Experience

• World Art Lead at Blizzard Entertainment

  Boston

  December 2023 - Present

  I proudly led the development of the Housing feature on the world art team, taking on various roles as lead, point of contact, and contributor. I organized bi-weekly check-ins, coordinated cross-team meetings, and trained content designers, ensuring alignment with stakeholder expectations. In overseeing Live development, I contributed to projects like Horrific Visions and Nightfall, and was responsible for the development of the two Housing neighborhoods for the Midnight expansion. I maintaining quality throughout each patch and feature I oversee and delivered respectful, actionable feedback with not only my own team, but across the different disciplines, such as the environment, prop and dungeon art teams. I integrated advanced features and tools to optimize workflows with an eye to hasten development. My responsibilities included creating demos for biomes in the Housing feature, refining environmental assets, and promoting the housing initiative through presentations and videos, ultimately enhancing project quality and team collaboration.

• Lead Environment Artist at Blizzard Entertainment

  Boston

  July 2022 - December 2023

  Overseeing my direct reports in their onboarding on World of Warcraft to help establish relationships, career progression and initial art style feedback. I’ve been self motivated on learning a range of proprietary tools and pipelines, as well as participating on internal initiatives to continue learning the art style, tools and continue to make personal connections with different disciplines. During this time I oversaw the development of the Barrows of Reverie for the Dragonflight expansion.

• Senior Environment Art Lead at Proletariat

  Boston

  May 2021 - July 2022

  Shifted my focus to environmental development and grew the environment art department from the ground up. Continued landscape and foliage creation, created and reviewed composition, meaningful clustering of props to add detail and story to areas while limiting noise on the landscape to not distract players. Continued to create hard surface structures, HLODS, Prefabs, conducted daily art reviews and feedback. Gave feedback and integrated outsourced environmental art. Created process for in-game animated background chapter and main menu background screens. R&D for in-game moment of interest cinematic.

  In addition to Spellbreak. I directly managed an environment team in the preparation and development of a beautiful corner for an external partner. In addition to being an individual contributor with textures, greyboxing, lighting, I was responsible for communication and daily feedback from leads to artists, presentations to stakeholders and maintaining alignment with the partners art guidelines and process.

• Lead Artist at Proletariat

  Boston

  October 2017 - May 2021

  Oversaw the early stage development and R&D for the environments of various prototypes, eventually becoming SpellBreak. Created foliage, that included deciduous and pine trees, grass and low plants. Developed structure system to allow designer to create a variety of different building shapes to accommodate game play. Created atmospherics for the various regions of the world to add mood, while attempting to balance game play. Researched and implemented landscape terrain mesh and early landscape auto materials. Was responsible for art pass on map to add more detail in the world. Responsible for performance regarding the environment. Was the hiring manager, built and managed a new team of eleven artists across a variety of disciplines. Worked with producers to generate asset lists and estimates across various environmental biomes. Was the sole environment artist up until closed alpha.

• Senior Environment Artist at Proletariat

  Boston

  October 2015 - October 2017

  Responsible for the creation of all maps for Streamline. This included, but not limited to POI's, Vehicles, Buildings and Structures, Deco, Flora and Lighting. As the primary environmental artist, I took it upon myself to identify and estimate all assets required for each map ahead of time for preplanning. I delivered each map within scope of both time and performance, working closely with the graphics engineer to ensure each map was as performant as I could make it. I also worked closely with the map designer to resolve map issues as they pertain to the visual look and worked closely with the art director to ensure it matched the overall vision for the game.

  When time allowed, I conducted creative streams on Twitch to go over our work flow with the community and go into details my process and pipeline.
  

• Lead Artist at WB Games/Turbine Entertainment

  Needham, MA

  June 2008 - July 2015

  Directly managed and mentored production art team of 12 artists. During the course of the development, I evaluated new tools, both internal/middleware and various pipeline techniques to incorporate into our day-to-day operations. Reviewed assets to ensure they meet our performance standards while maintaining a high quality bar. Facilitated communication within the team and organization as a whole by maintaining art documentation, creating tutorials in both wiki and video formats, and pre-planning and creating pre-visualizations to assist producers, concept, level designers and production artists. Directly created both character and environmental assets as well as Havok Behavior Graphs with special attention to the Havok Cloth pipeline.

  In addition to my regular duties, I reviewed the mobile pipeline with UE4 and Unity on a range of devices on our existing assets and pipeline to document quality vs. performance for consideration on future projects.
  

• Assistant Art Director at Tilted Mill Entertainment

  Framingham, MA

  October 2006 - April 2008

  Responsible for communication within art department, mentoring Junior Artists, updating and maintain art guidelines. Created series of tutorial videos to provide further communication on how to use new aspects of the game engine in order to reduce bugs and increase productivity. Created Buildings, Environment and graphic effects for SimCity Societies. Researched new tools to improve the art process and conducted R&D with the programming team to introduce new enhancements to the game engine. Led team of 11 artists for the production of SimCity Societies: Destinations; personally reviewed all artwork for quality and ensured the team met milestones.

• Art Director at Backbone Entertainment

  Framingham, MA

  February 2006 - October 2006

  Responsible for art direction of 3 original titles for the PS2 and for the Catz and Dogz for the PC. Tasks include creating concept sketches and art project schedules; art workflow processes involving a proprietary game engine with Granny; style guides for offsite artists and budgets. Conducted R&D on various 3D game engines. Oversaw two outsource houses to maintain art quality, overall art style and weekly progress meetings to ensure meeting agreed milestones.

• Art Director at Stainless Steel Studios

  Boston

  June 2003 - November 2005

  Member of the Steering Committee which was responsible for high-level company decisions such as employee issues, marketing, publisher decisions and sensitive contract details.

  Responsible for the look and feel of Rise and Fall: Civilizations at War. Managed staff of 18 in-house artists in addition to overseeing and approving art from outsource houses and offsite artists. Developed process for recording in-game footage and edited all content used for in-game cinematics, UI and promotional videos. Oversaw the needs of the individual artists and built a strong, well-rounded department. Maintained art guidelines, having the artists participate in adding to the guidelines to instill a sense of ownership to the creation process.
  

• Lead Artist at Stainless Steel Studio

  Boston

  November 2001 - October 2003

  Led staff of 14 artists and maintained strict art schedule ahead of schedule for Empires: Dawn of the Modern World. Responsible for the look and feel of the game. Worked closely with programmers to communicate new features of the game engine to the rest of the art team. Acted as mentor for newly hired artists or assigned appropriate mentors. Was directly responsible for hiring additional artists. Maintained art guidelines for artists to follow in order to minimize bugs.

• Lead Artist at Stainless Steel Studios

  Boston

  September 1998 - November 2001

  Supervised staff of 6 artists and created over 100 separate assets for Empire Earth, while maintaining a strict schedule of deliverables. Acted as mentor for newly hired artists and was directly responsible for hiring additional artists. Created and maintained art department guidelines to ensure consistency in art assets. Worked closely with programmers on R&D with environment, units, UI and buildings.