Jason Hickey | Senior Environment Artist

JASON HICKEY | SENIOR ENVIRONMENT ARTIST

42 Hertford Street DOB: 16/01/1979 Cambridge NATIONALITY: Irish CB4 3AG, UK E: [email protected] T: +44 (0) 7859 410 306 W: http://jason-hickey.daportfolio.com/

Personal Profile

Senior Environment Artist and Art Director with over 7 years experience, including... . Lead artist, Kinectimals: Now with Bears – Mobile (Frontier) . Senior environment artist, 2 years (Frontier) . Environment Artist, 2 years (Frontier, Blade) . Art director, part-time (Cobweb Games, Will To Live, Lulu Mae animated music video) . 4+ years AAA, multi-platform experience (PS3, XBOX 360, PC, iOS, XNA Windows Mobile, Android, PS2, XBOX and PSP) . Credited on 6 titles (Kinect Disneyland Adventures, The Outsider, Kinectimals: Now with Bears – Mobile, The Hustle: Detroit Streets, Pool Shark 2, World Championship Snooker 2005) . Art Direction experience in film, print, current gen games, mobile games, animation and architectural visualization

Key Skills . Expert modelling, mapping and texturing skills . Strong traditional art skills . Deep understanding of game art disciplines: concept design, graphic design, animation, environment modelling, texturing and lighting. . Strong understanding of the importance of game play design in environment art. . Creative with the ability to adapt to any game art style. . Expert technical understanding of game environment development processes and pipelines. . Excellent time-management, scheduling and organizational skills . A key trouble-shooter, problem solver and team leader . Great communication skills with experience in creating style guides and technical documentation . Ongoing education in traditional skills, current industry trends and new software. . Passion for creating and playing video games.

Software . 2D: photoshop, ArtRage, Alchemy . 3D: 3d Studio Max, Textools, UVTools, V-Ray, Pencil+ . Normal maps: z-brush, nDo, CrazyBump . Game Engines: Cobra, Unity, Blade . Asset control and bug tracking: SVN, Hansoft, Trackstudio, TFS . Video: Premier, After Effects, Sony Vegas

JASON HICKEY | SENIOR ENVIRONMENT ARTIST

Professional Experience

FRONTIER | CAMBRIDGE, UK | NOV 2008 – PRESENT

Responsibilities & Duties . Research, development and documentation of tools, workflows, best practices and shaders . Point of contact for art with respect to aesthetics, technical knowledge, pipeline, and scheduling . Implementation and drive of the artistic goals of the project . Responsiblity for performance evaluations and career direction . Art direction by providing feedback, style guides, paintovers and asset quality standards . Artist training and mentoring . Artistic critique, support and troubleshooting across multiple art disciplines . Pre-visualization, prototyping and visual targets . Production of high quality in-game assets including modeling, texturing, shading and lighting . Adapt to many different game styles from gritty realistic to clean sci-fi to hand painted worlds . Collaboration with engine and game teams to develop and improve authoring tools . Outsourcing planning, preparation and review

COBWEB GAMES | LONDON, UK | NOV 2009 – PRESENT

Illustrator | “Chronicles of Skin” | Indie RPG Card game, Print, TBC Spring 2012 Illustrator | “Hell For Leather” | Indie RPG, Print, Sep 2010

Responsibilities & Duties . Package design, logo design, company branding and web site concept design . Colour and Black and white illustration for online and print . Manage artists and quality of art assets

JON DADLEY | CAMBRIDGE, UK | JUN 2011 – PRESENT

Art Director | “Will to Live” | Indie iPhone survival adventure game, TBC Summer 2012

Responsibilities & Duties . Define art style and maintain across all assets . Produce hand drawn environments, characters, GUI and props . Animate using classical hand drawn animation techniques . Give feedback to and work closely with gameplay design

JASON HICKEY | SENIOR ENVIRONMENT ARTIST

FREELANCE | DUBLIN, IRELAND - NEW YORK, USA - BOLOGNA, ITALY | JAN 2008 - NOV 2008

Director | “Lulu Mae” | Animated Music Video Environment Artist | “Ion Animation Studios” | 3D Visualization

Responsibilities & Duties . Self driven career break to explore both traditional mediums and digital illustration with emphasis on colour, texture, accuracy, composition and idea exploration. . Part time freelance 3D artist for former employer Ion (see below) . Produced a collection of personal paintings . Collaborated with Irish singer-songwriter Nina Hynes on an animated music video for her track “Lulu Mae". This solo project is a 2D chalk style animation developed and rendered in Max.

ION ANIMATION STUDIOS | DUBLIN, IRELAND | OCT 2005 - JAN 2008

Responsibilities & Duties . Art direction for a small team to produce a high quality 3D animated short. . Gave direction on storyboards, audio, voice acting recording, animation, character concept. . Production of high quality pre-rendered assets including modeling, texturing, shading, lighting and camera animation . Production of pre-visualization concept art, screenplay and anima tics. . Photomontage of 3d model seamlessly inserted into photographs matching lighting and camera . Concept and pitch creation for client/MD approval. . Graphic Design: Graphic for logo (not including font) for popular Irish spring water Fior Uisce. Created artwork to fit brief which was used in final logo and branding. . Illustration: Stylized art work for architectural projects. Paintovers of blockout renders to give more artistic hand drawn feel.

DARK ENERGY DIGITAL | MANCHESTER, UK | MAY 2004 - OCT 2005

Responsibilities & Duties . Low poly character models, UVs and textures. . Low poly environment models, UVs and textures.

JASON HICKEY | SENIOR ENVIRONMENT ARTIST

JERRY BRUCKHEIMER FILMS | DUBLIN, IRELAND | DEC 2001 - FEB 2002

Trainee Art Director | “Veronica Guerin” | directed by Joel Schumacher starring Cate Blanchet

Responsibilities & Duties . Produced hand drawn artwork to be used as background props. . Researched (photographed and measured) locations for reproduction at miniature level.

Education

Advanced Composition and Colour Theory Online | Aug 2010 - Dec 2010 (Taught by Jason Manley of concept art.org) MADE 3 Day Concept Art forum Sixmorevodka, Berlin | Jun 2010 (Taught by Marko Djurdjevic and Massive Black) HND Computer Animation Irish School of Animation, Ireland | Sep 2002 - Jun 2004 Model Making and Design Sunderland University, UK | Sep 2000 – Jun 2001 NCVA Certificate in Art and Design Dundrum PLC, Ireland | Sep 1999 – Jun 2000 Leaving Certificate CBC Monkstown Park, Ireland | Sep 1996 – Jun 1997

References | more available on request

Nina Hynes, Musician and Managing Director - Transplant Records: (Berlin) Gary McGinty, Managing Director - Ion Studios: +353 1 496 7027 (Ireland) Pete Jones, Managing Director - Blade Interactive Studios: +44 161 8396622 (United Kingdom)