• Game development, pipeline creation, art direction, 2D/3D art-animation, programming, purchasing
• Photoshop, 3DS Max, Autodesk Animator, Perl, Debabelizer, DirectX, OpenGL

Though I had worked in interactive software for five years prior, my game making career didn’t really get interesting until I was hired at Activision Studios as a 2D Artist, so I have started with them first.

They were the number three game company in the US when I started. The project I chose would change all that and in a very short time, they would become number one. The best part was, I was told to stay away from the project because OEM projects generally don’t do that well.

The difference? The project was for 3D accelerator cards. I had been waiting for 3D accelerator cards since the 80s. I knew what they represented and how they would change gaming. They would also be the biggest seller of the 90s and they would have the game I created the lighting and textures for included. That game was MechWarrior 2.

Many first were accomplished on the game. Mainly tillable photographic textures, translucent sky boxes, real time bilinear filtering, 24 bit mipmapping, and real time textured particles. All in true color.

I moved to MechWarrior Mercenaries where I would receive my first art direction credit. I was the first technical artist at Activision. I wrote most of my early scripts in PERL. A handful of tools were written in C++.

By the end of my run, my job was to jump from title to title and help them bring their projects back on schedule and budget.     

• Visual FX, UI/UX, VR, AR, Shaders, Textures, UV Mapping, Modeling, Rigging, Particles, Optimization, Localization, Animation, Timeline Sequencing, Platform Conversion, Pipeline Creation
• Unity, C#, Adobe Cloud, Max, Maya, Blender, Houdini, Substance Painter, Zbrush, Python, Flash, JSFL

VEXStudio is where all my freelance gigs take place. I have been freelancing as both an artist and programmer off and on throughout my entire career and have loved every second. Not only is there a lot of freedom, you will get to work on all sorts of wild and interesting projects. I freelanced exclusively for nearly a decade straight until my first kid came along and I decided I needed something steady. To this day, if my fulltime gig permits, I will generally be helping friends on their project in my spare time.

I have had the privilege to not only work on unique and challenging projects, I have used about every type of software you can think of to finish projects, most all by myself.

I have watched the industry move from assembly language 8/16 bit games of the late 80s to the C based PC action games of the early 90s to the  Director based multimedia CD games of the mid 90s to the C++ DirectX games of the late 90s to the Flash games of the 00s now to the Unity based everything and then some we are currently witnessing. Though the tools change, the process remains the same.

I love both the retro and cutting edge. Though I can’t wait to see what’s next I know no mater how much everything changes, the core question will be the same. Is it fun?

• Project/team lead, pipeline creation, custom hardware development, training, scheduling, purchasing
• Unity, C#, Shaders, Textures, UV Mapping, Modeling, Particles, Optimization, Animation, Timeline

IGT is the number one developer of Casino Gaming Machines.

I worked as the Lead Technical Artist at IGT for nearly four years. In that time, I helped build a couple of dozen high end premium slot machine games.

I trained artist on the use of our pipeline and tools as well as coordinated with other departments, dicsliplines, and studios.

I used and made a lot of in house Unity tools. I also created camera and particle FX along with in game animations.

I prepped 2D and 3D files that were turned into cut out PNGs, Compressed Videos, or FBX meshes with corresponding animations extracted as anim files to be used in animators, sequencers, and timelines.

The overwhelming bulk of the Unity game scene is built by the TA.

The most challenging aspect of my job was optimization. The hardware was not very powerful but outputted to multiple 4K screens. There was no room for digital fat.

• Game development, pipeline creation, 2D/3D art-animation, programming, producing, funding
• Unity, C#, Python, Flash, Actionscript, JSFL, Max, Maya, Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects

Vision Strike Ware was a small group of seasoned pros that knocked out a handful of titles. It was the second time I used Unity in a professional setting.

The Unity project was an attempted reboot of Ron Millar’s Third World. An unfinished title from 1998 that rocked E3 at the time. The goal was to keep the visuals as close to the original as possible, embracing a retro feel. You can learn about its history HERE.

I created various tools to convert the extremely old data to work with Unity. Textures, models, associated rigging, and animations had to come over and be able to work in a modern environment. These were the first Unity tools I had ever created.

I worked on multiple licensed Air Force games as well.

I was the Producer, Technical Artist, Flash IDE JSFL expert on US Air Force: Operation Sentinel.

On Asteroids! Operation Icarus I created completely from scratch using a tool called Game Salad. It was very simple and was the classic arcade title Asteroids with a bunch of power ups.

These projects were in production at the same time. I really had to do a lot of hat switching many times throughout the day. The biggest challenge was handling time intensive tasks like programming, side by side short, quick tasks that a producer faces.

We released on every mobile platform, device, and store available. More than any other project, my innate resourcefulness was pushed to the max. I recommend downloading Asteroids or Sentinel.

• Game development, pipeline creation, management, talent recruitment/training, scheduling, purchasing
• Unity, C#, Python, Flash, Actionscript, JSFL, Max, Maya, Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects

Working on the Looney Tunes RULED!

I was hired as the Technical Artist for three projects at the educational company ClickN Kids.

I helped architect the software, setup animation templates, website design/coding, Flash JSFL/IDE work, project coordination, and countless other tasks.

 I managed both the local and Chinese programming teams. I learned a lot about spreading tasks over very different time zones and ways to make sure task ownership was not lost.

Though never released, Scooby Doo Math was the first project I ever professionally used Unity on. Even then, you could tell Flash was on the way out and this tool was to be the replacement.

The people I worked with were part of one of the greatest teams I have ever helped.

If you have a 3-5 year old I strongly recommend checking out the software.

• Game development, pipeline creation, 2D/3D art-animation, programming, management, scheduling
• Flash, Actionscript, JSFL, Max, Maya, Photoshop, Zbrush, Python

ZeroG was one of the premiere Flash studios of its time. This was at the height of the Flash gaming craze. Everyone worked on multiple titles at once and the deadlines were grueling.

I wore every hat imaginable while working there. I started out as the Flash IDE expert. Writing tools and optimizing assets, writing a lot of JSFL, Adobe Actions, and Maxscripts to prep the art for Flash.

I worked as an Actionscript programmer as well. Both AS 2.0 and OOP 3.0.

I also created a lot of 2D and 3D art and animations.

I found myself managing programmers and animators on a number of projects.

Finally, I helped pitch ideas and land accounts.

The most notable project was Ty Beanie Babies. it was a very powerful Flash game that provided a great way for young children to play and chat without having to know how to type, spell, or read. We called it a Flash MMO internally. Later, they would be called “Social Games.” One of the most successful genres.

We also did a handful of Marvel games. A contract I was instrumental in landing.

My favorite titles were a bunch of Universal movie licenses. Due to the compressed schedule, there was no over site or rules so we got to have a lot of fun.

• Game development, pipeline creation, 2D/3D art-animation, programming, management
• Perl, CGI, HTML, Photoshop, Asset Scripting

Immediately after launch, the X Files website was the most popular website that year and most of the next. We pushed the boundaries of what you could do with HTML 1.0. We also pushed what you could do with image compression. Using PERL and backend tricks we were able to make some simple but engaging games.

I never watched the X Files before this project so I was put into a room and watched the first two seasons back to back my first week. I’ve been a big fan ever since.

The most notable experience of the project, more than working on the first big studio website, was meeting my wife. She was one of the amazing HTML programmers. I managed artists, made pretty buttons, wrote HTML and PERL scripts.

• Game development, pipeline creation, 2D/3D art, inking, coloring, management
• Quark, Illustrator, Photoshop, Debabelizer, 3D Studio, Poser

Working in comics was a blast. I’m still friends with most of the people I worked with at Top Cow. They continue to make great comics to this day.

I ran the production department that was responsible for getting the comics colored, lettered, combined with ink, and prepped for printing. I also did some coloring, background inking, and very simple back ground pencils myself.

The coolest thing I did while there was merge pencil art with 3D models. To my knowledge, I’m the first person to mix the two in this way. Whenever we needed a silver head or girl covered in circuit boards, I broke out Poser and 3D Studio to create detail that hadn’t been witnessed in comics before that time.

I was also very fortunate to receive great instruction in all areas of comic production. My favorite piece of art is the illustration to the left that I made under the instruction of Mike Turner, the creator of Witchblade.

There are strict rules on what IGT users can show in their portfolio. Artists are allowed to show limited individual assets, but no one is allowed to even keep screen captures, let alone videos of our games in high quality. The best I can do is a video from YouTube. Though this game was made in 4K, and the video does not do it justice, it does display the games functionality and should be adequate to display my level of ability regarding utilizing Unity to create a platform-based game.

Everything you are seeing was built in Unity by the TA sans the original art assets, non-skinned reel lattice, math software, and invisible background code that picks the winning or losing slot icons. Everything is ready for localization in dozens of languages both East and West. Also, an even greater number of currencies must be accounted for and dynamically displayed while adjusting any interface elements. Sometimes needing wide spacing as witnessed in the game rules. An IGT TA has at least two projects going at once.

Since I can’t share the code from the various projects I work on, I created Punchy.

Though Punchy uses free store assets for the characters, animations, and sounds, all the Unity setup and C# code was created from scratch to display my level of competency. From start to finish, it was built and tested over a three day weekend with total development time at 26 hours.

It is a very simple FPS action puzzle game. You are on a corner of a large plane and need to work your way to the boss in the middle. Every section has several henchmen and health/time powerups. The goal is to move towards the boss while not “aggroing” too many henchmen at once, yet not running out of time. Standard FPS movement, WASD, mouse look with the left mouse button punching and right pushing.

To download game for PCs CLICK HERE

I’ve included the project so that you can review the code. All game code was created and typed from scratch to show how I layout and format my various classes and functions. The architecture is extremely basic, with a singleton gathering all the various data and presenting it through the Canvas system and a small number of scripts (Assets/Scripts) controlling the behavior of the various assets.

You will find the main game scenes in the Assets/Scene directory. The main one is ‘game’ and it will load when the project is loaded. The others are named as literally as possible (start, game, loser, winner, congratz).

The game scene is laid out as simply as possible. The “Actors” game object has all the various characters and power ups.

I made sure to use both the Animation component and Animator controller to show familiarity and competency with both systems. Canvas is used to display the very simple UI.

To be clear, this was not a project to showcase design or art skills, but C# programming and TA skills. This was made several years ago and requires Unity 5.6 to open the project.

To download project CLICK HERE