Lee Dotson
Skills
Art Direction, Systems Design, Production & Team Management, Blueprint Scripting, UX Design, Technical Art Direction, and a full range of art asset creation skills.
EXPERIENCE
Pocketwatch Games — Art Director
Feb 2022- Present
Monaco 2
Created interactive UX mockups of demonstrating the flow from the main menu, narrative hub, mission selection, and in-game HUD using Figma.
Created animatics to visualize gameplay concepts, UI flows, and storytelling methods.
Created animatics for cinematic sequences.
Built an internal art team from the ground up.
Provided direction for all visual assets to ensure they worked from an aesthetic and gameplay perspective. (Characters, Environments, UI, VFX, etc.)
Managed relationships with external art production partners covering in-game asset creation and branding materials.
Regularly met with publishing partners to review milestone deliverables and devise revision plans based on player feedback on milestones.
Created various prototypes and example assets to demonstrate both style and workflow approaches.
Collaborated with our design and engineering leads to develop a system for skinning voxelized level data with artist-created meshes.
Provided prototypes of custom nonphotorealistic lighting systems and worked closely with our engineers to ensure they were implemented to spec while also accommodating our tight performance considerations.
Designed a dynamic color palette system that ensures all art assets can be thematically blended in procedural environments. This system also allows for items to be color-corrected based on type and importance for categories such as Players, Enemies, Collectables, Mission Objectives, etc.
Created character concepts and polished game assets as needed to support our internal team.
Motion capture directing and clean-up for use with in-game animations and cinematic animations..
Recruited and managed writers and voice actors to work on our in-game and cinematic story content.
Harebrained Schemes— Art Director
June 2020 - December 2021
Unannounced Horror Game
Created animatics to visualize gameplay concepts, UI flows, and storytelling methods.
Created flow charts to visualize approaches to combat design that were under consideration.
Worked closely with the UX lead to create in-game interfaces that reinforced the tone of the game while clearly communicating gameplay information.
Collaborated with the Game Director and Narrative team to establish an eye-catching art style that met the project's narrative tone and gameplay needs.
Managed engineers responsible for creating in-house narrative tools and a cinematic combat system.
Provided direction and feedback for all visual assets (Characters, Environments, UI, VFX, etc.)
Screened and interviewed candidates across all disciplines for staffing up our team.
Developed custom shaders and worked with engineers to expand Unity’s URP to support a custom lighting model that matched our desired art style.
Collaborated with artists and designers to spec out production pipelines for animation, level design, ui flow, cinematics, and a modular character system that found the best compromise between design, art, production, and engineering needs.
Created prototype VFX, Character model, and Environment assets to demonstrate both style and workflow approaches.
Worked closely with our Narrative team to create concepts for characters and environments.
Adecco (on-site at Google MTV) — Senior Technical Artist
June 2019 - April 2020
Launched Demos: Chimera, Verbworld
Worked on-site with the Stadia Advanced Research Team coordinating and overseeing the art production on multiple projects.
Project Chimera:
Teamed with ML engineers to design and implement a pipeline for creating AI generative game art.
Created a custom dataset that paired renders of animal models from an unlimited range of camera angles, lighting conditions, and environments with segmentation maps via blueprint scripts in UE4.
Created shaders that composited and post-processed the ML-generated creatures with separate ML-created environments and UI elements, ensuring a cohesive appearance.
Created UI elements for the gameplay demo.
Created and maintained production documents to communicate the evolving workflow to both internal and external partners.
Project Verb World:
Collaborated with the Project Lead to create an appealing, accessible aesthetic that fit our time and budget constraints.
Art directed and oversaw the production of all other art assets (animation, exterior props, etc.).
Created various models, shaders, and scripts as needed to support the project such as weather systems and materials that changed based on semantic ai inputs.
Massive Black, San Francisco, CA — Technical Director
(contract working with Google ATAP)
Shipped Titles: Truckstars AR, Nightenfell AR
May 2017 - April 2019
Art directed and set asset creation standards for all 3D assets produced for various AR projects.
Coordinated asset production between external artists and multiple development teams spread out across the country (Mountain View, Seattle, Austin, and Pittsburgh).
Directly contributed to creating 3D Assets, Shaders, Textures, UI, VFX, and UI Elements.
Inxile Entertainment, New Orleans, LA — Art Director
Shipped Titles: Mage’s Tale VR
Other Contributions: Bard’s Tale IV
November 2015 - May 2017
Managed a multidisciplinary team of artists across multiple studios to produce a visually rich and engaging RPG that also met Oculus’s strict 90fps performance requirements.
Researched techniques and implemented best practices for producing high-quality and performant visuals in UE4's implementation of VR.
Researched and prototyped various approaches for communicating various gameplay systems in VR.
Served as the 'Art Dad', helping to mentor and guide junior artists on how to best work in a collaborative environment and achieve long-term goals.
Collaborated with Designers, Engineers, Producers, and Narrative staff to ensure that all art production met the projects’ needs and timelines.
Provided technical and artistic style guides to provide artists with a clear framework to work from while empowering them to bring their expertise to projects.
Contributed directly to creating various assets as needed (Concept Art, VFX, Cinematics, Level Layouts, Scene Lighting, marketing materials, etc.).
Limbic Software, San Francisco, CA — Art Director
Shipped Titles: Tower Madness 2, Zombie Gunship: Arcade
Other Contributions: Zombie Gunship, Zombie Gunship: Reality, Nuts!, Other internal unshipped projects.
May 2012 - July 2014
Defined and maintained the visual style of multiple projects across various genres.
Produced concept art, models, textures, and fx for all ongoing and new properties.
Collaborated closely with programmers to design UI mockups and final implementations for all gameplay systems.
Managed external artists to ensure timely delivery of all assets with adherence to visual and technical specifications.
Provided marketing assets for use with app store and social media promotions.
Storyboarding, video editing, and post-production for animated and video trailers.
Zarksoft, San Francisco, CA — Co-Founder, President, Design Lead
Shipped Titles: Empire of the Eclipse
March 2010 - July 2012
Designed and balanced all major systems for an online 4x strategy game. (Skill design, tech trees, combat resource balancing.)
Responsible for all UX design focusing on delivering the high information density needed in the 4X genre in a format that was easily readable on small mobile devices and easy to use with a touch interface.
Served as the contact point for press outlets and external partners.
Established the visual style and produced all art assets for EotE.
Cryptic Studios, Los Gatos, CA — Art Director
Shipped Titles: Star Trek Online
January 2009 - March 2010
Grew the art team from 12 to 32 artists over a one-year period to meet our tight launch goals.
Oversaw the day-to-day production of all art on the project, balancing the need to give individuals ownership of their work while maintaining a consistent aesthetic vision across the entire project.
Designed and balanced the combat system and technology trees.
Mentored and grew the skills of both junior and senior art team members across all disciplines.
Flagship Studios, San Francisco, CA — Art Lead
Shipped Titles: Hellgate:London and ongoing content
(Positions held, Character Artist, Character Outsourcing Manager, Art Lead)
May 2005 - July 2008
Coordinated with Designers and Producers to create content creation schedules for ongoing content once the game went live.
Worked closely with design and engineering to create new character skills and pick up items.
Set standards and oversaw the production of art assets for both internal artists and external teams located in the United States, China, and Korea.
Created character models and textures for use with Hellgate’s modular wardrobe system.
Created concept designs for armor sets, monsters, and NPC characters.
Epic Games, Raleigh, NC — Senior Artist
Shipped Titles: Unreal Championship 2
Other Contributions: Unreal Tournament 3
May 2002 - July 2005
Created character models and textures
Character concepts
FX creation
Lighting for in-game cinematics
Regularly performed a comparative analysis of various weapons and skills to help with the game’s balance during our regular design discussions.
Blizzard Entertainment, San Mateo, CA — Artist
Title Contributions: Diablo 3, Unannounced Title.
March 2001 - April 2002
Character modeling and texturing
Character concepting
Ionstorm, Dallas, TX — Artist
Shipped Titles: Anachronox
January 1998 - March 2001
Character modeling and texturing
Character concepts
FX
2D UI Elements for Minigames
EDUCATION
Massive Black Atelier — Classical Realist Oil Painting & Concept Design
SMART School / Illustration Master Class — Illustration
AWARDS
Multiple features of illustration work in the Spectrum Fantasy and Sci-Fiction annual.