Profile
Art Lead and Art Director with 20+ years across AAA games, VR, and film — specializing in visual quality ownership, external studio direction, and bridging high-level creative vision with in-engine execution. Shipped AAA titles at Ubisoft and Impulse Gear; held AD-level roles at Ubisoft, Hangar 13/2K and Tippett Studio. Deep experience directing outsourcing partners, building review pipelines, mentoring artists, and maintaining cohesive visual identity across characters, environments, VFX, and cosmetics. Comfortable working with established IPs, navigating approval pipelines, and translating creative intent clearly across internal departments and distributed, cross-time-zone teams.
Professional Experience
- Leading art development and look direction for an in-development game project.
- Managing remote artists.
- Working with Game Director to plan scope and define tasks.
- Designing key art and directing look development.
- Planned the full cosmetics lineup and styling direction for upcoming seasonal content.
- Refined cosmetics review processes, improving throughput and alignment across Art Directors and Producers.
- Collaborated with Art Directors and Production to scope and coordinate team efforts.
- Shipped AAA title XDefiant — led concept and cosmetics art creation from production through launch.
- Managed outsourcing studios, conducting reviews and ensuring quality and consistency with project art direction.
- Developed and refined review pipelines, improving workflow efficiency and feedback clarity across distributed teams.
- Designed environments, characters, and assets — defining key visual styles across factions, maps, and cosmetics.
- Built resource libraries and documentation to enhance team productivity and maintain long-term visual cohesion.
- Mentored junior and mid-level artists, elevating visual quality and supporting their professional growth.
- Partnered with design teams on environment development, readability, and gameplay-focused visual storytelling.
- Created designs for environments, characters, and props; worked with junior artists to define and elevate visual quality.
- Oversaw character, asset, and environment design from concept through ship on a stylized VR action title.
- Designed immersive game environments in Unreal Engine, ensuring visual consistency and gameplay readability.
- Led UI style design and implemented graphical elements across the full player experience.
- Contributed to additional studio projects and pitch development, supporting early-stage IP worldbuilding.
- Led Look Development artists during early development on an unannounced AAA project.
- Created key art and visual direction, establishing early production benchmarks and style targets.
- Developed material pipelines in collaboration with technical teams.
- Collaborated with engineering on environment cloud and weather systems — bridging art and technical implementation.
- Built and led the 3D environment team and production pipeline from the ground up for film, television, and ride projects.
- Collaborated with artists across disciplines to ensure high-quality delivery across multiple simultaneous projects.
- Worked with technical artists to design and implement a 3D asset browsing and delivery system.
- Art Directed initial pitches and visual development for environment projects.
- VES Award nominee — Dream of Anhui (immersive ride project).
- Led environment visual development and art direction in early production of the feature film Elysium.
- Developed designs and matte paintings grounded in architectural, industrial, and real-world reference.
- VES Award nominee — Excellence in Environment Design (Elysium).
- Created 3D matte paintings and cinematic environments for major productions: Avatar, Star Wars Episode II, Pirates of the Caribbean.
Key Competencies
Directed outsourcing and co-development partners at Ubisoft across distributed, multi-time-zone productions — building review pipelines, communicating creative intent clearly, and holding studios to a consistent AAA quality bar. Experience translating visual direction into actionable, production-ready guidance for teams operating in different regions.
Hands-on approach to quality elevation: paintovers, written callouts, material and lighting notes, silhouette and readability feedback. Strong visual fundamentals across composition, color, anatomy, atmosphere, and environmental storytelling — applied across characters, environments, cosmetics, VFX, and UI on shipped titles.
Worked within established IP frameworks at Ubisoft, navigating approval workflows and relaying IP holder feedback clearly to development teams. Skilled at balancing canon requirements, creative intent, and gameplay needs to deliver world-class player experiences.
Deep experience closing the gap between concept intent and final in-engine execution — collaborating with Tech Art, Design, and Production to ensure assets are performant, readable, and on-target. Comfortable in Unreal Engine workflows with a strong grasp of real-time production constraints.
Built and led teams from scratch at Tippett Studio and Impulse Gear — developing pipelines, asset systems, documentation, and style guides. Mentored junior and mid-level artists across multiple studios, consistently raising the visual quality bar.
Tools & Technology
Photoshop · Illustrator · After Effects · Maya · Blender · ZBrush · Substance Designer/Painter · Unreal Engine · Shader & Material Workflows · AI-Assisted Exploratory Workflows
