Technical Artist
contact@seanfeeley.com California

Profile

Creative engineer who adapts existing and emerging technologies to create innovative user experiences and to multiply artistic efforts.

Experience

Senior Staff Technical Artist, Sony Santa Monica Studio – June 2015 - Today

God of War: Ragnarok – Continued advancements of 2018 work for easier hair and fur wind modeling, and support for cloth and larger vegetation interaction. Built a "frame and click" flipbook pipeline for crowds. Created robust Houdini tools for optimized shadow proxies and decals. Prototyped RGBD cubemap reflections. Streamlined boss battle vfx prototype for easier use and feature support. Supported new material system and editor by converting 17000 existing materials and verifying parity, fixing bugs where failures occured.

God of War (2018) – Advanced rendering and art workflows for a Game of the Year and its incredible E3 reveal. Developed one-click workflows for LOD mesh reduction, model consolidation, and card cluster impostors. Built an automated LOD performance validation pipeline. Improved font rendering and anti-aliasing. Co-developed state-of-the-art dynamic wind system, presented at GDC and Siggraph.

Retro Remix – 2014 - Today

Built an NES graphics enhancement ecosystem. Full color, highres, custom playable art swaps. Meta-file format, editable in any PNG editor. Automatic recording of formatted screenshots from gameplay, ready to edit with live updates. Layout tool for tiles with marquee selection, copy/paste, tile drawer, and unified layout for multiple data views. Twitch integration with fully interactive, credentialed multi-user collaborative paint webapp.

Technical Director, Pixar Animation Studios – Dec 2008 - Oct 2013

Day and Night – Worked closely with Director Teddy Newton to develop and pitch a stereo 3D concept for this Visual Effects Society Award-winning short. Developed the 2D animation and 3D layout pipelines. Created procedural ground vegetation. Presented pipeline at Siggraph 2010.

Cars 2 – Developed a matte painting pipeline supporting Photoshop and custom imaging tools based on artist feedback. Prototyped the background vegetation voxelization pipeline. Shaded background characters.

Legacy films – Project Lead for restoration and stereo 3D conversion of For the Birds. Asset and pipeline resurrection after a decade of drift for Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc., The Incredibles, A Bugs Life, and WALL-E.

Workflow Designer, Pixar Animation Studios – July 2006 - Nov 2008

Storyboarded workflows, managed hotkeys, designed iconography, and designed and prototyped tool interfaces for Pixar's next-generation animation software suite; externally known as Presto.

Technical Director Intern, Pixar Animation Studios – June 2005 - Aug 2005

Hero character shading for the Academy Award-nominated short Lifted.

Recognition

Skills

Python, C, HLSL, Javascript, HTML/CSS, Maya, Houdini, Photoshop, Stereo3D, Shading, Compositing, UI design, Welding

Education

Savannah College of Art & Design – Bachelor of Arts in Visual Effects, Magna Cum Laude