| Technical Animation Director | Sims 4 |
| Animation Director | Sims 4 |
| Lead Technical Animator | Sims 3 |
| Technical Animator / Technical Artist | Sims 2 |
| Animator | Sims 2 |
| Animator | Big Ape Productions |
Interests:
Innovation in Game Animation
- I am passionate about creating new methods for creating fluid, performant, and reactive in game animation that looks and feels great
Pipeline development and artist support
- I am passionate about providing a well-designed, stable, and fast tools environment where artists can concentrate on creating art
- I believe in empowering animators by designing tools that give the animator control over how their art is used in and altered by the game
New Technologies
- I am excited about the potential of artificial intelligence to disrupt and transform the way we create art and animation for games
- I am curious and excited about the potential of AR and VR to transform games, and change how we interact with the world
Responsibilities:
- Product owner (animation and animation technology) – organized and tracked work for a small high performing interdisciplinary team (animation engineers, gameplay engineers, tech artist, animators)
- Feature development and prototyping of foundational gameplay and animation technology
Animation Pipeline and Tools:
- Directed and maintained the Sims 4 Maya animation tools pipeline – Sim Character Rig, Maya tools
- Developed specifications and provided art/animation support for the development of a new in-house sequencing and testing tool
- Introduced state of the art animation blending features to the Sims pipeline (Branch Windows, Synch Point, Blend Trees) - prototyping, testing, identifying use cases and provide first-of example implementations
- Set up an experimental in-house mocap pipeline
- Led development of in house asset reporting tools to assist in managing and tracking large numbers of animation assets
Technical Training and Support
- Provided technical training and ongoing technical education for the animation team
- Mentored technical animators and technical artist
- Provided technical support and troubleshooting for animation, gameplay, and technical design teams
- Provided documentation for tools and features
Technical Direction:
- Created and enforced implementation standards for animation state machines and testing suites
- Conducted technical reviews
Skills
- Excellent problem solving and troubleshooting skills
- Excellent technical communication skills
- I work best in small, collaborative, high performing multidisciplinary teams
- Python, MEL
- Maya – rigging, animation
- C# (not expert level, but I get by)
- Unity
Related Interests
- Unity
- AI / Tensorflow, especially applications in animation
