Topher Maraffi: A Man of Extensive Talents
“Leonardo Da Vinci is a role model of mine because he was the original Renaissance man who was both intuitive and technical, and became a successful painter, engineer, and performer. ”
A man of extensive talents, and a Renaissance man himself, Christopher (known as Topher) Maraffi, hit the ground running when he came to Beaufort in August of 2014 to teach at USCB. Having grown up in Charlotte NC, Topher vacationed in Hilton Head as a child so when he heard that USCB was looking for an instructor in Digital Art and New Media, he already knew he loved this part of the country.
“My family vacationed in Hilton Head throughout my high school years, and several relatives were married there since then. After living all over the country in big cities, I wanted to be closer to the family I still have living in Rock Hill SC, so it was like coming home again to move back to this region.”
Educator, fine arts painter, author, animator, performer, mime, and dance teacher are just some of the metaphorical hats that Topher wears. As Assistant Professor of Media Arts at USCB, he has a vision and a game plan that is sure to set the University on fire. A digital animation instructor, one of his many goals is to introduce digital filmmaking as part of a new Media Arts track he is developing for the Studio Arts program. “When I came to interview with USCB last February, I was charmed by the Southern hospitality, and the relaxed small town atmosphere of historic Beaufort. I also saw how much potential there is for growth here; the Studio Arts department is small and the faculty and administrators are open to new ideas. During my visit, I was able to have lengthy talks about how a Media Arts curriculum would be the best thing for growing the program and for student career opportunities. It became apparent that I would have a greater impact here than at some of the other larger universities I interviewed with. So when they made me an offer, I jumped on it.
“My first semester I was able to teach a new 3D animation class, and this semester I am teaching a new video game design class, in addition to graphic design classes already in the curriculum. As a bonus, I’m also getting to teach outreach classes that feature painting, drawing and collage, so I get to return to my fine art roots a bit.” The beauty of studying 3D animation and video game design is, “The interactive entertainment industry is exploding, so teaching USCB students how to apply their art skills to popular media is going to give them many more job opportunities.”
When he came to Beaufort to interview for the position at USCB during the 2014 Beaufort International Film Festival (BIFF), Topher saw a good fit for the Media Arts at USCB. He and Ron Tucker have discussed the possibility of an intern program with Beaufort Film Society. “Part of my plan was to get myself and my students involved.” And get involved he did, he is this years BIFF judge for the animation film category. Topher also debuted on the USCB Center for the Arts (CFA) stage in Miracle in Bedford Falls this past December, playing the part of Mr. Carter, the bank examiner. “I was asked to fill in for the part, and I was hooked. The cast and crew were great; although mine wasn’t a big part, I had fun doing some pantomime and spoke my first acting lines since I was in drama back in high school. I plan to get more involved in future productions at CFA, both on and off the stage.”
Topher graduated from UNC in Charlotte in the mid-90’s with a Bachelors of Creative Arts degree in fine arts painting. In his last semester, he took a course in computer graphics and it opened his eyes to how he could use his fine arts skills in the real world. He started working for NBC Newschannel in Charlotte and transferred to CNBC in New York, then to NBC in Rockefeller Center. There, he worked on show titles and motion graphics, and got to do visual effects on the Woody Allen film Everyone Says I Love You, and the title animation for the movie First Wives Club. Freelance work followed along with becoming an adjunct teacher and certified 3-D Animation trainer at Parsons School of Design, School of Visual Arts, New York University and New York Institute of Technology.
After he stopped working in production, Topher continued teaching in New York until he moved to San Francisco, where he taught at Mesmer Animation Labs and the Academy of Art. From San Francisco, Topher moved to Winter Park Florida in 2000, where he was the Course Director of the technical animation classes at Full Sail University until 2007. “Full Sail was a very production oriented school like Savannah College of Art and Design. I taught upwards of 90 students in my character modeling and rigging classes, which were the most technically challenging classes in the 3D animation program. One of the things I like about USCB is how small our classes in the Studio Arts program are, so we can give our students more personal attention in class.” During that time, Topher also wrote three technical books: Softimage/XSI Character Animation f/x & Design, Maya Character Creation – Modeling and Animation Controls, and MEL Scripting a Character Rig in Maya. All three books were on Walt Disney Animation Studios suggested reading list.
In 2008, the University of California Santa Cruz beckoned to him and in June of 2010 he completed a Digital Arts and New Media MFA at UCSC and a Masters degree in Computer Science. “I went back to school to create a holistic balance between my artistic and technical interests, which culminated in my performatology research that combines dance, animation, and interactive media.” If you go to his website, www.chrismaraffi.com, you can watch clips of two performances, The Magic Mirror Game and The Avatar Dance, from his thesis, Mimesis and Mocap, which he describes as “ a cross-disciplinary performance study in creating expressive and improvisational interaction between human performers and 3D characters, using motion capture technology, in a shared performance space.” While working on his Computer Science degree at UCSC, he started teaching video game design to gifted high school students in their COSMOS summer school program. “I have been working with USCB instructor Joanna Angel to develop plans for a similar program here, so that we can start recruiting high school students in the region to come learn media arts at USCB.”
One of the concepts to which Topher refers is the word performatology: “Computational aesthetic studies on artistic gesture data to formalize figure composition procedures that will enhance interactive media.” Or, as he explained it more simply, “All the rules and techniques of the visual and performing arts boil down to one thing… catching and holding people’s attention for long enough to send them a message. My performatology research uses computer science to try and understand how artists do that, so that we can formalize that process. One of the new classes we are currently developing is called Performative Media, where students will use video game technology to apply performatology research to live theater that we stage here at USCB. We hope to cross-list classes like this with the Computational Science department, so that we can bring art and science students together to collaborate on interactive media projects.”
Now, if all this genius bundled into one brain isn’t enough, let me assure you – there is more. In addition to teaching computer graphics, Topher has taught martial arts and social dance. He became interested in the martial arts at eight years old after watching the TV show Kung Fu in the 1970s. His mother took him to the local YMCA where he learned Kung Fu and Jeet Kune Do. He later was certified as an instructor of Filipino and Indonesian martial arts, and taught in New York and Orlando. He followed Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kune Do philosophy of taking whatever style is useful and fusing them into your own personal style. Eventually, he explains, he gave up teaching martial arts and channeled his energy into dance. He says, “Social dancing works a lot of the same attributes as the martial arts, but you get hurt a lot less when practicing. And you get the added bonus of playing with the ladies, which is a big plus. I met my fiancée at a Swing dance where we later became teaching partners.” Topher and his fiancée, Gina Taramasso, have more in common than dance; they are also both graduates of Computer Science at UCSC, and love to ride bikes on Spanish Moss Trail.
In Florida, Topher got serious about dancing after taking a Lindy Hop dance class. “Lindy Hop is the original granddaddy of all other Swing dances, emerging from Harlem in the 1930s, and sometimes called Jitterbug. I started learning right at the end of the 1990s Swing revival that started with the Gap commercial that was popular at the time. In Orlando, we had world-class swing bands coming to City Jazz in Universal Studios every week.” He had studied theater arts as a child and in high school, and had enjoyed break dancing, pantomime, and juggling; all of which he has incorporated into performances since. He began teaching Lindy Hop and Argentine Tango in a downtown Orlando club, and later in the Santa Cruz Palomar Ballroom, although he is quick to point out, neither Lindy Hop nor Argentine Tango are ballroom dances, but instead are vernacular, or street, dances. “The ballroom versions of these dances are very different than the original versions, because they were simplified to make them easier to learn. But the street dances are quite complex, and take years to master. They have dedicated clubs and competitions all over the country that are completely separate from the ballroom circuit, just like Carolina Shag here in the Low Country.”
Topher applied the same effort to dance as he did to martial arts training, and eventually fused his two favorite dances Swing and Tango into Swango. With his sense of creativity running full speed ahead, Topher became a principal developer of the Swango fusion style of dance as well as a founder of the Orlando Blues dance fusion scene from 2003 – 2008. “When I was developing Swango back in
2003, fusion dancing was new. Now there are fusion events and competitions all over the country.” He and his former partner, Jessica Helmer, made a popular YouTube video – Swango Blues Fundamentals. And when Topher moved back to California, he and his former partner, Lynne Carol, taught Argentine Tango and Swango in downtown Santa Cruz and as well as making several videos.
Serious, studious, and with mathematical precision, Topher still teaches Swing, Argentine Tango, and Swango in the Revolution Ballroom here in Beaufort with studio owner, Marcia Mitchell. In addition to teaching dance, he’s also learning the Carolina Shag. “I recently joined the Carolina Shag Club, and when my fiancée Gina visits in February, I’m going to take her shagging.” Speaking of his fiancée, he gave us an exclusive that BIFF is not the only big event he will be attending the second week of February. “We plan on getting married in Beaufort on Valentines Day, which also happens to coincide with the BIFF awards ceremony this year. It’s going to be an exciting day!”
Story by MARY ELLEN THOMPSON Photography by JOHN WOLLWERTH
