Art Director 2015-2017

In early 2015 the decision was made to create a Skylanders television series, and I was asked by Activision and Activision Blizzard Studios to lead the transition from games into the new medium while keeping the show on brand.

I worked with our newly formed media team to choose the characters that would comprise our main cast. The characters would have vastly different facial animation needs, require major changes to anatomy and silhouette- in short, they needed to be actors, redesigned for film, but still retain likeness, personality and familiarity with the existing character designs. I set the groundwork for what Activision was expecting, then worked with the team building each asset, from initial sketches all the way through final texture and my approval.

Every asset- environments and props, textures, effects, all needed to be recreated to match the style of the characters, and even the most minor prop went through the same process as a characters. 

Before the show was scheduled to air on Netflix, I needed to prepare all of the materials for our marketing program, as well as the imagery needed by Netflix and our licensing team. I created compositions and character poses to meet each need, and worked with our animation studio to bring them to final render.

The first season aired in October 2016, starring Justin Long, Ashley Tisdale, Norm McDonald, Johnathan Banks, Bobcat Goldthwait and James Hetfield. The premier of the second will be late 2017, and the show has been renewed for a third season in 2018.

2014-2015 Art Director, Skylanders Franchise

With Skylanders Superchargers, the brand became more centered on the current gen platforms (PS4, Xbox One and WiiU), and with the added horsepower of the new generation of hardware and a much more modern engine came an introduction of new possibilities. Volumetric clouds, lit particles, and further shader refinements were developed the results are stunning.

I regularly visited to the development studio, influenced new architectural and character art, and worked closely with them on lighting, texture and shader usage. I also directed all visuals for the in-game movie, from storyboards through final lighting. When not physically present at the studio, I worked with the team via video conference.

We maintained the key traits of the Skylanders art style, while bringing the title forward graphically into the new generation of hardware and consumer expectations. With Superchargers, I feel we were able to focus more on polish and less on technical hurtles than in previous titles, and I think it shows.

2012-2017 Art Director, Skylanders Franchise

There are hundreds of Skylander characters, and any partner or vendor is likely to quickly become overwhelmed with the details and style benchmarks that are necessary to maintain visual cohesiveness across the brand.

My role with both our Marketing and Licensing departments was to establish those benchmarks, and to guide each image or product to a successful representation for multi-billion dollar brand.

For Marketing, packaging and promotional materials, I would work with our internal team and external agencies to create the ideal pose for each character, or theme for each background, that met the overall goals for the line. From the sketch phase to four color finals, if something was off -anatomy, perspective, color, parity, lighting etc. I would provide immediate correction, never missing a deadline. In addition directing hundreds of packaging illustrations, I led the production of our promotional materials for the Netflix series, Skylanders Academy.

Licensing projects entailed much of the same working process, but with a much more varied and global range of product, from our comic book line to phone cases, stuffed animals, and very region-specific items with firms such as Mega Bloks, IDW Comics, Penguin Books and Power A. I used paint-overs to communicate most of my feedback which helped the vendors make accurate corrections, greatly reduce iteration, and we were able to create some fantastic products. 

This was a particularly fun part of my position at Activision, and was lucky enough to work on some amazing projects, including all the Skylanders McDonald's Happy Meal toys, Live action PR costumes, and our Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade balloon.

2013-2014 Art Director, Skylanders Franchise

Skylanders Trap Team had some challenges at first. It was a console transition year for the franchise, and the development team needed  raise the bar visually from their previous title, Skylanders Giants. Giants was a great game, but we had set a new art standard with Swap Force, and Trap Team would need to quickly catch up. The initial Trap Team levels were fun and visually creative, but they were not going to hold up graphically in the new generation.

On my end, a lot of paintovers, review and revisions were needed to communicate the pubisher goals, as well as finding areas where we could share tech, assets and training between studios.  Working with the team art leads, within a few months we completed the transition for several levels and then propagated those examples and experience to the rest of the team.

By mid-development it was evident that the visuals had turned the corner, despite the tight schedule and an aging engine. Trap Team was released to critical acclaim, and was another huge hit for the franchise.
 

Since 2008 I have been directing cinematics for all the titles I have worked on. In some titles, a cinematic can serve to set a connecting theme and visual tone that is incorporated throughout the title, sometimes influencing UI, in game FX and product marketing.

For the Skylanders franchise, it was also the main system for delivering our story, which was done in an episodic manner. These were much higher budget, and much longer than anything I had worked on with previous projects. Several were over 45 minutes in length.

We produced our video content with external vendors and I was responsible for directing the creation of all assets used in the productions, including storyboards, characters, sets, props and fx. Late in production, I managed the integration of those assets, and worked with the artists to refine each scene through lighting and atmospherics.

The success of these cinematics contributed directly to the decision to bring the franchise into television as a full fledged animated series, Skylanders Academy.

2012-2013 Art Director, Skylanders Franchise

I began at Activision just as development began on Skylanders: Swap Force. The development studio was also new to the brand, with their own new engine, and much needed to be done if the new title was going to both  "feel" like a Skylanders game, yet also move forward from previous Wii-centric visuals.

All existing Skylander characters from the previous two games (around 80) needed to be rebuilt, rigged and animated, and artists taught stylistic cues from the previous games that would make up the brand going forward. To acheive those goals, I traveled a lot that year to the various studios that were involved, created a brand style guide to insure consistency in style application and best practices, and regularly reviewed progress on all characters and levels. I communicated feedback through paintovers, asset tracking, and direct conversation with the teams.

Swap Force went on to set new visual standards for the brand and outsold the previous two Skylanders titles.
 

2011-2012 Art Director

PlayStation All Stars was a brawler set in a universe of Sony games and exclusives. Characters associated with the Sony Brand battled among mashups between franchises, for example Kratos from God of War fighting Nathan Drake from Uncharted in a Ratchet & Clank themed level.

The game is absolute madness.

The entire title was developed on a very tight timeline and budget, yet needed to accurately represent each game world and character as close to the visual quality of the parent franchise as possible, and still run at 60 FPS on a PlayStation 3. The characters needed to look great close up, and still hold up when the camera is pulled back to keep all players on screen.

Personally, my main artistic challenge for this title was to unify the varied art styles for each character and environment enough that they could work together in the same space, yet retain the defining visual traits so important to the owners of each IP. 

One of my last contributions before we shipped was conceptualizing and directing the game intro movie. Working with with an external vendor, we were able meet an incredibly tight deadline, and on budget by using well disguised game-resolution models.
 

Disney Epic Mickey

2008-2010  Art Director 

Disney Epic Mickey is one of the titles I am most proud of having been a part of. 

It was to be a Wii exclusive, yet graphically it needed to convey a lot, to say the least. The game was based on a sort of alternate reality Disneyland, in which a cataclysm had taken place.

As an artist, to me that was a dream to visualize. The focus was on the pre-1960 films and shorts, and of course Disneyland and its history, and we had access to much of Disney's early archives for reference. As an internal Disney studio, we were given a great deal of latitude, but our intention was to push the limit of what we would be allowed to do with these classic characters and settings to appeal to modern gamers. We created a dark yet playful title that surprised everyone, and appealed to a wide audience.

The main game play mechanic was the act of painting and thinning- the player adding and removing geometry, manipulating the environment to achieve the goals of each level. This mechanic tied art to design in a way that I have yet to see since, as neither group could act without the closest collaboration. One of the most difficult tasks we faced daily as artists was to convey to the player at a glance what they could manipulate, and what they could not, look cohesive visually, while supporting game design goals and fitting within the tiny memory available on the Wii.

Outside of directing all character and level art, some of my other contributions included direction of all in game and associated video, and directing the creation of promotional art. 

While it looks somewhat dated now, visuals for this title were highly acclaimed at the time, winning dozens of industry and publication awards including several specifically for it's art direction.  The promotional art piece "Wasteland" won the "Into the Pixel" exhibition at E3 that year.
 

After graduating with a BFA from The Art Center College of Design's illustration program, I began my career at a small start up called Wavequest Interactive as a concept and texture artist developing a Dungeons and Dragons title for SSI. I learned a lot, but the company was not to last and went under in early 1998.

I then moved to my first AAA development studio, Red Storm Entertainment. I worked as a concept and texture artist on an RTS game called Tom Clancy's Force 21, the first Ghost Recon, and contributed to several expansion packs for Rainbow Six and other titles.

I left Red Storm to work on MMO's and began work as a texture, shader and lighting artist, concept artist, senior artist, and eventually assistant art director while working on EverQuest II and Vanguard Saga of Heroes for Sony.