Seattle-based Art Director / Art Lead / Art Manager

I AM an art director and creative leader With 25 years of experience across AAA and indie games, spanning PC, console, mobile, and VR. I bring art and technology together to create high-quality player experiences. My background bridges large-scale studio pipelines and small, hands-on teams, with contributions across cinematic storytelling, environments, and character creation.

skills

ART DIRECTION & CREATIVE: Art direction & quality standards, creative brief writing, iterative feedback & review, visual storytelling, talent evaluation & artist pool development, style guide creation

EXTERNAL DEVELOPMENT: Vendor selection & management, global partner management, RFP/RFQ & SOW development, vendor performance management, risk identification & mitigation

LEADERSHIP & COLLABORATION: Cross-functional collaboration, stakeholder alignment, mentorship & team development, escalation management, influence without authority

CREATIVE & TECHNICAL CONTEXT: Real-time pipelines, Unreal & Unity literacy, 3D art production (console, mobile, VR)

TOOLS

Maya/Blender, ZBrush, Adobe Creative Suite, Substance Designer & Painter, Unreal/Unity, Microsoft 365/Google Workspace, and collaboration platforms

Art Outsource Manager

This role was established to strengthen collaboration between internal art teams and multiple external development partners, reducing review overhead while improving alignment across quality, performance, and delivery. The goal was a more efficient, scalable external pipeline that allowed internal leads and directors to stay focused on higher-priority development needs without sacrificing quality.

In this role, I owned the end-to-end external art development pipeline across multiple vendor partners, overseeing quality, performance, delivery, milestone tracking, and vendor operations. My responsibilities spanned vendor sourcing, SOWs, contracts, invoicing, and tracking, while managing work produced by up to 70 external artists at a time across five vendor partners.

I led the evolution of our external art review process, taking on detailed review ownership to reduce review overhead for leads and directors by approximately 50%. This shift allowed internal teams to maintain focus on core development priorities while sustaining a consistent standard of quality across a large volume of outsourced content.

Serving as the central point of coordination between art leads, project directors, production, and overseas teams, I ensured outsourced work remained aligned with gameplay goals, visual direction, and performance constraints.

Throughout production, I applied independent technical and artistic judgment to identify and mitigate risks early, resolving the majority of issues autonomously and escalating only high-impact concerns when necessary. This approach helped prevent downstream issues while keeping the external pipeline moving efficiently and predictably.

studio ART DIRECTOR

The Seattle studio for Lakshya Digital was established to strengthen collaboration between game developers and publishers and our overseas development teams, evolving the relationship from traditional vendor support into a true production partnership. The goal was clearer communication, tighter creative alignment, and efficiently focused, higher-quality results.

As the first hire for the studio, I was responsible for building and leading the local art team, collaborating closely with our India-based studios, and forging new working relationships with other Keywords Studios teams across the U.S., China, and Canada. Over my tenure, my involvement supported the growth of the India art organization from approximately 150 artists to more than 700, scaling both team size and production capability every year.

Since the studio’s inception, I contributed to over 50 titles worldwide across console, mobile, and VR platforms.

I partnered with internal teams both locally and abroad to ensure each client’s artistic vision and quality expectations were met, regardless of style or platform, and stepped in to provide clarity and direction when client guidance was limited.

In this role, I guided multiple teams through ongoing technical and aesthetic feedback, serving as both creative lead and quality gatekeeper to maintain a consistent, high standard across all deliverables.

CHARACTER ART LEAD

Worked closely with the art director and department leads to define the characters visual quality for transition to the new console generation

Managed a team of 10-12 talented artists, plus outgoing and incoming Character related assets from outsourcing

Designed timeline and tasked team to meet milestones, Deadlines, and deliverables

prototype Design and implementation of new dismemberment system for x-ray and fatality moments

CHARACTER ART LEAD

Restructured the existing character pipeline to improve efficiency and strategically integrate outsourcing at key points in production.

Refined character creation processes to achieve higher visual fidelity while maintaining performance and technical constraints established in the previous title.

Contributed to the development of character shaders and shader effects to support the game’s visual style and material response.

Performed hands-on review and final approval of all outsourced character assets, ensuring consistency with quality and style standards.

Remained closely involved in final character material and texture polish to deliver a cohesive, high-quality roster.

CHARACTER ART COORDINATOR

Started as A senior character artist and took over daily management of the character team during the project

Retooled and executed previous damage and dismemberment systems for a more noticeable and dramatic effect

Created character art for boss characters, character damage, x-ray moments, and fatalities

involved in final character material and texture polish

ENVIRONMENT & CHARACTER LIGHTING ARTIST

Led the lighting effort for the first MK title to feature full 3D environments with transitions to multiple arenas

worked closely with tech to define the environment creation pipeline, migrating to a new game engine for the upcoming console generation

R&D for lighting and shader development, Radiosity Normal Mapping, and Point clouds

Training for environment artists on new engine, asset creation, and normal map generation

Mortal Kombat: Armageddon

project Point of contact to production, tracking of progress and milestones

Converted 60+ game characters to make them cinema ready

Created all cloth simulations

management of render files and initial compositing

Mortal Kombat: SHAOLIN MONKS

member of group tasked with creating cinema versions of game characters, modeling and surfacing

environment shaders and lighting

management of render files and final compositing

Mortal kombat: DEception

character surfacing

environment shaders and lighting

management of render files and final compositing

Psi-Ops and nba ballers

character lighting and shadows to match in-game look

hardware rendering and final compositing