MY STORY

I am a Technical Art Director, specializing in Pipeline and Tools Design, Programming, Rigging, Skinning, and Dynamics for Animation. With 24 years experience I have had many responsibilities over my journey, passing through Motion Capture as a cleanup artist, to its eventual technical management involving camera calibration, focusing, and setup. From final animation across characters, creatures, and weapons, props, and vehicles, to eventually leading a team of technical animators overseeing our department’s pipeline, tools, and rigs. I have been through over a dozen productions, working on some of the biggest titles in this industry, and have worked with some of the most well known and incredible studios. My passion is to provide our team with well architected, user friendly, and inviting tools and rigs, allowing them to bring our games to life. My position has required that I help insulate our team as we leap from project to project, and engine to engine, ensuring our tools and rigs remain the same as they interface with drastically different environments. It has necessitated that I do my best to design modular systems and foundations, tools, interfaces, and rigs, that leverage data and code reuse, allowing changes to be safe, and as specific or global as necessary. I share these success with my team, and it has allowed my studio and its animators to create some of the most incredible content, year after year.

SKILLS

Production: Character Setup and Rigging. Authoring of Character Ragdolls and Dynamics for Clothing, Weapons, Vehicles, and Props. Tools, Pipeline, and Plugin development using Python and C++. Shotgun Task Tracking API and Automation for Rigging and Animation Team. Facial Animation Pipelines and Workflows leveraging Motion Capture, Faceware, and Speech Graphics systems. Thorough background in Motion Capture setup, Calibration, Solving, and Cleaning.

Applications: idTech, Unreal Engine, Maya, Modo, Motion Builder, Houdini, Shotgun, Havok, JIRA, Perforce, PyCharm, Visual Studio and vsCode, Photoshop, After Effects, 3d Coat.

Programming: Extensive Python Programming Experience including OpenMaya, PySide/Qt, Designer, and Shotgun APIs. Familiarity with C++ including authoring Command Line Applications and Maya Plug-ins.

GAME CREDITS

(release year)

Pubg: Deston Map ∙ 2022
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War ∙ 2020
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare ∙ 2019
Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 ∙ 2018
Call of Duty: World War II ∙ 2017
Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare ∙ 2016
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered ∙ 2016
Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 ∙ 2015
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare & Exo Zombies DLC ∙ 2014
Call of Duty: Online ∙ 2013-2018
Call of Duty: Ghosts ∙ 2013
Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 ∙ 2012
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 ∙ 2011
Call of Duty: Black Ops ∙ 2010
Singularity ∙ 2010
Wolfenstein ∙ 2009
Quake 4 ∙ 2009
Marvel Ultimate Alliance ∙ 2006
X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse ∙ 2005

FILM CREDITS

Troll Bridge by Snowgum Films ∙ 2018

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Pubg Madison

2022 to Present - Technical Art Director

2020 to 2022 - Principal Technical Animator

Raven Software

2015 to 2020 - Lead Technical Animator

Leading a team comprised of myself and three other Technical Animators, while we support our Animation and Motion Capture team with Tools, Rigs, and Pipeline solutions.
Authored tools to automate the batching of an entire projects worth of animations from one engine and numerous skeletons, to another.
Presented a proposal at a large company summit, advocating for an Activision wide tools sharing effort, orchestrated its foundation and development, and jointed its successful adoption across a number of studios.
Expanded on the modularity of the Raven animation rig as it has been evaluated and adopted by some of our sister studios. • Authored numerous large and small scale tools to support Rigging and Animation.
Authored a large number of characters, weapons, props, vehicle game and animation rigs. Including dynamic and procedural animation and destruction.

2009 to 2015 - Senior Technical Animator

Rigging and Skinning of game assets, focusing on characters, props, weapons, and vehicles.
Authored Plug-ins and Tools to improve and streamline our Animation and Motion Capture Pipelines.Setup in-game dynamics, ragdolls, blendshapes, and procedural animation flourishes across Characters and Weapons.
Generation of animation rigs for use in both Maya and Motion Builder.
Pipeline setup and troubleshooting of exporting/importing assets in to the game engine.
Worked directly with the Motion Capture department for Maya & Motion Builder capture implementation.

2005-2009 - Animator to Senior Animator

Animation, Implementation, and extensive polish of game animations across Wolfenstein and Singularity game projects.
Rigged and Implemented numerous Weapons, props, and Vehicles across Wolfenstein and Singularity.
Animated all first person weapons in Wolfenstein.
Cleanup of Motion Capture Data.
Worked directly with Design and Engineering on the gore/gib system of Wolfenstein, leveraging havok and ragdoll systems.

2004-2005 - Motion Capture Intern to Junior Animator

Capturing, solving, and cleaning of Motion Capture performances.
Setup of the Mocap Camera system and Software, as well as calibration and focusing of the cameras.
Delivery of Motion Capture performances to Maya, Motion Builder, and 3ds Max.

Snowgum Films

2017-2018 - Animator and Technical Animator

Character Rigging and Skinning for the team of animators.
Facial Rigging and Deformation setup leveraging Modo’s Order of Operations deformation workflow.
Animation of CG Characters blended into live action sequences with actors.

EDUCATION

2003-2005 - Madison Area Technical College

Associates Degree in Computer Animation.
Equal focus on art fundamentals including composition, form, balance, and color theory. In addition to extensive 2d and 3d art and its implementation into real-time and game environments.
Was a lab monitor on nights and weekends offering technical application and rendering support for my fellow students.