G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra- Sr. Cinematic Animator - Shiny Ent. (2009)

For G.I. JOE, I again lead a small team in creating all the cutscenes for the game, which again coincided with a theatrical release. Movie-games always come with an increased level of difficulty since canon usually has to sync-up between the two. This typically means that all creative changes have to run through the movie studio, often returning with  notes. G.I. Joe also had the added dimension of Hasbro, which had rights to the toy line. This resulted in some very specific changes to how we handled the destruction of the JOE mobile command center in-game since they didn't want to negatively impact the sales of the real-life toy counterpart. 

From a development standpoint, we learned a lot from the previous title, The Golden Compass. Cutscenes were better supported through tech and animation and the cinematic moments almost all had custom animations created for every character involved, as well as other improvements, like depth of field and eye tracking. There was also a major improvement to the lighting and rendering. Overall, this lead to a much more polished looking game. 

Justice League Pitch - Sr. Cinematic Animator - Shiny Entertainment (2008)

While we were between projects at Shiny, I helped put together a small pitch for Justice League that would eventually become Green Lantern: Rise of the Manhunters. The game that originally went into development included all of the Justice League characters, but was scoped to The Green Lantern to coincide with the release of the movie. 

While a short motion graphics piece, I felt it was an interesting foreshadowing of the Justice League project Machinima picked up years later. 

The Golden Compass - Cinematic Artist - Shiny Ent. (2007)

One of the better examples of the auto-generated facial animations.

I helped lead a small team in creating all the in-game cutscenes for The Golden Compass, a game based on a movie based on a book. It was a much more manual process than in previous projects and relied entirely on tech / scripting instead of motion capture and animation.

While there were custom animations made for key scenes,the cutscenes were mainly stitched together from general animations and assets. This, on top of being built in a propriety Shiny engine, led to a stiff and unpolished feeling product. Reviews for the game agree. 

It's when you get into the wonk that you really can appreciate the technical victories here. All the characters had a "spirit" animal with them, that had to be linked up to their host. They would often interact with each other, needing further linking. Add a procedural-driven facial rig on top of that, and you had links upon links upon links. 

Lastly, this was released across 6 platforms, including PS2, PS3, and PSP, simultaneously through 1 tool-set. Again, this was a technically amazing achievement lost on the average consumer. In the end, that's what really matters. 

One of the technical hurdles: linked animations. The grappling scene was very intimate, and included a prop.

A great example of a very technical scene. Linked characters, animation swaps, very targeted pathing that the camera had to follow. 2 characters grappling, while interacting with a prop. All of which had to be framed with long, active camera shots.

Path of Neo - Facial Animator - Shiny Ent. (2005)

I transitioned to the lead facial animator (read: only) for all the cutscene dialog in Path of Neo. Instead of motion-capture, all the lines were instead hand-animated. 

Looking back, Path of Neo was the game everyone wanted instead of Enter the Matrix. Part of the oversight of EtM, was people wanted to be Neo. The reasoning at the time was a matter of challenge. At the end of the first film, Neo was basically Superman. How do you build a compelling sense of risk in the Matrix world if you aren't afraid of agents? 

Fortunately, after the 3 movies were released, WB allowed Shiny to make the game people wanted from the beginning... as Neo. It contained many over-the-top fight movies (like people-chucks) and still has one of the best tutorial sequences I've seen in which you play through classic action films. 

Enter the Matrix - Jr. Facial Animator - Shiny Ent (2003)

For my first real career position, I helped process motion capture data and rig facial geometry for the dialog of in-game cutscenes for Enter the Matrix. I went through multiple hours and multiple takes of the actual actors reading their lines while all dotted-up with tracker points. One of which had received botox treatment before the shoot and required re-animating all of their eye brow data. 

The amazing thing about this project is all the hype that was around the Matrix at the time. ETM launched to coincide with the second film and was used as apart of the Wachowski brothers' trans-media experiences, along with the anime series, the Animatrix. This was the absolute peak of the Matrix hysteria where even Hugo Weaving was doing Gatorade commercials as Agent Smith. 

The cutscenes from Trinity and Ghost are the ones that always stuck with me... "You think it's crazy to believe it?" 

(By the way, sun-glasses are great when you can't get eye tracking to work)

The World is Not Enough - QA Intern - BlackOps Ent.(2000)

While I was attending the Art Institute of Los Angeles, I supplemented my education as an alpha-tester for The World is Not Enough. I spent my time, at a spare desk in the server room, playing a VERY early version of the game. 

It's worth noting this was also the first time I got a job from "networking" from the early friends I made while interning at interplay. 

VR Baseball '99 & 2000 - Intern - Interplay (1998)

My very first step into my career as a game developer was as an intern for VR Baseball 99, in 1998. The art director was kind enough to let me come in after-hours and remap texture directories from the PC to the Playstation versions, and even create my own renders of the fields for the stadium select screens. 

Looking back, I kind of feel bad for harassing him by sending an email every other week, (for a year!) to get in. Thanks Rob, and sorry!