Technical Artist

Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City (360/PS3) – Slant Six Games, Capcom
Role: Character Rigger, Technical Animator.
– Built, weighted, and maintained unique skeletons & rigs for over 24 characters & monsters.
– Accountable for finalizing all face & body weights.
– Modified/Updated character geometry/UV’s as necessary.
– Optimized art assets, reducing scene files from as large as 100mb, to around 5mb.
– Developed & maintained expression scripts to improve geometry deformation of animation data.
– Synced & finalized all voice animation data.
– Improved processes & production by providing better solutions & tool suggestions.

Challenges: No rigging pipeline process founded, development team had little understanding of the production pipeline placement of rigging, back & forth executive decisions that required a re-haul of character rigging assets in several stages of production.
These challenges were overcome by management entrusting & empowering the rigging team to make & execute decisions of their own accord as to how they work & solve character production issues, having a positive attitude & accountability, and communication with programmers & leads.

Fight Night Round 4 (360/PS3) – Electronic Arts
Role: Technical Artist, Character Rigger.
– Maintained boxer character rigs, weights, deformation expression scripts, and dynamic simulations.
– Built, weighted, and maintained secondary character & prop rigs.
– Solved character production bugs related to hair, cloth, and secondary characters.

Challenges: Short production cycle, large team, lots of new tech, internal pipeline transitions, lots of cuts & change requests, builds crashing like no tomorrow.
These challenges were overcome by keeping a positive attitude, learning as much & as fast as possible, having accountability, communication with team members, having high standards, and persistence.

NBA Live 09 (360/PS3) & NCAA Basketball 09 (360/PS3) – Electronic Arts
Role: Associate Technical Artist, Character Rigger.
– Weighted/Maintained body muscle deformations, and player shorts & jerseys.
– Fine tuned parameters & attributes of cloth weights & dynamics of players using in-house tools.
– Built & maintained character rigs for secondary characters (mascots, crowd, referee, coaches).
– Developed, and maintained weighting tutorials & documentation for EA’s international development studios.
– Managed, reviewed, and optimized character weights from EA’s international development studios.
– Scripted expressions, and fine tuned muscle deformation parameters & attributes.
– Solved character production bugs for the modeling, animation, and programming teams.

Challenges: Constant reviewing, providing feedback, and adjusting of outsourced assets, creating effective weights for mascots with default skeleton, model assets & weights not positioned correctly in-game, dynamic cloth adjustments.
These challenges were overcome by providing & updating the tutorial materials used for outsourced studios, creative improvising of weight distribution, verifying correctly called skeletons, and documenting & saving progress.

EA Sports Active (Wii) – Electronic Arts
Role: Lead Character Rigger, Technical Artist.
– Planned, and developed strategies & solutions for animation through rigging.
– Built & maintained all character rigs for male & female characters for Motion Builder, as well as Maya.
– Weighted bodies, faces, and props for all male & female characters in preparation for animation.
– Scripted expressions, and fine tuned muscle deformation parameters & attributes.

Challenges: Small team & limited resources, team not in close proximity (or building), unique tools, expressive animation ranges, limited quantization of weights, lots of model changes.
These challenges were overcome by early strategic planning & strict deadlines, improved distance communication habits, studying tool scripts, improvising weight allocation, effective communication with lead modeler.

FaceBreaker (360/PS3) – Electronic Arts
Role: Associate Technical Artist, Character Rigger.
– Weighted hair, and maintained body weights for characters.
– Reviewed in-house production tools & processes.
– Solved character production bugs related to hair & hair collisions.

Challenges: First project, late entry, large team, not familiar with studio, lots of dependencies.
These challenges were overcome by being proactive, extra hours studying tools, getting hands dirty & feet wet, making mistakes & correcting them, showing humility & asking for help when necessary, and not waiting for anything.

Grand Slam Tennis (Wii) – Electronic Arts
Role: Technical Artist, Character Rigger.
– Weighted hair & props for players.
– Maintained player head, props, clothing weights.
– Solved character production bugs related to head, hair, and secondary props.

Challenges: Weighting card hair to sway, low quantization for weights, geo & positioning changes, visible separate geo seams in-game.
These challenges were overcome by learning & utilizing in-house weighting tools, effective weight allocation, animation testing, and proficient troubleshooting methods.

Piddly’s Chance (UT2004 MOD) – Chunky Heads Entertainment Inc.
Role: Animator, Character Rigger.
– Built & maintained all character rigs.
– Developed player character and secondary animations, and managed art asset integration into UT2004.
– Created production art, box cover art, and disc cover art.
– Managed & solved art production bugs.

Challenges: Very ambitious project, late entry, limited development time, little rigging & animation experience, required several rigs & multiple animation libraries & sequences, game engine transition.
These challenges were overcome by maximizing team work, communication, and free lab times, assistance from instructors, and studying & sharing knowledge with other teams.