Brian Wyser
415.239.8226
brianwyser@yahoo.com

OBJECTIVE: A position creating and providing life to animated actors, and imaginative worlds, while continuing to grow as an artist.

EXPERIENCE:
Avatar Factory, Palo Alto, CA October 2004 - Present
Animator – Independent Contractor

• Developed custom character animation rigs, and created animation content for an online application.

 

Big Bear Productions, San Francisco, CA June 2004 – October 2004
Assistant Animation Director – Independent Contractor

• Worked closely with Director and Animation Director to lead development of music 12 videos for the MTV television series Video Mods.
• Duties include working with Mocap animated characters, composing shots and sets, establishing and animating cameras, designing and creating lighting for sets and characters, and providing conceptual input toward the art direction of 12 music videos.

 

There Inc., Menlo Park, CA June 2000 – May 2004
Animation Director/Manager
6/03 - 5/04

• Provided art direction for all animation content in THERE.
• Developed a wide variety of avatar, and vehicle animation content.
• Managed a single, directly reporting animator while continuing to provide leadership to overall 3D team of modelers, texture, and layout artists.
• Continued contributing to the feature design and development of avatar systems of expression and their interaction within the 3D world, vehicles, and overall user experience.

Senior Animator
9/02 – 6/03

• Produced majority of animation content for THERE: characters, vehicles and environments.
• Performed role as 3D lead: constant collaboration with Producer, Lead Engineer, and overall project team to design and develop feature pipelines, construct prototypes, outline tasks for myself and other contributing artists, produce art content, and provide input on overall artistic direction to assure the successful completion of a project.
• Modeled and mapped vehicle objects. (buggy, truck, board)
• Conceived, designed and developed all hoverboarding animations (riding and tricks).
• Assumed an overall leadership role on the 3D team for which I provided production support, concept design input, problem solving, pipeline and source control guidance, and many other intangibles in an effort to allow my colleagues to become more successful in what they produced.

Lead Animator/Artist
6/00 – 9/02

• Lead and produced the majority of animated content for key avatar features: Conversational Movement, an elaborate system of idling animations; Smiley, a system for triggering communicative animations or emotes.
• 3D character animation; environmental animation; modeling and mapping of characters, organic flora, vehicle and structural models; avatar skeletal construction; character setup; motion capture direction; and level assembly.
• Contributions also included support and leadership for five other artists, software evaluation, and often during our own time we created many experimental prototypes (glider, chicken) some of which led to product features, due to the nature of our startup development team.

 

Interplay Productions, Irvine, CA November 1995 – May 2000
Lead Artist
6/99-5/00

• Collaborated with the Art Director to lead a five-member art team in the development of a PlayStation2 cart racing title. Responsibilities: development of character animation, character models, texture mapping, animation setup, development of concept art, game design, software evaluation, and collaborative development of a cohesive and compelling artistic vision.

3D Animator / Artist
11/95 – 6/99

• Developed artwork for PlayStation, Sega Saturn, and PC video game titles. Responsibilities: 3D character models, character textures, character animation, animation setup, and environmental modeling.
• Designed, directed, and developed opening cinematic for VR Baseball 99. (watch ~7mb download)
• Became lead animator. Responsibilities: all aspects of animation development including, character animation, cinematic animation, software evaluation, motion capture preparation and direction of multiday session, 500+ moves.

 

Black Hawk Technologies, Irvine, CA October 1996 – May 1998
Lead 3D Animator / Artist, Contract

• Collaborated with a 6-member development team to develop a playable PC game demo. Constructed all 3D in-game dragon character models, (examples: red and black) based on 2D artist’s concept sketches. Established animation setup and skeletal construction.
• Conceptualized and created all in-game character animations.
• Designed and modeled character weaponry and projectiles.

 

Specular International, Amherst, MA June 1993 – September 1995
Technical Support Specialist
6/95 – 9/95

• Provided phone and email support and solutions to problems end users experienced with all graphical applications developed by Specular, which included Infini-d, Collage, Logomotion and Backburner.

Quality Assurance Engineer
6/93 – 9/95

• Examined and assessed 2D and 3D graphical application functionality.
• Composed images used for magazine cover, print advertisement, catalogue, and software packaging.

 

EDUCATION:
University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA
Bachelor of Fine Arts, Computer Graphics, May 1995 (early animations in Infini-D)

Dragon Productions Theater Company, Palo Alto, CA
Adult Professional Acting Workshop, 2/2004 – Present

SKILLS:

• Experienced developer with 9 years of 3d production art experience. Created art content/shipped titles for the Sega Saturn, Playstation, Playstation 2, PC games and MMOGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Game)/persistent 3d worlds.
• Skilled and experienced animator and character animator with strong understanding of the principals of animation, weight, timing, balance and acting.
• Skilled and experienced character creator; organic modeling, texturing, weighting, rigging and animation.
• Skilled and experienced real time modeler; organic and hard surface, characters, vehicles, props and environments.
• Creative, enthusiastic, self motivated and hard working team leader/member with a thorough understanding of the production demands. Seasoned team leader and director.
• Ability to absorb new software and tools quickly. Throughout my career I have completed productions and met deadlines using 3dsMax, Lightwave, Softimage, Motionbuilder, Alias\Wavefront, and proprietary software packages, while I also evaluated other commercial applications for potential production development.
  

Current proficiency:

3D Studio MAX 7.0
MotionBuilder
Softimage 3.8 (animation)
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Premiere
Various source control products

Prior production experience with:
Lightwave 4.0 – 6.0
Alias\Wavefront Poweranimator
Meta Creation’s Painter 3D
Corel Painter
Right Hemisphere’s Deep Paint 3D