While not my first job in the Industry, LOTR: War in the North was my first chance to work on a console platform. I also earned the title of Technical Artist while working on this game.

When I was hired onto this project, Snowblind (the studio behind it), was in the process of being acquired by Warner Brothers. This provided me many opportunities in what I like to think of as diversity training...

• I managed my own tasks
• I learned how to communicate between designers and artist
• I made improvements to the character pipeline
• I was responsible for making sure all characters worked properly in the game

As the project progressed I earned more responsibilities. Increasingly taking control of more characters and art assets. From the main player avatars, to the enemies and NPC's I was in charge of integrating them with the game.

The first step of that process was rigging and skinning. Making sure the models could provide a wide range of smooth deformation once animated. Then I would setup custom shaders so that skin and armor could have environmental effects like water, fire and frost applied to them. The enemies would have a complex system of severing setup that would allow limbs to fly!

Finally, I worked with Gameplay Designers to make sure everything was connected up correctly and could be tested within the game engine.