Mike ""viro"" Burgoyne
Not much is known about this entity of the sky. Many digital artists speculate the origins of the one known as "Viro". The story goes:
He was born one lonely summer night, deep in the deserts of Northern America, sometime in the 1970's. Prototype host to an experiment, he was the first of many test tube babies, but sadly was the only successful creation. For years scientist of the digital art community toiled and played god with genome splicing in order to create the perfect digital artist. An expert of Digital Photography, Graphic Interpretation, Visual and Artistic Communication, and other big and complex words. Shortly after birth, the scientists began a rigorous training program, involving very little sleep. After many long and arduous hours at the computer training facility, Viro was profoundly adept at all manner of digital art. This training has left unfortunate side effects, however, as now even in his sleep, he trains in a 3D Environment, often twitching involuntarily.
At age 4, the US government cut funding to the project, and Viro was abandoned in the desert as he watched his home be torn asunder by bulldozers. After almost a year of frightened wandering in the desert, using only the rigging procedures he had learned in training to build a shelter, he was adopted by a family of artistic desert sasquatch. By age 8, the Sasquatch had taught him how to draw, mostly airplanes and cars. He attended art and drawing programs throughout Sasquatch Jr. High and High school. After years of being able to focus on the core aspects of drawing and using nature as an influence, he became interested in street art and graffiti, the likes of which he had seen on raids he had done with his sasquatch family for food, or just to mess with the local villagers.
At 18, he attended Sasquatch High school and bid his farewell to his family, as he knew he had to seek greater meaning in life. He stowed away on a plane full of snake meat to be used in fast food chain hamburgers bound for the U.S. After several years of train riding, hitch hiking, and tagging the train cars and buildings in every major city in the U.S., he realized that a college education was just what he needed to move up in the world. He attended Salt Lake Community College In 1998 and won an award of excellence in the student show for an abstract charcoal drawing. This is where he discovered the joys of graphics software such as 3D Studio Max and Photoshop. He also traveled to France and Ireland to study the works of masters like Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, and Rafael.
After leaving the Community college, he went on to earn a Bachelor’s degree in Digital Design and began working for C.R. England, a national trucking company in Salt Lake. At C.R. England he was responsible for creating print materials, motion video and computer animation for their training materials. Seeking greater social interaction than mere late nights on CG forums, and becoming as increasingly lonely as the truckers he worked for, in 2007 he moved on to The Training Authorities so that he could do strictly 3D work on huge mining machines. In November 2007 he was promoted to lead 3D artist, a far cry from shelter rigging and snake texture baking in the jungle he was once accustomed to. While lead artist his team won 3 communicator awards for 3D graphics. At TTA he used his extensive knowledge in mechanical rigging, managing and setting up a production pipeline and rendering using 3DS MAX and Mental Ray.
Becoming increasingly interested in science and medicine he moved on to Infuse Medical in 2009. In 2013 he was promoted to Technical Director. As Technical Director he’s responsible for looking after any technical problems the 3D team encounters and developing custom tools to improve their workflow as well as managing and maintaining the computers of the 3D team and render farm.
