Resume

ALEX HOGAN
TECHNICAL ARTIST  CHARACTER RIGGER - MODELER
Tel: (407) 491-6751 -- E-mail: alex@alexhogan.com -- Web: www.alexhogan.com

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Game Titles
Madden NFL Football 2007
2006 Future Release, PS3, Developed and Published by Electronic Arts

NCAA College Football 2007
2006, XBOX 360, Developed and Published by Electronic Arts

NCAA College Football 2006
2005, PS2 and XBOX, Developed and Published by Electronic Arts

 The Lord of the Rings - Middle Earth Online
Not Yet Released, PC, Developed and Published by Turbine Entertainment

Asheron's Call 2 - Fallen Kings
2002, PC, Developed by Turbine Entertainment and Published by Microsoft

Work History


Technical/FX Artist, N-Space Inc.
October 2006 to present - Orlando, FL

Responsibilities:

- Create and animate assets for in-game use
- Create special effects for in-game and Real-Time cinematics, using particle systems, rendering effects, and in-game scripting via LUA
- Help document and improve the game systems relating to special effects and rendering
- Help maintain artist toolset and DCC->Game pipeline (MaxScript, C#)
- Communicate technical concepts to the art team and artistic needs to the engineering team

Technical Artist, Electronic Arts - Tiburon
July 2004 to October 2006 - Orlando, FL
EA Technical Artist Job Description:

Reporting to the Art Director on a game team, the Technical Artist is expected to be the bridge between Artists and Engineers. Individuals in this role are pro-active problem solvers who demonstrate a strong sense of creativity and respect for aesthetics. Working with Programming/Technical staff the Technical Artist ensures that CG assets are easily integrated into the game engine without sacrificing artistic integrity. Technical Artists will be expected to learn/understand how game-play and architecture issues can affect content creation and successfully develop workflows to compensate for such limitations on artistic content.

Responsibilities:

- Develop solutions to various production problems in the CG pipelines
- Coordinate with appropriate EA studios to ensure that his/her team is aware of other proprietary tools and that his/her team always has up to date versions
- Build basic to advanced level of complexity character rigs; skins/binds models to skeletons
- Build basic CG Dynamics systems
- Debug skeletons, models, shaders
- Communicate technical concepts
- Produce and integrate art assets where necessary
- Write basic to intermediate level scripts and expressions within a CG package (i.e. Mel) to improve efficiency of various artist tasks


Character Modelling and Rigging Lab Instructor, Full Sail
October 2003 to July 2004- Orlando, FL
Instructed students in basic and advanced high-resolution character modeling and rigging.

  • Instructed students in lab and occasionally presented lectured on class topics
  • Researched advanced character modeling and rigging techniques for possible inclusion in our curriculum
  • Designed MEL tools to reduce time spent doing long or repetitive tasks


Lead Artist, Creative Essence
April 2003 to October 2003 - Bradenton, FL
At Creative Essence I was in charge of all design projects.

  • Working from a general concept given to me by the companys engineer, I designed our products image, from concept art to fully-rendered pre-visualization
  • Designed marketing multimedia presentations to help sell our products to clients & investors


Technical Artist Intern, Turbine Entertainment Software
April 2002 to March 2003 - Westwood, MA
The technical artist position at Turbine handled character setup, asset integration, art pipeline creation and maintenance over the course of each project, software evaluation, and the creation of new tools within the software packages used by the art team.
The Tech Art department also served as the interface between the art and engineering departments.

  • Worked on Asherons Call 2 until its November 2002 market release
  • Worked on The Lord of the Rings  Middle Earth Online until March of 2003
  • Helped create and maintain the art-to-engine pipeline for both games
  • Setup characters with skeletons, weighting, and game data for use in game
  • Processed art assets into engine-usable data
  • Created tools in Mayas MEL language to reduce time spent on long, repetitive, difficult, or otherwise impossible tasks, complete with user interface if required
  • Researched new Normal-Mapping techniques and evaluated several software packages for integration into the art pipeline. Turbines MMO games now have normal maps surfaces in most indoor scenes.


Character Modeling and Setup Internship, Full Sail Real World Education
March 2002 to April 2002 - Orlando, FL

  • Created intuitive character skeletons for 3d animation
  • Researched creating windowed interfaces to control custom character attributes and rigs


Skillset

3d and Artistic Skillset

  • Trained in AutoDesk Maya and AutoDesk 3D Studio MAX
  • Experienced with Lightwave, Z-Brush, MudBox, Blender, Poser, Bryce, and Wings 3d
  • Focusing on character setup, scripting, modeling, basic animation, and pipeline development and improvement
  • Experience writing real-time HLSL shaders in CG 1.4
  • Experience creating dynamic particle systems for games (and creating the RT particle engine, too...)
  • Experienced programming with MaxScript, Maya's MEL Scripting language and and Maya's C++ API
  • Eight years of experience using Adobe Photoshop versions 3.0 through CS3


Technical Background

  • Experienced programming in Microsoft Visual Studio .NET - JScript, C#, Visual Basic and VB.NET
  • Experienced creating media with Macromedia Flash and Director, using ActionScript and Lingo
  • Experienced designing tools and user interfaces for tools with MaxScript, Maya's Mel scripting language, Lua, HTML, FLASH, PHP, and JavaScript
  • Six years experience designing web pages in HTML, SHTML, and PHP
  • Experienced with database programming and data-oriented tool design (HTML, PHP, javascript, C#, and MySQL)

 

Education

Associate of Science Degree in Computer Animation                         Graduated February 2002
Full Sail Real World Education

  • Graduated as class Valedictorian with Perfect Attendance
  • Awards in Logo Animation and Character Creation, Design, and Setup

General Art and Education                                                                                  1998 - 2000
University of West Florida & Pensacola Junior College