de Vries Arts

2015 - Current

Currently an independent game developer, I am also available for various related work such as:

Character art for games/video/3D print
Low poly modeling
High-res sculpting
Animation
Rigging
Concept art/Illustration
Unity integration and gameplay prototyping
Game design & development
FX for games

For details, see projects below.

MediaCollege Amsterdam

Nov 2015 - Jul 2018

A rewarding and enriching teaching role that has contributed to my evolution as game developer. My role included the development and teaching of curriculum for 1st and 2nd year students, covering:

Animation principles
Character animation for games
2D animation in Adobe Animate, Photoshop and Unity
3D animation in Maya
Rigging basics in Maya
VFX for games in Unity
Art integration in Unity

As part of this curriculum I coded a small game called 'Stick Figure Fighter' in Unity, which was fully functional excluding graphics. Students were to design and animate their character according to specs, then run it through the export-import process to get a feel for real game art production.

Vanguard Games

Jan 2008 - Feb 2015

An evolving role that included:

Character art (modeling/sculpting/texturing)
Environment art
Animation
Rigging
Physics setup for vehicle/building destruction
Tools, scripting & pipeline development
Shader coding (cgfx/hlsl/Unity CG)
Vis Dev
Level building & building methods
FX (Unity & Maya)
UI
Team lead & supervision

While having worked on projects from start to finish, I was heavily involved in the start of a project. There I would research and develop the production methods, set up the pipeline, develop tools (in Maya) for artists to use and develop visual targets for further art production.

Formal Education

University of Amsterdam
2001-2007

Doctorandus(MA) in Social and Political Philosphy, with a minor in Aesthetics.

Philosophy might seem irrelevant to my current carreer, however logic (informal, formal, symbolic and mathematical) is the very essence of philosophical practice. And logic, of course, is what coding cannot do without.

University of Leiden
2000-2001

Propaedeutics in Psychology

Personal Education

2002-2007

Once modding tools were decent I spend a few years making custom levels and fully animated characters for Warcraft 3 mods. Picked up 3ds Max for this (required for the official Blizzard exporter released for wc3). In these years I also discovered Zbrush (version 2) and Modo 201.

1996

Upgraded from Klik & Play to The Games Factory (Europress/Clickteam). I was now able to make game with scrolling backgrounds. Made various 2 player combat games (various incarnations of two tanks in a small maze with random appearing powerups) and a few starts at platformers.

1995

Started my personal eduction in 3D using Lightwave (version 5) to create my first 3D animations, effects and game assets. Tanks, robots and futuristic cities.

1994

Bought my first game development software: Klik & Play (Europress/Clickteam). It came with it's own scripting language and pixel drawing tools. My school notebooks henceforth would be filled with game design, logic and character/vehicle designs.