DREW SKILLMAN 574 3rd St, SF, CA, 94107 | 415-269-9497 | [email protected] |web: www.drewskillman.com | blog: www.drewskillman.com/blog

EDUCATION Reed College, Portland, Oregon BA Physics 2002 Thesis: Normal Mode Analysis of the Clathrin Cage and other Semi-Rigid Systems

SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS Dutch Game Garden 2014 Rapid Prototyping at 2013 GDC Visual Effects Artist Roundtable 2012, 2013, 2014 GDC Shanghai: Rapid Prototyping Techniques for Development 2011 Rock Show VFX 2010

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE Department of Future Tech (Double Fine) Co-Head 2013 – Present I currently develop innovative prototypes and games for cutting edge technologies like , , and Natural Motion.

Sony Playroom DLC (My Alien Buddy) (Double Fine) Project Lead 2013 Project Lead on a Playstation 4 camera based launch title. We collaborated with Japan Studio (Sony Japan) to bring an adorable, physically simulated gelatenous Alien to life in your living room.

Dropchord (Double Fine) Prototyping and Visual Look Development 2013 Prototyped new mobile phone and Leap based motion games with a small team. Pitched finished prototypes internally and externally, eventually securing funding and helping to build the project schedule and visual look. Dropchord is currently the #1 selling game on the Leap Motion Store.

Fotonica (Santa Ragione) Mobile Shader Programming 2013 - Present Assisted in the creation of a performant, mobile version of their Unity based game Fotonica. Authored optimized GLSL shaders, fast mobile- friendly edge detection, and Unity tools for reducing batch counts.

Kinect Party (Double Fine) Project Lead 2012 – 2013 Led a talented team of artists and engineers through a rapid development cycle to create one of the most well received Kinect titles on 360. Managed both internal and external schedules and budgets. Promoted the game externally at various PR events.

Double Fine Happy Action Theater (Double Fine) Lead Technical Artist 2011 - 2012 Worked with a small team developing innovative augmented reality games for Kinect. Authored shaders, visual effects, and developed image processing techniques to bring unique augmented reality experiences to players living room’s, including water caustics, real time snow accumulation, and simulated hot lava.

Trenched / Iron Brigade (Double Fine) Lead Technical Artist 2010 - 2011 Created performance prototypes to determine targets for vertex density, level of detail, shadow fidelity, post processing, particle and material budgets. Hired and managed a team of phenomenal technical artists. Created visual targets for environmental and lighting design. Contributed concept art for marketing materials. Developed a directional atmospheric fogging model for dramatic skies.

Stacking (Double Fine) DREW SKILLMAN PAGE 2

Technical Artist / Lighting Artist / Visual Effects Artist 2010 - 2011 Created a suite of post shaders and effects to recreate a silent film style look. Developed a baked lighting pipeline and artist facing Maya tool (created in PyMel) that integrated an external radiosity solution with our proprietary level editor. Coordinated with engineering to develop a per instance point cloud based storage structure for radiosity normal mapped lighting that could be applied to level of detail meshes as well as the base mesh. Lit all levels using the above system.

Brutal Legend (Double Fine) Technical Artist / Visual Effects Artist 2006-2009 Served as a liaison between the engineering and art departments. Collaborated with our engineering team to create a powerful, extensible, and robust effect system from scratch, prototyping and adding new features through development. Collaborated with engineering to create a dynamic time of day climate system. Wrote special effect shaders including, ocean, water, lava, volume fog, ink, and various others. Wrote tools including a LOD generator, dismemberment system, accessory system, scene validation, and batch process utility. Enforced naming conventions, batch processed assets for optimization and resource restructuring. Wrote Photoshop DDS export scripts, with version control integration and layer based export shortcuts. Mentored new technical and effects artists throughout development.

Spiderman 3 PSP (Vicarious Visions) Technical Artist 2005 - 2006 Helped build the level exporter, level pipeline, and milestone deliverables

Project Inferno (Vicarious Visions) Technical Artist 2005 - 2006 Worked with a small team of engineers to extend the 3 XBOX engine with support for “next gen” features including volumetric lighting and a data driven post processing system.

Disaster simulation and 3D training (Oregon 3D) Member of Technical Staff 2005 - 2006 Taught 3DS Max and Maya rendering courses. Created a real-time prototype that used inertial based sensors to teach techniques for alleviating vertigo.

EXHIBITIONS “Super I am 8 Bit” Presented interactive art combining Kinect technology with retro, vector based styles. 2012

“Photographs Showing Landscape, Geological,and Other Features of Portions of the Planet Mars” Collaborated with Artist Ethan Jackson to explore the intersection of telemetry based radar data and more familiar, camera based optics. 2003

MEMBERSHIPS Real Time VFX Group (Co-Creator) Visual Effects Society