Accomplishments

Accomplishments

MaxPlay, Inc

  • Principal Artist on a number of demos using Maxplay’s Game Dev Suite

Red Fly

  • Created VFX and “Big Moment” Animations for “Dead Run” (working title)

Merge Interactive

  • Art Director on 6 titles
    • Star Wars Clone Trooper – plug-n-play TV game
    • Duck Commander – Duck Dynasty plug-n-play TV game
    • Zombie Hunter – The Walking Dead plug-n-play TV game
    • Field ‘n Stream Fishing – game for Windows 8 and Mac
    • Big Buck Hunter Pro Adventure – for Windows 8 and Mac
    • Bass Pro Shops: The Strike: Pro Angler – for iOS
  • Ensured quality, consistency, performance & memory standards
  • Responsible for finding and hiring contractors, outsourcers
  • Managed outsourcing for environments, characters & animations on several projects
  • Mentored artists
  • Animation, Rigging, and Effects work on several projects
  • Collaborated on company strategy & game design
  • Wrote a number of MEL scripts and other tools for automation

Red Fly

  • Art Producer on an unannounced next-gen title
  • Ensured that memory and performance constraints were met for a number of games, including Thor (Wii, 3DS) and Star Wars: TFU2 (Wii)
  • Led team of artists on Food Network: Cook or Be Cooked! (Wii)
    • Collaborated on game design and team strategy
    • Developed look and feel
    • Ensured quality and consistency
    • Managed outsourcing
    • Character TD, effects, animation
    • Designed and managed outsourcing of AutoChop: MaxScript tool to streamline cutting up food art
    • #1 bug writer on project, and among top 10 bug-fixers (#1 art bug fixer)
  • Put together a budget mocap studio
  • Effects work for several projects – Ghostbusters, Mushroom Men, Cook or Be Cooked, Star Wars: TFU2, Thor, and others
  • Character TD work including FaceRig: face rigging tool and how-to docs used on numerous projects
  • Batch animation exporter and other automation MEL scripts

Spacetime Studios – Blackstar

  • Led team of character artists, animators and technical artist
    • Ensured quality and consistency; aesthetic and tech reviews for all character art, animation, and character art tools
    • Collaborated with Art Director and Vision Director to set standards for visual bar
    • Estimated detailed art budget for entire project
    • Assisted with scheduling and tracking of deliverables
  • Built and maintained character art pipeline
    • Documented character art / animation pipelines
    • Character rigging in Max and MotionBuilder
    • Designed and collaborated on art tools implemented by programmers and technical artist
      • Skeletal template, skinned mesh and animation tree editors
      • Autoskel and Autorig – utilities automating standardized skeleton construction and character rigging
      • Collaborated in design of Material Templates – tools for ensuring DX9 shader quality and consistency
      • Collaborated in design of numerous other editor and exporter features
  • Outsource management
    • Served as primary contact for numerous art outsource houses: created outsource packages (with complete samples, documentation, tools and concepts), ensured quality and consistency and timely delivery by providing complete and timely feedback
    • Deliverable scheduling, asset tracking, and outsource house cost and capability tracking
  • Team leadership – collaborated with leads on team strategy
  • Character and animation production art and pre-visualization

Sony Online Entertainment – Star Wars Galaxies

  • Character asset tracking and management
    • Character / Live Lead – aesthetic and technical reviews for all character / wearable art and animation; scheduling and tracking of deliverables
    • Art integration – delegated creation of art assets / communication with programming, design, and art teams, technical writing – documentation of art processes
  • Lead artist on major gameplay revamp expansion
  • Mentored teammates with Maya / technical issues
  • Integral in setting up Art Pipeline for characters, animation
  • Animation – Managed player character animation for the whole game – envisioned and executed style across the game with animations done by multiple people in and out of house, animated most of player characters’ animations
    • Rigging for characters and creatures
    • Invented animation system using dynamics for exploding body parts (for droids)
    • Motion capture
      • Established mocap pipeline – Investigated mocap studios; Investigated editing solutions and software; learned filmbox (now MotionBuilder); got mocap working in the game
      • Planned and assisted with mocap shoots and editing – direction, poses, tech issues
      • Directed and managed outsourcing of editing/looping process
      • Designed and wrote automation tools
      • Assisted with writing outsourcing contracts
      • Sound event trigger system design and tool implementation
      • Animation Table / State hierarchy work on character and creatures – esp. for player characters
      • Mounts and Vehicles character animation systems
  • Character customization
    • Designed and prototyped character customization blend shape / wrap deformer / hueing systems
    • Prototyped character customization UI; created random head generator
  • Wearable occlusion / layer system
    • Pivotal in design of wearables occlusion system, documented and taught team members, designed occlusion tools for artists
    • Contributed to slot arrangement / slot blocking system
  • LOD fairy / Cyborg factory
    • Designed and prototyped system for automating rapid creation of customized wearables and their LODs using blend shapes / wrap deformers, additional automation including automatic assignment of weights to ring vertices
  • Technical Art systems including: Skeletal LOD system, Hierarchical LOD system, Skeletal mesh hardpoint system including blend shape HPs
  • Bug fixes – responsible for fixing bugs for almost every aspect of art in the game
  • Production art including in-game intro animation, characters, droids, ships, architecture, lighting, particles and more