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While growing up in Altoona’s East End, Todd Scopio dreamed of a future in Los Angeles.
“I had a desire to be in Los Angeles. I looked at UCLA and USC. My mom nixed that idea,” said Scopio, who now lives in Valencia, Calif., a Los Angeles suburb.
The 1985 valedictorian of Altoona Area High School, Scopio went to Penn State and graduated in the fall of 1988 with a degree in computational mathematics.
Today, he is the principal software engineer at Disney Animation.
While in high school, Scopio thought about becoming a doctor but had an affinity for mathematics. He focused on math and computer science – computational mathematics was a combination of both.
He knew he would have to leave Altoona to achieve his career goals.
“While at Penn State, I set my sights on a defense industry job. For the kind of career I wanted, there was nothing in this area,” he said.
Scopio said he packed his car with no job and drove across the country, and in the spring of 1989, he landed a job at XonTech, a defense industry company in Van Nuys, Calif.
“I was a technical manager, and then I was promoted to manager of the software group,” Scopio said. “My projects were focused on signal processing research and development, utilizing state of the art massively parallel processors in embedded real-time systems.”
In January 1996, a coworker, who had moved on to Disney Animation, told him the company was hiring.
“I jumped at the opportunity. I got an interview and got the job. It to me was a bit surreal.
“I thought, ‘This is Disney Animation, the division that does the movies, things you grew up with going to the movies and seeing.’ This was during ‘Pocahontas,’ ‘The Little Mermaid,’ ‘Aladdin’ and ‘Beauty and the Beast.’ Disney was in the golden age, and they were hiring,” Scopio said.
He started as a technology software engineer during the production of “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.” He remained in that position for five years before being promoted to manager of the software department.
He didn’t like management and was allowed to return to more “hands-on” work.
Scopio admits it is hard to describe what he does in layman’s terms. He said he uses tools known as DLight and Scene Navigator.
DLight is used to create surface materials on the geometry, and to create and manipulate all lighting used on a production. DLight then takes all of the geometry, materials, lights and lots of other artist data and translates and packages it into a “scene file” for a final “renderer,” Scopio said.
Scene Navigator is responsible for managing the stockroom of assets – characters, environment, props, etc. – and can manage how each stockroom asset is used for a shot or sequence.
“My job is to write and support tools that are used by artists on all productions. I don’t personally add characters to shots, create lights or perform final renders. Instead, I write the tools that the artists use to do this,” Scopio explained.
Scopio has worked on numerous Disney films. “Tangled,” “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” and “Tarzan,” are among his favorites.
“The one I contributed most to was ‘Tangled,’ the one I put the most energy into. We rewrote everything. It was a massive undertaking. ‘Hunchback of Notre Dame’ has a special place in my heart. It was my first exposure to what it was like to make a film,” Scopio said. “‘Tarzan’ was a fun movie. We had a huge story change in the middle. We were breaking new ground in computer graphics, (and it) was an enjoyable film to work on.”
Scopio also worked on the recent hit “Frozen.”
“We knew it was a good film, but didn’t realize it would become the film it became. We didn’t anticipate the amazing success it had. We were blown away by the response in a very positive way,” Scopio said.
Scopio is currently working on Disney’s next two films simultaneously – “Zootopia,” due out March 4 and “Moana,” due out Nov. 23, 2016.
Scopio fondly remembers growing up in Altoona.
“There was nothing like an Altoona High School football game. We were competing for the state championship in basketball. We lost in the semi-finals,” Scopio said. “Sir Skate was always fun. We did trips to Canoe Creek State Park and Raystown. We did a lot of camping and went water skiing. I remember Blue Knob and skiing; I loved that.”
Scopio only gets back home about once a year, and he now has a wife and five children.
He misses his family – his mother, Launa Lauer, and sister, Tammi Foose, live in Altoona – and some aspects of the area.
“I miss the simplicity of Altoona. I am living in the second biggest city in the country. Life is very busy. The city is very busy and crowded. I miss the greenery. Central Pennsylvania is a beautiful place; Los Angeles is more like a desert,” Scopio said.
David Hall, Scopio’s high school math teacher, remembers him well.
“He was really bright. He stood out as an exceptional math student. I taught 35 years at Altoona and he would probably be in the top ten of all the math students I had over the years, and that is about 30,000 kids. He is the kind of student you would get once every five years,” Hall said.
High school friends remember him fondly.
“We had a lot of classes together. He was extremely smart. He seemed to always be a step ahead of everybody,” said Joe Sheetz, president and CEO of Sheetz Inc.
“He was a good friend. He was one of the guys you could rely on. He would be there for you. We had a lot of talented people in our class. He was not braggadocios, he wasn’t arrogant, he was just one of us. It was fun hanging out with him,” said Scott Colombo, clinical director of physical therapy for Allegheny Chesapeake in Pittsburgh.
Classmate Tom Hite called Scopio quiet but intelligent.
“He helped me pass AP computer science, and he made a job out of it,” said Hite, a ship designer for Concurrent Technologies.
Lisa Brennan said she has known Scopio since they were in seventh grade.
“In our school days, I would have described him as smart, nice, somewhat quiet and ‘in the band.’ Today, I would describe him as confident, kind, brilliant and creative,” said Brennan, middle school librarian at St. Christopher’s School in Richmond, Va.
Scopio recently visited her school as a “visiting animator.”
“Todd created an outstanding presentation that included animated graphics and behind the scenes production slides. He guided our audience through the animation process from ‘rough draft’ through ‘revisions’ before refreshing our memories with the ‘final scene’ clips that we recognized from so many famous movies,” Brennan said.
Sheetz is not surprised by Scopio’s success.
“To achieve the success that he has achieved doesn’t surprise me in the slightest,” Sheetz said.
Brennan is not surprised by his success but is surprised where he ended up.
“Has anyone else from Altoona ever scored a job with Disney? Or even applied to work with a company like Disney? I hope Todd’s story inspires Altoona’s students to reach for careers that match their dreams,” Brennan said.
Scopio said the key to his success is simple.
“I enjoy what I do. That is the bottom line. If you have a passion for it, you do a good job. This company means a lot to me. It has such a legacy behind it,” Scopio said.
Scopio hopes to one day retire from Disney.
“It is too enjoyable to leave. I work with some very smart people. It is stunning to see the artists at work. You are humbled and learn every single day from your coworkers. It is always exciting. … They are going to have to kick me out,” he said.
Mirror Staff Writer Walt Frank is at 946-7467.