James Panzer Senior Animator/Artist [email protected] http://animatorjp.artstation.com/

8 Leesburg Irvine, CA 707.364.3726 My Strengths:

➔ Use Maya, MAX, and Motionbuilder to create believable and functional animations for gameplay and cinematics on console, mobile devices and virtual reality gear such as the Oculus Gear VR. ➔ Using engines such as Unity and Unreal as well as proprietary software. ➔ Collaborating with multiple disciplines in order to reach a common goal. ➔ Working with less experienced animators and helping ensure a level of polish across the entire project. ➔ Working with motion capture and Motionbuilder to ensure we get performances that best reflect the intention of the story. ➔ Quickly adapting to new tech and helping others get up to speed. ➔ Helping to foster an environment of education and growth among the artists.

Work Experience:

5/2017 - Present Turtlerock Studios, Senior Animator

● Turtlerock has become known mostly for their VR titles as of late. Working on these titles is a cross between games and cinematics and I had to wear a few different hats. ● Besides animating to a fixed but pivotable camera, it was beneficial to be able to rig things up in order move a prop or have a character interact with the environment in someway. ● Detaching parts of an environment and creating models to then implement into the Unreal Engine was something we do a lot. ● These were very short development cycles lasting typically 3 months or so. In that time we brainstorm ideas with the team, lay out a timeline for when we should start seeing certain things come together and how much time we’d have to polish all the assets in the end.

8/2016 - 4/2017 Warner Brothers, Senior Animator

● Helping guide the restructuring of the look and feel of the animations and animations systems with-in the DC Legends mobile game. ● Using the Unity engine to implement and test game assets. ● Bringing a unified look and feel to the characters on screen. ● Helping to build a reliable and repeatable animation workflow by working with all other disciplines, from creation to implementation.

7/2015 - 7-2016 Activision, Toys For Bob: Senior Animator

➔ Helped bring to life the amazing and varied characters of the Skylander universe. This entailed meeting and brainstorming with designers, running ideas past other departments and finalizing a look and feel for the character. From there I’d start animating rough passes on everything we would need to see our character in game and test. After finalizing all design decision and nailing down timing, I would start polishing the character. These characters were enemies, non-player characters and the Skylanders themselves. ➔ I also did non-character animation as well, in the way of ships and ambient machines running in the worlds. ➔ I worked with the cinematics team on a few cinematics that would either be finished in house by myself or sent out to be finished. ➔ Since many of the characters were very unusual we worked directly with the rigging team to constantly revise the rigs. ➔ I built custom GUI Pickers for all the rigs I worked on, these were then sent to our outsourcing stations as needed, keeping the workflow contained and simple. ➔ Devised a system to share animation across multiple rigs and ended up cutting tasks down sometimes by a third of the time we had estimated. ➔ Overall I had a blast animating these characters and poured my heart and soul into each one. Always trying to think outside of the box and come up with new and exciting solutions for each.

7/2010 - 7-2015 ZeniMax Online: Senior Animator

➔ Animation of both human and creature characters for “The Elder Scrolls Online”, while also developing the look and feel of the character as well as fleshing out unique abilities to fit that character. ➔ Worked on various cutscenes for the game. This entailed animating characters as well as cameras to help maintain the flow of the cinematic. ➔ Represented animation on various teams which handled key aspects of development, such as monsters, player animation, populating cities, etc... ➔ Worked closely with designers on iterative processes such as monster combat mechanics, quest progression, player emotes as well as mini games. ➔ Coordinated with the outsource team about various assets being done overseas and gave direction and feedback. ➔ Developed and supported the “One Second Club” at work. A more approachable alternative to the “Eleven Second Club” for busy full time individuals who wanted to strengthen their animation skills.

2/2009 - 7/2010 2XL Games: Animator/Artist

➔ Animated, rigged and implemented all characters for various titles. ➔ Worked closely with motion capture studios and directed acting as needed. I was also in charge of calling various motion capture studios and working out quotes for jobs. ➔ Once we had the motion capture data I then developed a workflow for getting in game. This was generally done using MotionBuilder and Maya. ➔ Created documentation for all the above processes so people who needed could easily be brought up to speed.

1/2001 - 11/2008 Rainbow Studios, THQ: Senior/Lead Animator

➔ Animated characters for titles such as Cars the Game, for PIXAR/Disney Star Wars Pod-Racers, for LucasArts, various MX titles for Sony and Deadly Creatures, for Nintendo and the Wii. ➔ Cars, Star Wars and Deadly Creatures were cinematic heavy, being the bulk of what I animated. These were fully acted scenes using storyboards and the provided dialog. ➔ During Star Wars Racer Revenge, I reduced the time it took to rig and skin our characters using our proprietary software from a week down to a day. ➔ Authored complete documents for those new to our tools and workflow which helped get newer employees up to production speed. ➔ Helped create and implement ambient animation systems like birds/wildlife to bring the worlds to life, particularly in the big open worlds of our MX Titles. ➔ Skinned and rigged entire characters using both proprietary software as well as 3D Studio Max. ➔ Layout and storyboarding for cinematics as well as oversaw shot list and small team of animators.

Education:

➔ Animation Mentor Online School (2009). ➔ The Art institute of Phoenix, Computer Animation Course (2000). ➔ I’m always looking to learn and grow as an artist and I usually do a few personal courses a year through sites like Digital Tutors or Lynda.