Who I am

Picture of Michael Carter

Dr. William Michael Carter, Assistant Professor, School of Creative Industries, Ryerson University.

Director of Industry, Master of Digital Media Program, Yeates School of Graduate Studies, Ryerson University (on secondment to FCAD 2017-2019).

Michael is a 2015 Team Award Recipient for the President’s Blue and Gold Award of Excellence, in the design, development, and implementation of the Master of Digital Media program. He helped design and implement Ryerson’s Zone Learning as well as providing support and mentorship to the DMZ. Michael is on secondment from his role as the Director of Industry for the Master’s in Digital Media program and comes to Creative Industries as a specialist in the field of creative business production and operational management.

Michael has spent his professional career immersed in the creative, technical, and business roles of animation production, maintaining a successful 20-year career in the film and television business as a producer, executive producer, and executive.

Since graduating from Sheridan College’s Computer Animation Program in the mid-1990s, he has held a number of progressive positions, both locally and internationally, that propelled him to the role of executive producer for Calibre Digital Pictures on the CGI/live-action series Ace Lightning II (BBC Worldwide/Alliance Atlantis) and Shoebox Zoo I (BBC Scotland/Blueprint Entertainment), as well as the stop-motion series Henry’s World II (Alliance Atlantis). Michael oversaw the series animation servicing of the CGI animated series Handy Manny I & II (Nelvana/ Playhouse Disney), and the Gemini Award-winning (2008) 2D Digital Animation Series Will & Dewitt (Cookie Jar/KidsWB!). In addition to series animation pipeline creation and production, Michael has developed CGI feature animation pipelines for Create Media Ventures/Goodstory Productions and CGI commercial animation and feature development pipelines for Aardman Animations.

Michael has sat on the board of directors of CASO (Computer Animation Studios of Ontario) as director, vice president, and president. As president, he represented CASO as a member of the OMDC’s (Ontario Media Development Corporation) Screen-Based Industry Advisory Committee, 3D-Flick, and various regional and municipal digital media initiatives.

Michael’s main research is on the use of Virtual Archaeology to better inform archaeological, heritage and community engagement research, knowledge translation, dissemination and mobilization. His particular area of interest is in the public engagement of Virtual and Augmented Reality production, 3D Scanning and VR technology. Recently Michael completed a research project to (re)imagination a 16th century Iroquoian Longhouse from the Lawson Site, which is now being deployed as an interactive experience at the Museum of Ontario Archaeology, with further research focusing on the deployment of robots within archaeological sites in Egypt and the VR revisualization of the Temple at el-Hibeh.

Michael’s current research is focusing on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Culture, both from the perspective of the enculturation of data and in the formation of pre-cultural markers within AI itself. Additional research is in the DNA of 3D points within virtual objects and the representation of providence and provenance data as an actor-network.