Creative Strategy, Direction & Leadership

DoubleDown Casino - for desktop and mobile

Responsible for leading creative team of 30+ artists to deliver content and feature solutions for top social casino product, DoubleDown Casino.  Shepherded the company from a start-up to a highly successful enterprise grossing $300 Million a year with a market value of $825 Million. http://www.doubledowninteractive.com 

• Pioneered the social casino genre, combining a love of casino games & a free-to-play business model in the online realm.

• Inspire & oversee creative teams of illustrators, graphic designers, motions designers, and audio designers to deliver end-to-end full service audio/visual solutions for stakeholders and end-users.

• Drove the graphic fidelity and audio/visual language of products across all platforms, flash, html5/JS, UNITY.

• Incubated new products, features, games, and casino content through approval, pre-production, and development.

• Cultivated a work environment valuing candor, accountability, and the fostering of creativity, innovation, and growth.

• Committed fully to advocating for the player experience and emotional impact in every facet of development.

• Prototyped casino themed experiences for desktop flash, html5/JS for mobile, GearVR and HTC Vive using UNITY.

Participation in Senior Leadership meetings, consulted on business strategy, facilitated external vendor procurement. 

TECH ARTIST – SONY ONLINE ENTERTAINMENT

Bellevue, WA 2006-2011

The Agency, The Matrix Online, DC Universe Online

Recruited by The Agency team to leverage my versatile skill-set for high profile, multi-genre online PC and PS3 titles.

• Pioneered a pre-visualization approach to ‘define the fun’ and build stakeholder consensus on proposed features.

• Created scripted custom productivity tools and pipelines for artists using Maya mel script.

• Team builder responsible for creation of machinima-style cinematics and monthly production progress videos, which featured informative, entertaining game footage and documentary style interviews of colleagues. 

• Developed solutions for facial animation, hair, cloth and destructible simulation, and prototyped game features such as a take-cover mechanic, augmented reality inspired user interface, encounter game-loop, and marketplace flows.

• Oversaw production of promotional videos for Electronic Entertainment Expo.  Example: http://tinyurl.com/3r5yw5p

PRINCIPAL AND CO-FOUNDER – VALKYRIE ENTERTAINMENT

Seattle, WA 2002-2006

Forza Motorsport, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Volvo TV commercial entitled ‘video game’

Formed and managed an independent art and animation production house.  Clients included Microsoft Game Studios, Electronic Arts, SONY, Volvo, Midway, Amaze, Junction Point and Wild Tangent.  http://www.valkyrie-entertainment.com

• Secured business opportunities, managed client relations, managed in-house staff of six artists plus external contractors.

• Directed and executed all animation projects including the first ever car commercial to use real-time game content. 

Developed Valkyrie into a brand recognized by the game industry for high-quality solutions and art content services. 

ANIMATION LEAD– ELECTRONIC ARTS SEATTLE

Bellevue, WA 2000-2002

Motor City Online, Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2, Need For Speed: Underground

Transferred to EA when it acquired DreamWorks Interactive to ‘bring more life’ to the studio’s titles via animation.

• Responsible for handling all character, creature and ambient animation needs for online PC, muscle-car racing game.

• Created driver animations and cinematics for Need For Speed:Hot Pursuit 2 for Nintentdo Game Cube.

• Created pre-production attract video for PlayStation2 title Need For Speed:Underground.

SENIOR ANIMATOR – DREAMWORKS INTERACTIVE

Los Angeles, CA 1998-2000

T’ai Fu, Jurassic Park: Warpath

Maximized a compelling, exaggerated style of action while maintaining an efficient animation data footprint.

• Animated principal characters in an exaggerated martial arts style on T’ai Fu for the original Playstation.

• Researched and animated dynamic dinosaur movement for Jurassic Park: Warpath for the original Playstation.

• Worked remotely with minimal supervision from my home studio in Seattle and occasionally on-site in Los Angeles.

ANIMATION LEAD – SURREAL SOFTWARE

Seattle, WA 1996-1998

DRAKAN: Order of the Flame

Pioneered an innovative gamer experience of mounting and flying on the back of a fire-breathing dragon in combat.

• Animated principal and secondary characters on DRAKAN for PC.  Duties included design and testing of the skeletal, single skin animation system for the RIOT engine. Contributed to the fiction and mythology of the DRAKAN world.

• Used Softimage|3D to model and animate characters and creatures. Directed motion capture sessions at Monolith Studios using Motion Analysis’ optical system. Integrated motion capture data with hand-key-framed animations.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surreal_Software

LEAD ANIMATOR - BOSS GAME STUDIOS

Redmond, WA 1995-1996

SPIDER: the Video Game
Joined the upstart game division of Oscar winning special effects house, Boss Film to produce games for the original Playstation.

LEAD ANIMATOR – THQ

Calabasas, CA 1993-1995

The MASK, Akira, Bass Master’s Classic
Mentored teammates on advanced animation techniques and created 2D & 3D animations of principal characters on games for SEGA Genesis and Super Nintendo Entertainment System using DPaint and Maya.

LEAD ARTIST - DAVIDSON AND ASSOCIATES

Torrance, CA 1992-1993

Math Blaster-Episode One: In Search of Spot, Alge-Blaster3, Reading Blaster, Story Club

Guided team of artists animating the award winning edu-tainment franchise, The Math Blaster Series. http://tinyurl.com/3z84uel

ANIMATOR – AMERICAN FILM TECHNOLOGIES

San Diego, CA 1991-1992

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes- Television  Series
Coordinated with 50 animators on a proprietary 2D digital graphics/animation system to produce episodes for Fox and Marvel.

EDUCATION

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Rochester Institute of Technology (R.I.T.) B.F.A., Graphic Design/Animation
Bellevue College, Continuing Education, Programming C++ level 2

ACTIVITIES

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