Cinematic Animation and Previs Supervisor, Mocap Director and Unreal Integration Specialist

Professional Experience:

Freelance Animator: November 2020 - April 2021

Taking on small projects while I take my time finding the next full time job to sink my teeth into

  • Request for Proposals, bidding and art/animation pricing for future projects

  • Virtual set creation in Unreal

  • Character keyframe animation

Dreamcraft Attractions: October 2018 - October 2020  

Prototypes, Demos and Unannounced Projects: Animation Director

  • One stop shop for the studios animation needs, from Previs through to Post.

  • Creative Script and Story development. Rapid prototyping and prevising narrative and ride experiences.

  • Managing outsourcing partners to achieve high quality results.

  • Taking on the Character Technical Pipeline to take complex characters with mixed joint/blendshape rigs to run at 90fps in Unreal4 for VR.

  • Animation of 6-DOF motion platforms to give guests a pleasing and realistic sense of flying a dragon and other vehicular experiences.  

  • A key part of bizdev budgeting content creation in the RFP process and execution of projects on budget and on time.

  • Providing content for Dreamcrafts marketing and trade show needs.

Capcom Vancouver: November 2016 - September 2018  

Unannounced Sequel: Cinematic Director

  • Managing and directing a small but talented team of animators, lighters and vfx artist to create high production value cinematics running real-time.

  • Directing performance capture shoots at Beyond Capture mocap studio.

  • Redefining the cinematic and animation style to breathe new life into an old IP.

  • Working with the writing and narrative teams crafting the story into a cinematic experience.

  • Product Owner for a new set of tools built internally on a new engine to handle cinematic production, automation to keep animators animating eliminating production bottlenecks.

  • Creating a conversation system utilizing Unreal’s sequencer for other forms of narrative delivery.

 

Digital Dimension: October 2014 - October 2016   

 

Cinematic Director/CG Director

  • Middle Earth: Shadow of War Nazgul/Shelob Visions and multiple ingame cinematics.

  • Unannounced Project greenlight pitch cinematics WB Montreal.

  • Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate present day cinematics.

  • Aqua Dimension 3D Theme park adventure.

  • Unannounced Project greenlight pitch for WB Monolith.

  • The Creative side of business development and bidding.

  • Part of the creative leadership for the studio.

 

The Third Floor Previsualization: May 2013-August 2014           

 

TTF Montreal studio lead and Previs Supervisor:

  • The creative head for TTF’s new Montreal studio.

  • Setting up the office in all aspects.

  • New Business Representative in Montreal.

  • Video game development consultant for the company.

  • Previs Supervisor for Rob Marshall’s “Into the Woods”, Robert Zemeckis’s “To Reach the Clouds” and Samsungs Galaxy11 VR project.

  • Integration and build expert for an Undisclosed Oculus Rift Unreal 4 project with Maleficent director Robert Stromberg.

  • Previs Artist on: “Brilliance”, “San Andreas”, “Cops” and “Blacksails”

  • Postvis Artist on: "Conflagration” and “Dracula Untold”

Unbroken: Previs Lead:

  • Setup a team and office in Sydney Australia for Angelia Jolie’s directing debut.

  • Trained up the team on TTF’s tools.

  • Supervised initial shot creation.

  • Created several shots for the feature.

X-men Days of Future Past: Previs Artist:

  • Created several shots the learjet sequence.

  • Provided continuity across shots on the Quicksilver Kitchen Sequence.

  • Cleaned up scene files and packaged them up for the client.

  • Postvis on several opening shots to the film.

 

Visceral Games: June 2010 – March 2013     

 

Army of Two: The Devil’s Cartel: Cinematics Director:

  • Managed a 70+ sized team in 4 locations in 3 different time zones.

  • Producer on 65 minutes of cinematics in charge of the quality, look, and feel of all scenes and how they integrated with gameplay.

  • Product Owner to build automated exporter/import for the frostbite cinematic pipeline.

  • Directed several storyboard artists and the Montreal/Shanghai animation teams to previs out all scenes.

  • Directed acting talent for Motion Capture at House of Moves and EACapture for stunt work.

  • Hands on integration work in Frostbite 2 scripting scenes to run.

Unannounced Original IP: Animation Director, Co Creative Director:

  • Managed several very senior animators on an excited new IP where the goal was to have very stylized ingame animation, IE Team Fortress 2.

  • Fleshed out the story and universe with the Creative Director.

  • Designed the cinematic look for the story.

  • Created the ingame camera system, navigation and combat cameras.

Unannounced Sequel: Cinematics Director, Ingame Camera Direction:

  • Designed an “Uncharted” like ingame camera system in a melee action game.

  • Prototyped out a navigational camera system in a level as proof of concept

  • Created several “Proof of Concept” animatics for the game.

 

BioWare: Apr 1997 – May 2010

 

2009-2010         Mass Effect 2: Senior Cinematic Animator:

  • Implementation expert setting up the majority of the games cinematic scenes in Unreal 3 via Kismet and Matinee.

  • Handled the production aspect of the DLC scenes done in Montreal.

  • Animated the Kasumi DLC boss fight scene.

  • VFX Supervisor on the vfx heavy Overlord DLC scenes.

2007-2009         Dragon Age: Lead Cinematic Animator:

  • Leading a team of 14 to build over an hour of cinematics.

  • Product Owner for the Cutscene Editor ensuring the correct user friendly features were created to implement cinematics into the game and so the public could create their own scenes with the tool.

  • Directed Mocap shoots for all cinematics at Giant Studios and EACapture.

  • Set the cinematic style for the game.

2005-2007         Mass Effect: Senior Cinematic Animator:

  • Tasked with creating the methods and process's for integrating all scenes into the game.

  • Creating most of the ship scenes.

  • Animated several character scenes.

  • Implemented and maintained the majority of the cinematics in Unreal via Kismet and Matinee.

2003-2005         Jade Empire: Lead Cinematic Animator:

  • Leading a team of 12 to create over 50 minutes of cinematics to drive the key story points forward.

  • Directing Mocap at Giant Studios.

  • Set the cinematic style for the game.

  • Animated several scenes in between Lead duties.

2002-2003         Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic: Lead Cinematic Animator:

  • Defining the animation style for the Ebon Hawk and the space scenes.

  • Leading a small animation team to produce 30 minutes of in game cinematics to drive the key story points forward.

2001-2002         Neverwinter Nights: Animator/Lead Cinematic Animator:

  • Created the majority of the player animation set.

  • Lead the cinematics team to produce BioWare's first high quality per-rendered intro movie.

2000-2001         Baldur’s Gate 2: Throne of Bhaal:  Lead Animator:

  • Leading a small team to create both gameplay and cinematic animations.

1999-2000         Baldur’s Gate 2: Shadows of Amn: Animator:

  • Animated various ingame characters and cinematic scenes.

1998-1999         MDK2: Animator:

  • Animated various ingame characters and cinematic scenes.

  • Scripted most cinematics to run in the engine via LUA.

1997-1998         Baldur’s Gate: Animator:

  • Animated various ingame characters and cinematic scenes.

Skills:

 

  • Over 24 Years comprehensive knowledge in animation, cinematography, previsualization, layout and shot flow.

  • 20 Years of leading animation teams.

  • 20 Years of animation and cinematic pipeline experience.

  • Comprehensive understanding of game development and narrative flow within modern game engines.

  • A to Z Motion Capture shoot production including talent casting and directing.

  • Team leadership/management leading animation teams, often in external locations.

  • Accountability for cinematic schedules and deliverables.

  • A technical mindset combined with a good artist sense.

  • Adept problem solving skills in a wide variety of development applications.

  • Visual scripting animation, cinematic and character implementation in game engines.

  • Understand where workflows and pipelines can be improved driving tools develop to greatly increase efficiency within animation and narrative teams.

  • Strong editing expertise supported by a solid ability to composite scenes together for a variety of purposes, 2D animated storyboard, 2.5D productions, motion graphics, etc…

  • Presentation experience beyond animation to drive projects to a high quality that show extremely well.

 

Software:

  • Maya 2018-2021

  • Adobe Suite, Premiere, After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator

  • Unreal 4

  • MS Office

  • Jira

  • Frostbite 2.0

Education:

  • 1995-1997: Digipen Applied Computer Graphics School: Extensive two year animation/modeling/texturing/lighting course.

  • 1982-1995 Grade school

 

References:

Available upon request.

 

Links:

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/tony-de-waal/1a/60/189

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1897647/

http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,27217/