Ken Proudfoot

Technical Artist / Animation / Rigging / UI
Santa Clara, CA 95050
408.835.0788

My Portfolio:

http://portfolio.kenproudfoot.com

View Ken Proudfoot's profile on LinkedIn
http://www.linkedin.com/in/kenproudfoot

Scripts etc. at Creative Crash

http://www.creativecrash.com/users/ken-proudfoot

About Me:

   I’m a highly self-motivated, proactive Technical Artist/UIx-HCI Artist/Animator. I have been in the video game industry for over 13 years, and have worked on 17 shipped titles to date, on various target platforms from PS1/2, XBOX & Wii consoles to PSP and iPhone hand-held devices, working in many varied positions such as a 2D Artist (UI and FX), 2D/3D Animator, 3D Modeler/Texture Artist, and Technical Artist. I am an Animation graduate from CalArts. As a contractor for Hooked Wireless Inc, I have both co-designed their 3D UI editor system, and created multiple working 3D UI demos and mock-ups for clients such as Google, Audi, and BMW to name a few.

   I have held Lead Artist, Lead Animator and Lead Technical Artist positions. Currently I am the Senior Technical Artist for an Online Social Game, where I am responsible for all Art Tech related issues and planning, but I also do all of the UI artwork for the current product line. Prior to that, I was a cofounder of Portable Zoo, Inc. and the artist responsible for all 2D game and shell art, as well as some Particle FX for a series of iPhone games. For many years (8+) I was the Principal Technical Artist acting as the liaison between the Art and Programming departments for a THQ owned studio, I was involved in designing and maintaining our production Art pipeline as well as the creation of our Maya art tools (using MEL).

   I am a graduate of California Institute of The Arts (founded by Walt Disney) where I studied Experimental Animation and received my BFA (’96) and MFA (’98) in Computer/Film Animation. Prior to that, I earned an AA (’92) in Graphic Design from Monterey Peninsula College.

   Aside from my Technical Art skills, my other art talents are character rigging and animation, as that is where my background and College degrees were focused. Recently, I created a detailed bipedal rig, codesigner the animation system, and animated the NPC characters of a military genre, multi-weapon class, cover-system based video game. In the past I have rigged and animated various objects/characters for FMV and In-Game resolutions, such as the vehicle/facial rigs for PIXAR’s CARS PSP Video game, motocross racing/stunt characters in THQ’s MX series, to robotic/animal type characters in a Power Rangers title. Modeling, texturing, and lighting are also in my skill set, as well as creating GUIs and Shell art. I have great overall skills and can be of benefit to many other areas of development, including sound design, particle systems, and even web/ad design for both internal and external web.

   My managing experience consists of leading a group of artists through many facets of game development as a Lead Artist, Lead Animator and Lead Technical Artist. My managerial duties included tasks such as; Art/Animation critique (both group and individual); asset creation scheduling, tracking and follow up; leading team meetings; countless interviews with prospective Art, Programming, Design and Production candidates; working with other department leads for scheduling and task synchronization; training artists on new and emerging tech and tools as well as creating a documented environment for new artists to learn our tools and pipeline; and the more mundane managerial tasks such as time cards, time off approvals, and disciplinary issues.

Thanks for your consideration, please check my references section at the bottom.

Employment/ Positions Held:

Education:

Games Experience: (in reverse chronological order)

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Recommendations:

*More recommendations can be found here: LinkedIn (LinkedIn Rec. Section)

•“Does your studio have a person that everybody goes to in order to get straightforward answers to difficult questions/challenges? Well for our studio, if there was a technical question involving art/animation, Ken was that "go to" guy. He offers years of experience with complex animations, hardware strengths/weaknesses, methods/processes of building up a level from scratch. He demands that risk is proved up front to determine budgets and limitations early-on. Not just a source of vital information, Ken is very hands-on and I've enjoyed watching him make huge contributions to our shipped products. He's also constructed animated models/videos for benchmarking needs, that tend to double as impressive stakeholder presentations (a talking Lightning McQueen featuring Owen Wilson's voice from the movie Bottle Rocket comes to mind). He plays and analyzes competitive games to improve our studio creations.” November 9, 2008

David Gray, Executive Producer, THQ / Locomotive Games
•“Ken is a great Technical Artist and manager. Has a lot of skills in animation as well. Have worked with Ken for 10 years and would work with him again, anytime. Highly recommended.” November 5, 2008

Don Traeger, President/Founder/GM, Locomotive Games
•“Ken is a very knowledgeable technical artist and is very easy to work with. He has great technical sense as an artist, understanding the technical limitations and will always work closely with you to come up with a compromising solution between what artists want and what is feasible. I've had a great time working with Ken and I'm sure everyone else will too.” May 28, 2008

Andy Chien, Software Engineer, THQ / Locomotive Games
*References available upon request.