keith bruns
 
summary
 

An experienced Senior Technical Artist/Animator and 3D art generalist with a solid understanding of the needs and expectations of traditional and VR game development. Specializing in character rigging, weapon and vehicle modeling, rigging, and animation, PBR texture creation, model optimization, and best practices for rigging and animation, alpha/beta software testing, leading/mentoring artists and 3D art pipeline expertise and optimization.

employment
Highwire Games
february 2024 - present
Senior Character Technical Artist/Animator  
- Establishing a new character skeleton and animation system by converting an existing setup to Metahumans.
- Refining and hardening the art standards and pipeline for a clean development environment and full documentation.
 
Studio Hermitage
november 2023 - february 2024
Senior Technical Artist  
- Setup documentation and workflows for establishing an art pipeline for a startup company that had none in place.
- Created art for presentation to publishers and outside contacts to help establish funding and look of the game.
- Developed assets and cleaned up purchased assets for in game use using a standard PRB workflow in Unreal5.
- Research and development of numerous software packages for artist use to establish an artist facing pipeline.
 
Mob Entertainment
may 2023 - september 2023
Principal Character Technical Animator  
- Lead/mentored a team of technical, environment, animators and character artists on best practices/techniques.
- Instituted a modern workflow by incorporating Jira, Perforce, naming conventions and documentation practices.
- Documenting the entire processes to prepare for converting a PC only title to all consoles and portable devices.
- Creating character and prop rigs with levels of complexity to adhere to standards for each delivery platform.
- Establishing, reviewing and documenting standards for models, LODs, animation, and artist facing tools.
 
Firaxis Games
september 2022 - march 2023
Lead Technical Animator  
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Leading a small team of technical artists and working with modelers and animators for Marvels Midnight Suns.
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Added secondary automatically driven joints to the existing character rigging system for better anatomical deformation.
 
Survios
july 2014 - may 2022
Senior Technical Artist  
- One of the first two artists hired after the launch of the studio, worked on all prototypes and every game since.
- Typically working on 2-5 games simultaneously in different styles with varying animation needs and deadlines.
- Worked to develop topology standards for all characters to ensure ease of rigging and reduced character rework.
- Rigged all characters for Raw Data, Sprint Vector, Electronauts, BattleWake, Creed: Rise to Glory, Walking Dead, Big Rumble Boxing: Creed Champions, and Puzzle Bobble: Vacation Odyssey, including physics and cloth.
- Modeled/textured/rigged multiple weapons, props, and intractable objects for Raw Data
  credited projects:
 
PS4/5/VR:
Puzzle Bobble:Vacation Odyssey
PS4/Xbox/Switch:
Big Rumble Boxing: Creed Champions
PC VR:
Walking Dead: Onslaught
PS4/VR:
Westworld: Awakening
PS4/VR:
Creed: Rise to Glory
PS4/VR:
Battlewake
PS4/VR:
Electronauts
PS4/VR:
Sprint Vector
PS4/VR:
Raw Data
PS4/VR:
Multiple Prototypes
 
DuMonde vfx
march 2014 - may 2014
Maya TD - (contract)  
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Organized & optimized the art pipeline for two studio locations and off-site artists for the Crossbones TV series.
- Optimized scenes for renders which reduced render times by nearly 30%.
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Modeled and textured buildings, props, vegetation, and other assets for numerous scenes.
 
Kojima Productions (los angeles studio)
august 2012 - may 2013
Technical Artist  
- As the first artist hired at the LA studio, I was responsible for helping to build the art team.
- All US based art R&D duties were my responsibility until a full art team was hired.
- Created and reviewed all art tests, resumes, portfolios and contacting applicants references.
- Responsible for designing the Kojima Los Angeles logos, shirts, posters and brand pieces for the LA studio.
 
Spark Unlimited
april 2012 - july 2012
Senior Technical Artist  
-
Character, creature, and prop rigging for Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z.
 
CCP Games
august 2009 - october 2011
Technical Artist  
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Developed character pipelines for modeling, rigging and animation for a game franchise with no prior characters.
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Body and facial rigging for EVE Online: Incarna, and the acclaimed custom character creator.
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Body and face bipedal and quadruped creature rigs for World of Darkness prototyping.
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Developed a joint based facial rig with simple controls and multiple layers of animator options.
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Worked with the character modelers to setup best practices for model and animation deformation.
- Involved the company with numerous alpha/beta softwares providing feature and bug feedback.
- Technical liaison between programming, tools, and art departments to create a first time character pipeline from scratch. This included introducing animation, rigging, modeling, and best practices techniques to the studio.
  credited projects:
 
PC:
EVE Online: Incarna
PC:
World of Darkness
 
Sucker Punch Productions
september 2006 - april 2009
Character Technical Director  
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Worked from pre-production to final on inFAMOUS for the PlayStation3 as the Character Technical Director.
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Tasked with developing and ensuring characters adhere to technical, aesthetic, and memory rules.
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Ensuring proper edge loops, zBrush to game pipeline, modeling for deformation, and proper UV layout.
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Worked with rendering engineers on materials & lighting for our new deferred rendering system.
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Helped to develop the in-game camera editor which was used to create 200+ scenes in-game.
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Created the screen grabs for magazines and other promotional materials, as well as creating off-line renders in Mental Ray for in-house and Sony Advertising promotional use.
- Mentored a junior TD, and spoke at local colleges to evangelize about the company and industry.
  credited projects:
 
PS3:
inFAMOUS 1
 
Naughty Dog Inc.
june 2003 - july 2006
ICE Team artist  
-
Worked on Mark Cerny's team developing tools and technologies for the Playstation3 console. I was the only artist on this project with a large number of senior level programmers for 3 years.
-
Primarily tasked with researching art asset creation and pipeline methods for next generation games. This included looking at new software and techniques to increase artist efficiency and was instrumental in getting Naughty Dog involved in numerous Beta and developer feedback programs.
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Introduced zBrush, mudbox, HDRshop, and other new programs into the company pipeline.
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Assisted most of Sony's Playstation3 launch teams meet their 2005 deadlines for E3, GDC, internal milestones, and any other scheduled showings by assisting tools development and artist training.
-
Traveled to the studios below to meet with the programming and art staffs introducing the tools and new technologies and demonstrating how to integrate it into their pipeline.
    Sony Computer Entertainment Japan Polyphony Digital
   
Naughty Dog Inc.
Insomniac Games
   
Factor5
 Suckerpunch Productions
   
Sony Santa Monica
Sony San Diego
   
Zipper Interactive
Incognito Entertainment
  credited projects:
 
PS3:
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune
PS3:
Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction
PS3:
Lair
PS3:
Gran Turismo
PS3:
Resistance: Fall of Man
PS3:
Warhawk
PS3:
Motorstorm
PS3:
NBA 2007
PS3:
MLB 2007
PS2:
ICE Tools and Tech (now EDGE)
 
Idol Minds llc.
march 1999 - june 2003
Animation Team Lead | Animator | Level Designer  
-
Hired directly out of school with 2 other classmates to complete Coolboarders4 in 7 months. The game went on to sell over 1.5 million copies and was an early "Greatest Hits" title for Sony.
- One of my levels was used on a Pizza Hut promotional disc and included with a Jampack demo CD.
-
Hired as a background artist and completed 2 PS1 games before moving to the animation team as the only animator for the 3rd title. Was then promoted to animation/rigging lead for the last game.
-
Worked with two other artists to train the art and programming staff to use Maya.
  credited projects:
 
PS2:
My Street
PS2:
Coolboarders 2001
PS1:
Coolboarders 2001
PS1:
Coolboarders4
 
 
professional contributions
Raw Data - AMD VR Game of the Year (2017)
Our first VR title beat nominees: Robo Recall, Rick & Morty Simulator, Superhot and Lucky’s Tale.  
New York Fashion Week (2011)
Rigged a 3D model of ZombieBoy with clothes designed by Nicola Formichetti for NY Fashion Week.  
Nature Magazine - 'Keep on Spinning' (2009)
Created graphics for a research paper by Jake Koralek on “Spintronics” for Berkeley Labs.  
Game Developers Conference (2007)
Contributing Artist on a talk by Mark Cerny, John Olick, & Dave Simpson on RSX best practices.  
Siggraph (2006)
Contributing Artist on a talk given by Naty Hoffman, Dan Baker, & Jan Kautz on PBR lighting.  
Unparent HDR Lightprobe Set (2005)
18 HDR lightprobes created in 2005, released for free and licensed to software companies.  
 
 
education
East Tennessee State University
august 1997 - january 1999
student - Advanced Visualizaion Laboratory
-
Trained on SGI Indigos, Indigo2's, O2's, and Octane machines running unix.
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Certified by Alias|Wavefront in both PowerAnimator and Maya.
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We were a Maya beta test site, so I had experience at the time of its release which helped me land my first job.