Chris “Topher” Maraffi Bio
Award-winning technical artist and faculty at NC State University Media Arts, Design and Technology (MADTech) department, teaching XR design, performance capture, real-time virtual production, hybrid gen-AI tools and creative coding. I have advanced degrees in digital arts and computer science, and wrote three popular technical animation books that were on Disney Animation’s recommended reading list. My research interests include adapting arts theory from cinema, theatre, and games to the design of hyper-reality illusions and hybrid real-time filmmaking with gen-AI tools in virtual production.
I am currently the lead researcher in NCSU College of Design’s Virtual Production Lab, with a focus on interaction between live actors and digital doubles in the volume. I previously received a National Endowment for the Humanities Digital Projects for the Public grant and Epic Games Megagrant for developing an XR tour of Historic Mitchelville Freedom Park, the first African-American town in America and a Reconstruction-era Gullah-Geechee heritage site on Hilton Head Island South Carolina. I am a Pioneer member of SIGGRAPH (attended since 1996), and served as the room lead for the Immersive Pavilion in 2025.
I have an MFA in Digital Arts & New Media and MSc in Computer Science from the University of California Santa Cruz. Working as a broadcast designer and animator in New York City throughout the 1990s, I designed shows and motion graphics for NBC, as well as titles and visual effects for independent films, such as The First Wives Club and Woody Allen’s Everyone Says I Love You. I started teaching animation at NYU and School of Visual Arts in 1995, and became a certified trainer in New York and San Francisco, authoring three technical books that were on Disney’s recommended reading list.
Before teaching at NCSU, I developed the game design courses at FAU and the Media Arts concentration at University of South Carolina Beaufort, and was the Course Director of the technical animation courses at Full Sail University in Orlando. I’ve also taught as an adjunct instructor at Academy of Art, NYU CADA, School of Visual Arts, NYIT, and The New School/Parsons. Please see the News section for my latest activity.
My wife and I teach social dances such as Carolina Shag, Lindy Hop, and Argentine Tango, and have some instructional videos that can be found on Youtube. Here we are dancing in a Carolina Shag competition in 2017:
Categories: About
Topher Maraffi 