I’m a manager experienced in hiring, mentorship, training, cross-functional collaboration, production and schedule oversight, as well as keeping team morale high. Over fifteen years of game development experience has given me a deep understanding of how to navigate production cycles to a successful game release.
I’ve worked on titles in a large variety of game genres and art styles, both as an individual contributor and in a leadership capacity. I’m comfortable working in a pre-established style or helping to define the look of a game.
EXPERIENCE
King, Seattle — Sr. Environment Artist February 2018 - February 2019
-Created levels using modular assets for an unannounced mobile Action RPG Project.
-Used Unity’s timeline tools to create real time cinematic sequences.-Worked with engineers to create tools that increased production efficiency and artist quality of life.
-Collaborated with Design to create fun and engaging player experiences with a focus on visual storytelling through environment.
-Participated in playtests and new feature meetings to help define and plan the future of our game.
Glu — Art Consultant October 2018 - December 2018
-Organized resources and documentation into a collection of easily digestible power points detailing both the creative and technical processes for the Deer Hunter project.
-Answered questions from the leadership team about specific concerns and confusions they had while spinning up on the project.
Glu, Bellevue — Art Manager September 2014 - March 2017
-Directly managed up to 12 cross discipline artists. Held bi-weekly one on one meetings, peer art reviews, managed conflict, wrote and delivered performance reviews. Developed talent via mentorship, tutorials, goal setting and career guidance.
-Participated in the hiring process by reviewing portfolios and art tests, leading phone and in-person interviews, and working with the leadership team to make final hiring decisions.
-Worked with our legal department to help several reports navigate the PERM process for obtaining green cards through our company.
-Helped develop the art pipeline for the studio and wrote detailed documentation of important processes for onboarding future hires.
-Reduced environment art completion time by 20% on Deer Hunter 2016 after launch and by 70% on Deer Hunter 2014 as the project matured.
-Smartly budgeted time and resources to achieve a 6+ week content buffer for live titles at their launch.
-Maintained product quality and vision by giving verbal and written feedback to artists. Provided paintovers to ensure that requested changes were messaged clearly.
-Created and curated a studio wide asset library to reduce cost and time for asset creation on future projects.
-Created asset packets, schedules and budgets for outsourcing vendors. Collaborated directly with outsourcers to deliver feedback and approvals.
-Managed the art team’s schedule, helping both artists and management keep better track of work status and the overall project picture.
-Built and managed asset tracking sheets used by artists, production and pm to keep track of the status of hundreds of assets.
-Open communication with the director and studio management teams to keep them up to date on team issues and offer ideas to help studio process.
-Building culture and employee engagement through fun: guest artist lectures, figure drawing, birthday surprises, desk pranks, sketch lunches, secret santa, etc.
Glu, Bellevue — Sr. Environment Artist November 2010 - September 2014
-Helped transition the studio to Unity by researching and writing pipeline documentation.
-Worked with the engineering team to help set asset budgets and create tools for all studio projects.
-Collaborated with art leadership to set the visual style for environments and created benchmark levels during pre-production.
-Ownership of my environments from whitebox to completion, including: layout, modeling, texturing, lighting, fx and implementation.
-Assisted with tasks outside my area when needed, including: concepting, character texture repaints, weapon and prop making, UI icons, and creation of promotional materials for use in the app store and social media.
-Aided projects with optimization to bring environments within performance requirements. Reduced the average size of DH16 environment asset bundles from >10mb to <4mb, leading to an increased retention rate on future data releases.
Electronic Arts, Los Angeles — Environment Artist July 2004 - February 2010
-Created unique gameplay structures, terrain textures and prop sets, assembled them into final maps in a proprietary engine.-Worked with .XML and .ini files to import art, fx and animations into the game.
-Collaborated with the design department on multiplayer maps to ensure art did not negatively impact the perceived or actual fairness of competitive play maps.
Zombie, Seattle — Texture Artist June 2003 - May 2004
-Created quality looking textures for use within the tight performance restraints of the original xbox console.