Richard Morton

3D Environment Artist & Game Designer

 

Overview

I am a games industry veteran with a career spanning over 25 years and 29+ titles across multiple formats ranging from PC & Home Console to Hand-held, Mobile & Tablet. Highly experienced in 2D & 3D Art, Game Design & Level Design with Team leadership skills working on AAA titles including Playstation Home, the Little Big Planet Franchise and the Tomb Raider series.

 

Availability - Immediate start either in permanent employment or short/long term contract

 

Latest Position - Route 1 Games (2015 - 2016)

Role – Contract Based Mission Designer/3D Artist (Velawoods English)

 

Responsibilities - Creation of missions for a 3D English Learning App. Developed in Unity 4/5 in conjunction with the Full Inspector and uSequencer Unity plugins. The missions consisted of in-engine cutscenes with animated cameras, 3D characters with animations and waypoint paths, conversation trigger events, sound effects and specific triggered sequences. I also assisted the programmers in enhancing uSequencer to be more efficient and streamlined for our needs. Art assets were mostly supplied from outsource vendors as per our spec, I managed the intake, approval and feedback of the 3D assets and imported assets into Unity once approved.

 

Create 3D assets in Maya 2014 for use in missions that are a little more specific and technical to be outsourced, including animated objects and morph targets, also to modify assets from outsource that don't quite work how we need them to. I created the skyboxes within Unity using a custom script to generate the cube maps and then convert them to 6 sided shaders.

 

Scene and mission optimisation was also a key part of my role, with exploration into faster and more efficient ways of baking the lighting into a scene to look better, take less time to bake and use less lightmaps. Maya scene optimisation incuding poly reduction and object/material merging to reduce draw calls.

 

I also assisted in mentoring junior members of the design team to use Unity and our method of creating missions in the most effective and time efficient way and helped instill task tracking using trello, kanban and Excel in conjunction with Mantis for bug tracking and SVN for source control.

 

Career Highlights - (Extended Career History document available on request)

• Velawoods Engish – Route 1 Games (Contract Mission Designer & 3D Artist)

• Playstation Home – Lockwood Studios (Contract Artist, Designer and Outsource Liaison)

• LittleBigPlanet (PSVita) – Double 11 (Creative Manager)

• Sega Rally Revo (PS3) – Sega Racing Studio (Track Ribbon Design/Environment Art)

• Free Running (PSP, PS2) – Rebellion Derby (Lead Game/Level Designer)

• Tomb Raider Series (PS1, PS2) – Core Design (Lead Game Designer)

• Chuck Rock 2 (Megadrive, Amiga, Game Gear) – Core Design (2D Environment Tile Art)

• Scooby & Scrappy Doo (Spectrum, C-64) – Hi-Tec (All artwork & Level Design)

 

Education

Spurley Hey Comprehensive School 1984-1989

Y.T.S. Work Experience at Wise Owl Software 1989-1990

 

Design Skill-set

• I have successfully developed game software from concept & design phase through to final product on many AAA titles

• I use Word, OneNote, PowerPoint, InDesign and Illustrator to create concept & design docs.

• Game design aspects from Control System, Enemy Behavior, mission unlock trees, level design, level specific events, Puzzle & Trap design, monetisation to character story & script development.

• I am highly skilled with Unity 4/5, custom in-house editors and level creation tools and can pick up on new tools very quickly. Skills range from scripting, enemy placement, trap and puzzle implementation. In engine cutscene creation including camera animation, character paths, audio triggers, special events.

• Greybox/Blockout design and 3D prototype creation in Max, Maya and Unity

• Highly skilled in Unity 4/5 in terms of importing assets from Maya FBX and creating working scenes/missions, setting up objects, prefabs, shaders, lighting, triggering events and objects, audio placement, camera animation.

• Usequencer Unity plugin used for creating event Timelines to build missions and mission specific events such as in-game cutscenes.

 

Art Skill-set

• Highly skilled in both Max and Maya especially environment & object modeling, texturing, lighting, shader effects including Normal, Spec, Blend Shader etc. UV Unwrapping and Baking AO maps. FBX export, Morph Target creation, animation and export.

• Adobe Photoshop CC for creating repeating textures, Unwrapped texture pages, spec maps, normal map generation and 2D GUI elements creation. Illustrator used for creating 2D elements, Logos & Iconography for in-game assets. Adobe Muse for Web Design and After Effects.

• Environment lighting in Maya and Unity including understanding of shaders and how they affect light, AO, HDR, GI. Realtime and baked shadows and AO.

• Environmental Effects such as water shaders, particle effects and modelled and animated effects.

• UV scrolling tricks for mobile devices to create animated lights, water effects, conveyor belts, etc

• Unity FBX import/export pipeline including animaing objects and shaders, also vast understanding of Unity in general. Unity plug-ins - Puppet 2D used for creating 2D skinned animating characters

• Topography tools such as Topogun and 3D Coat.

• Skybox and Cubemap creation and optimisation including 6 Sided shader in Unity.

• I’m proficient with asset management tools such as Perforce, Alien Brain, Turtle SVN to ensure the project is backed up and safe in terms of workflow and organization.

• I use Hansoft and have also used many other scheduling management and scrum agile tools such as Trello and Kanban to create schedules/ task lists and check the day to day progress.

 

Summary

• I am a self motivated team player, able to lead and be led by others, eager to learn new skills in new fields if need arises.

• Varied skill set spanning from game design, level design, art, technical design & Outsourcing.

• Problem solver, often bridging the gap between the design, art and code teams

• Proven leadership skills including managing in-house teams and creating outsource documentation and follow-up outsource control to ensure assets are of quality

• Ability to work within strict deadlines and put in extra hours when needed.

 

References – Available on Request