independent Bay Area films, as well as commercials and videos for clients including Snoop Dogg, the SF Giants, Coca-Cola, Walmart, Target, Adobe, Cisco, HP, Corning, OnLive, and Symantec. He was also Visual Effects Supervisor on an indie film named "Task Force 318" and was Compositing Lead for "The Photon Effect," a Comicon fan favorite by Dan Poole. Christian's digital painting work on the featurette "Bohemibot," earned a Student Academy Award. He also developed effects as a compositing technical director for "Midnight Son," "Angel's Soul," "Opal," and "Without."

In his spare time, Christian enjoys experimenting with new ways to create awe-inspiring visuals in many different software packages and writing new tools in Python to make his workflow faster and more efficient. Completely divulging himself into his craft, Christian eats, sleeps, and breathes visual effects. As the WESTERNIZED Visual Effects Lead, Christian is a key component in visually engineering ideas into discernible pieces of work.