About rahhali.com

This site is an attempt to do a few things that have been on my mind for quite some time now. This will not only be my home, but home to my family as well. My goal is to share my experiences, thoughts, ideas, creations, successes and failures with my family, friends and people who are interested. This site will also be a forum to promote myself for future career possibilities. We’ll see how successful I am at attempting all this in due time. =)

About Nordin Rahhali

My career starts off as a performer in the circus believe it or not. I’m the eldest of three children my parents had, and soon followed in their footsteps by performing at the age of 4 as a clown. At 6 years of age, I started a new act with my family called the Rahhali Troupe as an acrobat. The act was exciting, fast paced and involved lots of tumbling and acrobatics combined with forming human pyramids; A very Moroccan act (yes we’re all crazy =). This was a family affair which involved at one time my father, mother, sister, and uncle in the same act. In those days my family traveled all the time, and I was extremely fortunate to have spent spent time living in Canada, America, Indonesia, Malaysia, and The Dominican Republic. I also managed to visit many more countries for shorter periods of time. I performed until I was about 13, at which point my family moved to Toronto to stay. In hindsight, life in the circus is tough if you’re an outsider looking in, but when you don’t know how “normal” people go about their daily lives it doesn’t seem hard at all. It’s just the way you live; It’s life. Of the many memories and feelings that I have from this part of my life, feeling the rush of performing in front of thousands of people at once, all over the world is still strong within my mind and heart. It is not something that one can ever forget.

Once in Toronto, I attended Sir Alexander Mackenzie Jr. public school for grades 7-8, and then went on to Stephen Leacock C.I. for high school. Initially I went to Stephen Leacock C.I. because I wanted to get into dramatic arts (seems natural after reading the above huh?) but I quickly became interested in a course they offered called “Communication Technology”. They had a full Amiga lab (anyone remember those!) and I completely got hooked into trying to learn everything I could about them, and how to use them for creative purposes. I went on to discover a program called “The Video Toaster” that came packaged with some 3D thing called “Lightwave”… I loved it! I continued learning about media, art and how to bring them together through a follow up course into “Television Production”. It was an amazing course, and to this day no other high school that I know of offers anything close to the hands-on experience ywith real equipment that your receive at Stephen Leacock. A special thank you goes out to a teacher who has helped to steer my career and life more than any other teacher I’ve had in school. He was head of the “Communication Technology” and “Television Production” courses when I was there. He trusted me and supported my many late night adventures with expensive equipment so that I could learn; And then in turn I’d teach what I learned to him. =) Thank you Howard Gross for all of your encouragement and trust that you showed to me in high school. Trivia Fact: Howard taught Mike Myers in the same course he taught me back in the stone age. It’s a small world!

Back to my story. At this point I was fairly certain what I was going to do; I would graduate, go to Sheridan College and take their animation course and get a job working on films! And in order to do that I would have to learn Soft Image or Alias, because of course that’s what all real shops use right? (Or so I thought!) My Co-op placement would both rearrange all of the above thinking, and solidify some of my other goals. I would become a literal sponge (kind of yellowish, skin was uneven but soft), and absorb every bit of info I could get on everything and anything related to CG.

At the tail end of high school I took a co-op placement at a company called Waveform Digital Productions. They had some wacky software from Side Effects called “Prisms”. I had never heard anything about this software before, all I knew at the time was “Alias” and “Soft Image” is what the big boys used and so I wanted to get a co-op placement at a company that used these naturally. In my interview I was asked how my Calculus and Trigonometry was in which I replied “Yeah, pretty good”.. That night I started brushing up on my math. I still remember my original sit down where I was being demoed what Prisms was, and they start showing me how to animate through expressions and I’m just thinking. OMG, this is cool and scary. It was then I realized how little I knew but I was determined more than ever to learn everything I could. They offered me a position and I felt that was the best opportunity to learn, and I’d be on a SGI too! (It was a big deal at the time, one machine was over 60k! =) Prisms was known to be the least user friendly 3D solution on the market, but also the most unique and powerful. I was determined to understand it. Within a few weeks of co-op I was offered a small job at Waveform.. I was ecstatic, here I am in school and working on a commercial. It was very exciting for me. At the end of school Waveform offered me a job. I decided to take it for at least the summer to see how things progressed. They progressed well. =)

After Waveform I joined C.O.R.E. Digital Pictures to work on Dr. Dolittle. Because of my previous experience with prisms/renderman and then houdini/renderman I fit right in at C.O.R.E. I soon started writing a large library of shaders for them and quickly became one of the guys difficult shots would go to, and as one of the “go to” people when questions need answers. I’ll get the job done, oh yes, one way or another I’ll get it done. Hehe, <cough>, tears of pain.. It may be funny now, but on any of the numerous over nighters I’ve pulled, I know I wasn’t laughing then! (well, maybe laughing out of hysteria ;). What’s interesting is how much I noticed my circus background helping my career, and I really picked up on this while at C.O.R.E. I’ve had a strong work ethic instilled upon me since I was a child, I also have a strong working knowledge of how the human body moves since I had to be so aware of it when I was performing. This translates very well into animation, because I can see and usually tell what’s wrong with movement very early on. It has also helped me with pacing and timing. It’s interesting to notice how all of life’s experiences take shape to mold you into the person you become. Something you can’t see when you’re younger.

If I was to choose a word to describe myself when it comes to my career, I’d have to say versatile. The reason being is that I love doing it all, and most of the companies I’ve gravitated towards have required their employees to be solid across the board. I love fx, compositing, animating, problem solving, writing shaders/scripts/code, texturing, lighting, modeling, supervising and being on set with the cast and crew of a film. I enjoy it all. I’ve always loved challenge, which is probably why I like doing a little bit of everything. I love art and the technical side of it as well. I guess both sides of my brain like each other, because I’ve been successfully able to be both creative and technical in my work throughout my career thus far.

I’ve now been working professionally for over a decade beginning with Waveform Digital Pictures in 1996, and then C.O.R.E. Digital Pictures in 1998 until I decided to leave in 2002 to pursue life abroad. I moved to London, UK that year and worked at Framestore-CFC until 2004. London is fantastic, I met many good friends there and grew to love the city and lifestyle. One day, I may be back! In 2004 I moved to Los Angeles to continue my career at Digital Domain.

I’ve taken on a variety of roles and responsibilities throughout my career thus far, including Animator, Compositor, Technical Director, Animation Director, CG Supervisor and Visual Effects Supervisor. For a list of films that I’ve worked on click here.

The 2003-2004 years have been life changing.  In November of 2003 Claudette and I married after being together for 8 years.  In February of 2004 we had our first little girl, Yasmina Carmencita Rahhali. In March of 2006 we were blessed again with our second little girl, Freesia Aaliyah Rahhali.  We are both very happy and I can’t believe how so much can change in one year.  Life is good.

Currently I am CG Supervising at Digital Domain and have just completed the 3D stereo conversion of Disney’s CG feature “Meet the Robinsons”.

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