chahnrun@gmail.com • 407.712.4236 • www.chahnrun.com • Cedar Park, TX 78613

Art Director

Long time Lead Artist in the gaming industry. I am exceedingly passionate about art, and I make it my goal for this passion to spread on the teams I join. Leading a team of passionate people toward a creative endeavor is a challenge for sure. One that I love. It's about finding the best ways to use your team, and not getting in their way. Providing clear timely feedback, and keeping an eye on how the day to day challenges may affect the big picture is a must for any team who wants to finish on time and achieve high quality results.

Areas of Expertise

Lighting | Environment Art | Concept | Photogrammetry
Leadership | Team Management | Outsourcing
Technical Problem Solving | Cross Disciplinary Communication | Performance Optimization

Software

Photoshop | Maya | 3ds Max | Zbrush
Substance Designer | Marvelous Designer | Keyshot
Frostbite | HeroBlade | Unreal | Perforce | Hansoft | Jira

Professional Experience

Daybreak Games Austin, Texas

Art Director 10/2017 – Present

Unannounced Title

Creating art vision that supports the goals of the Executive Producer and Creative Director.
Oversee hiring, mentorship and management of entire art team.
Work with design, art and programing teams to create workflows that will best suit the game.
Provide daily feedback to artists across all disciplines to improve overall quality and help establish consistent quality bar.
Assist production with breaking down tasks and setting priorities across the art team.

Bioware Austin, Texas

Environment Art Director 6/2008 – Present

Mass Effect Andromeda

Lighting Lead - Created color scripts for each critical path mission to help make sure levels have a emotional arc as well as give level artists direction on lighting levels. Set up PBR lighting standards and guidelines. Provided feedback and paint overs to help artists push artistic quality through lighting across 3 studio locations. Did most high-level lighting, skyboxes and Post FX.
Cinematic Lighting Lead - Set visual targets. Worked closely with programmers to improve cinematic lighting tools. Led one artist in Austin and 5 at EA Shanghai. Trained team on tools and provided artistic direction.
Austin Environment Team Lead - Provided artistic feedback. Helped solve technical issues. Did initial scheduling of work for the Austin studio. Helped facilitate communication with Montreal and Edmonton studios. Conducted one on ones.

Was part of a 4-person photogrammetry team sent to Iceland to capture assets for several planet palettes in the game.

Dragon Age Inquisition : the Descent

Worked closely with Creative Director to make sure level layouts and mood hit his vision. Created concepts for environment assets as well as some initial mood pieces to ensure artists and I were on the same page about what direction things should take.
Led team of 6 environment artists. Built schedule for team breaking work down into small chunks, making sure we stayed on track and hit all deadlines.
Did all high-level lighting and Post FX. Created several new shaders to help push the aesthetic. Helped out with world building and performance optimizations throughout level.

Shadow Realms

Led team of 13 internal environment artists. Provided feedback on a daily basis. Helped solve technical issues. Was responsible for training, as many artists were new to Frostbite. Created and maintained environment art schedule, made sure tasks were given to artists with the right skill sets.
Did all the lighting throughout the environments, helped set up substance designer texturing work flow, as well as some in-engine shader work.
Led 6 external prop artists. Making sure they always had enough concepts to work from and providing feedback on quality as well as technical specs.

Lead Environment Artist

Star Wars the Old Republic : Rise of the Hut Cartel

Led team of up to 13 environment artists. Built schedule for all work that went into the expansion. Provided daily feedback on artistic quality and style. Helped maintain dependency with other teams, especially world design. Worked closely with concept art team to guarantee we were getting what we needed.
Managed 8 external prop artists making sure assets were built to quality and within technical guidelines. Also was responsible for making sure they always had enough work to do as they were paid not per asset but for the project.
Pushed for and helped guide the creation of several new shaders and other tech that raised the visual bar of the game.

Senior Environment Artist / Planet Lead / Outsourcing Lead

Star Wars the Old Republic

Led teams ranging from 3 to 6 artists to complete 4 planets for the game. Led the creation of terrain texture sets and world building styles. Made sure color palettes were compelling and cohesive. Built sky boxes and did most of the lighting.
Drove communication with outsourcers through weekly vidcon calls. Worked with 2 other outsourcing leads to create a better process for reviewing assets and making sure our internal artists were providing detailed feedback.
Took over as lead environment artist in the final month of the game before launch. Made sure team got across the finish line by prioritizing work that needed to get done, and by balancing resources to make sure we had the right people on the right tasks.

EA Tiburon Orlando, Florida

Lighting Lead 6/2004 – 6/2008

NCAA College Football

Assisted the art director in hitting his vision through lighting. Broke down photo reference to demonstrate gaps in the current render quality. Oversaw concept artists in the creation of visual target images.
Worked closely with character art lead and environment art lead to make sure their assets worked well with the lighting.
Used reference and visual targets to help guide programming and tech artists to overhaul the lighting tech and tools from previous years, resulting in a drastic improvement.
Did all lighting for the game including all time of day changes and weather scenarios.

Education

BFA Computer Animation

Ringling College of Art and Design – Sarasota, FL