"Answering the call..."
The In-Game Cinematics Technical Artist role required me to wear multiple hats and embrace the generalist in me, it was the opportunity of a lifetime as I love Blizzard games especially the world of Overwatch.
Key contributions and accomplishments within this role:
- Assigned Point person (of contact) for Tech Art on the Overwatch Cinematics side, attending key meetings to assist leads and department supervisors.
- Became well versed in the proprietary engine. Daily task were ingesting assets, prepping shots for capture, monitoring the farm and fixing bugs/data builds.
- Set dressed key Cinematic environments.
- Uprezzed and kitbashed game team models (such as props and buildings) in order to create new look variants to fit new level landscapes for cinematics.
- Look variant creation of game team's textures/materials and basic texture painting work for Cinematic only usage.
- Grey boxed environments for (Cinematics) modeling team to detail out.
- Placed temp lighting into maps and baked lighting/reflections when needed to assist the Lighting team.
- Worked in Maya on a daily basis, not only in areas I'm fluent in but outside of my comfort zone like layout rigs.
- Setup Enemy and Civilian Animations, poses and look variations within the engine Timeline Editor.
- Valuable experience in project managing and utilizing Shotgun, Miro-boards and Jira.
- Strong communication, troubleshooting and multitasking abilities that were vital in assisting not only Tech Art but other departments such as VFX, Animation and Lighting.
- Passed on my knowledge to others (trained and mentored new hires and teammates).
