I make games look great.
With a passion for worlds, visual effects, lighting, game design, and people management, I lovingly collaborate with other developers to create unique experiences and strong teams.
I’m currently an Art & VFX Director at Maxis, overseeing Environments, Lighting and VFX on one of Maxis’ groundbreaking Sims projects.
I work from Vancouver, Canada.
Here’s some of my work.
A passion project
When inspiration hit, I invested nearly all of my personal time into creating a game from scratch. Over years, I breathed life into an interactive journey full of color and life.
It became Shape of the World, a serene first-person explorer where the world grows around you!
Made with Unreal Engine 4. Sound and music by Brent Silk.
Stunning AAA games
At The Coalition, I have lead a fantastic team of great real-time VFX artists - senior and junior alike. Together, we made some of the most polished and striking visuals in the gaming industry with Gears 5 and Hivebusters DLC.
Trance-inducing videos
I love filming life, then synchronizing beautiful images with great soundtracks. It’s personal: a way for me to connect with my memories and just be creative!
Peruse my videos in the Gallery.
My history of game development
If you don’t count my high school years of making Quake maps, I started my career creating the front-end and heads-up-display for Dawn of War II (2009) before trying my hand at VFX on Space Marine (2011).
Concepts for the impacts of various weapons in Space Marine (2011).
I contributed VFX and lighting to Company of Heroes 2 (2013) before moving on to Black Tusk Studios to build stunning (unannounced) action sequences.
The studio refreshed as The Coalition and I created visual effects on Gears of War: Ultimate Edition (2015) and Gears of War 4 (2016) before taking the lead of the VFX team on Gears 5 (2019) and its campaign DLC. I’ve had the pleasure of working on gameplay, cinematics, single-player, and multiplayer. I have created concept art, particle systems, scripted prototypes, and hand-drawn animations.
A concept for the Hivebusters (2020) final boss - a giant jungle bird who I suggested could launch a chemically reactive loogie from its beak. That’s exactly what we did.
Meanwhile, in my spare time I was piecing together my own game, Shape of the World (2018). This gave me a chance to concept the game at the highest level, and work on every element of the game, from the environment to the player’s movement.
Shape of the World (2018), a relaxing, colorful, musical wander through forests that grow as you explore.
Still at The Coalition, I worked in the role of Associate Art Director for two years on an unannounced project. With a focus on environments and VFX, I worked very closely with the Art Director to expand and clarify the vision.
Today, I work at Maxis as an Art & VFX Director. You’ll hear more on this soon!
I loved crafting these little “nightmare” sequences in Gears 5 with post-process effects that carefully highlighted the focus and obscured the rest.
I birthed the first prototype of this incredible shattering and re-healing ice floor, and worked closely with my team to shepherd it through many trials until it was beautiful, performant, and bug-free.
I enjoyed pushing this waterfall in Hivebusters to have a beautiful subsurface effect, excellent interaction with the pool, and the ability to pour across the camera lens.
One of the more satisfying rewards in Shape of the World is reaching a triangle gate and shooting into a new biome. The experience is a composite of player movement, environment layout, changing palettes, individual growing actors, critters, vfx, sound, and music.
Remembering to play!
That’s me and my kids Bowen and Sage. I forgot what the world looked like through a child’s eyes before I had them. They keep me playing - Lego, skateparks, Halloween displays, whatever!
