Luna
Why Traditional lighting tools only worked shot by shot, weren't intuitive, and slowed production velocity.
What Led strategy and design for a new suite of lighting tools in Presto, Pixar's animation software. Grounded the work in ethnographic research and design sprints, then led design through engineering sprints to ship four new editors and a range of workflow improvements, building a design system to keep the tools consistent as they scaled.
Impact Deployed on Toy Story 5 in 2026 
Lighting is at the heart of how Pixar tells its stories. I joined this project to rethink how that craft could work, reimagining the tools and workflows artists use to light a scene.
Lighters at Pixar traditionally worked on one shot at a time, navigating fragmented technical workflows in a slow disconnected tool from the rest of the pipeline
I kickstarted design for the core experience for Luna, a project aimed at creating a new toolset for lighting artists within the animation software. Most of the editors below were researched, ideated and deployed from scratch.
We launched a fully functioning set of editors with new workflows that kept similar mental models of artists in the previous tools but provided more power.
My first goal was to design a multi rendering image editor built for parallel shot workflows, enabling artists to iterate across multiple shots simultaneously in real time.
We stress-tested the monitor across a wide range of workflow permutations and real production shots, iterating at every step based on what we learned.
My team and I explored ways to surface image information cleanly on a sidebar or nav bars, helping artists switch context without losing their flow.
Another new workflow we introduced was to help artists manipulate thousands of lights quickly. I designed a regex-like query system and multiple editors that let artists select and target lights through pattern based queries.
I also designed a node based editor for adding shaders to the lights.
This new suite of editors and systems called for a new visual language to match. I designed the icon set, built functional prototypes, and developed a design system to support it.
Luna powered the lighting workflow on Toy Story 5, making it feel more intuitive and natural for artists.
Designing for expert artists takes real empathy: you can study their workflow, but you’ll never fully step into their shoes. Their processes are intricate, with rarely one right answer. Working closely with artists, watching them work, testing early ideas, and iterating on their feedback, taught me to sit with ambiguity and let the design take shape through that back-and-forth, rather than trying to solve it upfront.
