Hi, I'm Emmett Dzieza
I'm a creative director and animator, musician, potter, and interactive artist living in Berkeley, CA.
I'm a creative director and animator, musician, potter, and interactive artist living in Berkeley, CA.
Much of my career has been spent working in the field of motion graphics — the intersection of design, animation, and computer graphics. I've worked on graphics for interesting surfaces like projection mapping St. Peter's Basilica, directing NASA planetarium shows, and art directing museum exhibits. I've done graphics for awards shows like the Academy Awards, and contributed animation to many, many TV commercials while working at companies like The Mill and Buck.
I also spent time at a few tech companies — I worked on the brand team at Square art directing commercials and creating animations, spent five years as a Creative Director at Meta working on fun augmented reality experiences in Messenger and Instagram, and am currently working on graphics for Apple.
Show graphics and stage visuals
Creative Director, Meta — virtual call spaces
Branding campaign — animation, social, direct mail
Animated visualizations of planetary cartography
Real-time audio-reactive visuals built in TouchDesigner
Sketches, simulations, and explorations
I've always loved playing music. In 2016 I decided it was time to actually finish some things and put them out in the world, and I started Starunner.
Starting with an EP that was entirely instrumental, then spending two years learning more about songwriting and coming out with a full-length album — Be Kind Rewind — that was half instrumentals and half pop songs. It was a super fulfilling challenge to figure out all the details: mixing vocals, songwriting, mastering. In this age self-releasing an album means you end up spending a lot of time doing social-media marketing, and I made music videos for a lot of the songs by recutting 80s movies, and lots of promotional animations to put on Instagram.
Most recently I've been taking jazz guitar lessons. I made this series of games to help me improve my knowledge of the fretboard.
Full-length album — a fusion of synthwave, electronic, and pop. Half instrumentals, half vocal tracks with two collaborating vocalists.
My wife Sara and I make interactive art together as Zephyr Workshop.
We took an old Pacific Bell pay phone, re-jiggered its insides, and made it into a weird dystopian art project that we took to Burning Man. When people walk by it rings, enticing them to step inside, where they can listen to ads, record messages, and gaze up at the psychedelic infinity mirror above.
Visit project site →
We also built this piece called Wave Garden, which is an interactive exploration of cymatics. It's basically a big speaker under a baby pool, with two oscillators controlled by sliders that cause the water in the pool to resonate in interesting ways. It's been through a few iterations, the latest of which we brought to Oakland's Merritt Gardens Autumn Lights Festival.
Interested in working together, want to chat about synths, pottery, or interactive art? Drop me a line.