Mr. Patrick Sarell
Details
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Department: School of Design
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Campus: City Campus Australia
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patrick.sarell2@rmit.edu.au
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ORCID:
0009-0004-6257-1156
About
Over a twenty-five-year career spanning feature film, television, and interactive media, I have worked across animation, rigging, effects, and directing in roles that increasingly combined creative authorship with technical system design. For more than fifteen years, I have held senior and lead animation positions in Australia and internationally, specializing in creature and effects animation for large-scale feature film production.
Across this period, I have developed a systemic and critical understanding of animation as an integrated discipline encompassing traditional 2D animation theory, 3D character and creature animation, layered and non-destructive workflows, tool and pipeline development, motion editing, rigging, anatomy and body mechanics, effects animation, camera animation, camera tracking and match-move, composition, cinematography, editing, production and directing. This breadth of practice has enabled me to work at the intersection of artistic intent and technical architecture, and to design and implement industry-first innovations including simulation-driven character animation, real-time organic motion in character rigging, and the application of traditional animation theory within contemporary 3D animation workflows.
My professional work has contributed to more than twenty feature films, including multiple productions that have received Academy Awards, and has involved working for directors such as Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Alfonso Cuarón, David Yates, George Miller, and Taika Waititi. In parallel with my industry practice, I have maintained an independent creative research strand through short-form filmmaking. I created, wrote, and co-directed the animated short film Nullarbor, which received an Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Award, was shortlisted for an Academy Award, and recognised through multiple international animation awards. The film was funded by Screen Australia and Screen Victoria, is held in the Australian Film and Sound Archive, and was produced by The Lampshade Collective, an animation studio I co-founded to support the creation of original Australian animated content.
Teaching interests
Throughout my practice as a 3D Animator, Rigger and Director I have applied a substantial body of knowledge to research, investigate and develop new knowledge and workflows across the fields of 3D animation and rigging. The central focus of my work being the integration of simulation to keyframe tools and workflows, new ways of animating that bridge the gap between traditional 2D animation theory and 3D animation practice and real time organic rigging systems. These workflows tools and rigging systems have been implemented in both professional and higher education contexts, demonstrating their capacity to function as generalizable methods for bridging theory, practice, and production across animation modalities.
Animation and rigging have functioned not as separate technical specializations but as interdependent disciplines, each shaping how motion is conceived, structured, and executed. Animation demands sensitivity to performance, timing, weight, and intention, while rigging requires an abstract understanding of constraint systems, hierarchies, deformation, and control architectures. Rather than treating rigging as a preparatory or support activity, my practice has approached it as a conceptual extension of animation itself—a means of encoding motion logic, physical behaviour, and performance intent directly into the structure of the character. This alignment reflects a broad and integrated understanding of animation as both an expressive and a systems-based practice.
[AB1]3D animator, technical artist, director
Research interests
My engagement with traditional 2D animation theory and contemporary 3D animation workflows has developed through a reflexive, cyclical process rather than a linear progression. My early animation practice was grounded in traditional 2D animation principles; however, attempts to apply these principles directly within 3D production environments were initially unsuccessful, revealing a misalignment between animation theory and the dominant technical paradigms embedded in 3D software. This led to an extended period of technical investigation, during which I pursued rigging and simulation-based solutions—such as the development of cloth-driven animation tools and procedural rigging systems—in an effort to resolve limitations imposed by existing workflows.
