When Harry Porudominsky ’94 graduated from Pine Crest School, he imagined a future in engineering. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do coming out of school,” he admits. “I thought engineering made sense, and I went into college thinking that’s what I’d pursue. But I realized I wasn’t happy with the direction I was going.”
What unfolded before him wasn’t a straight path, but a creative one. Harry explored creative writing, took on web development projects, and eventually discovered animation—not as a career, but as a hobby. “A lot of my career was kind of falling from thing to thing,” he said. “It sounds haphazard, but there’s a flow to it all.” That flow eventually carried him to a career in animation and 3D design, where he has spent years bringing characters to life and threading stories into immersive visual experiences.
At its core, Harry’s work is about finding the throughline—the narrative thread that gives shape to ideas, moments or characters. “I think storytelling is basically how you take the chaos and a bunch of ideas and weave them into a cohesive tale,” he said. “It’s how we make sense of the world. If you can find that thread and help others follow it, that’s where storytelling lives for me.”
Harry has worked on high-profile productions like Marvel’s “Green Lantern” movie and developed stylized takes on beloved universes like “Star Wars” and “He-Man.” While the scale of those projects was exciting, he also acknowledged the limitations. “Everything you do goes through a committee,” he said. “There wasn’t much room to stretch creatively. You’re fitting into a broader scheme. You’re given a brief, and that’s what you have to work with.”
For Harry, the most rewarding work has often come from smaller productions—like the independent animated feature “Battle for Terra,” where he was involved from pre-visualization through final animation. “That project was really formative for me,” he reflected. “The characters didn’t exist when we started, and by the end they felt alive—like I’d known them my whole life. I could see my evolution through how the characters developed and how my animation improved.”
While some animators chase big action scenes, Harry found joy in the quieter moments. “My favorite step in animation was always the small stuff,” he said. “I liked the close-ups, the reaction shots, the facial work. That’s where you really get into characterization. The big action pieces were fun, but that’s not what I loved doing most.”
That love for nuance and detail extended to how he worked with other creatives. In his own projects, Harry championed a production culture rooted in openness and collaboration—something he experienced early in his career through a process known in the industry as “dailies.” “It’s a space where everyone gets to speak, and where artists can both defend and reflect on their work,” he said. “It’s not about ego. It’s about making the work better. When you first start out, you love everything you do and you defend it so hard. As you mature, you realize that the critique is often where the real progress happens.”
Some of Harry’s most rewarding moments came from letting go of his own ideas. “Sometimes, what someone else gives you is better than what you imagined. I love being surprised in a positive way. That’s a gift. But it takes maturity. You have to realize that criticism of the work isn’t criticism of you.”
Harry’s passion for animation is also rooted in a deep appreciation of its history. “Everything stands on the shoulders of what came before,” he said. “The Looney Tunes guys were studying Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. They asked, ‘If I had no rules—no physics—what could I do to make the funniest moment?’ And now, technology lets us do almost anything. The rules are gone again.”
Of course, new technologies bring new questions—and Harry is watching the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the creative industry with both curiosity and concern. “It’s a double-edged sword,” he said. “AI can give you something generic to fix, but it doesn’t give you anything truly new. Right now, it feels threatening to a lot of creative fields. I think we need to embrace it carefully and thoughtfully—not fully, not blindly. It’s a tool, not a replacement.”
Long before he was animating characters or debating AI, Harry was a student immersed in stories at Pine Crest. He fondly recalls his AP Literature classes as pivotal. “That probably did more to expand my understanding of how a story fits into everything than anything else,” he said. “There was something magical about really learning to read for depth.” A small, five-person class made the experience especially personal. “It was very hands-on and catered. I didn’t realize how formative it was until I got to college.”
It turned out that all those papers and grammar drills paid off. “In college, I was mostly with engineers. And whenever we had a paper to write, everyone gave theirs to me to edit. I realized—wow, I guess this isn’t basic stuff. Pine Crest really prepared me.”
To students who love storytelling but aren’t sure how to turn that passion into a profession, Harry’s advice is simple: “Everything is storytelling,” he said. “I know that sounds cliché, but it’s true. I’ve worked on everything from movies to corporate presentations, and no matter what it is, if you approach it as a story—if you figure out how to thread your idea through the chaos—then you’ve become a storyteller.”
He recalls a project at DIRECTV, where he was tasked with explaining how autonomous vehicles would change the future of entertainment. “We boiled it down to a single chart. And then we thought, ‘What if we told it as a story?’ We turned that chart into a two-minute VR experience. Thousands of people went through it, and they came out saying, ‘Oh—I get it now.’ That’s the power of a narrative.”
As for what’s next, Harry is currently in between roles, helping his brother launch a business and taking some time to reflect. “I kind of enjoy the chaos,” he said. “That’s been my happy place for most of my career.” Wherever he lands next, Harry Porudominsky will undoubtedly be following the thread—and helping others see it, too.
