Howard K. Hsu

3 0 2 - 8 9 7 - 9 3 1 2

howard at howard hsu dot com

Career Objective

To continue challenging myself in a Technical Artist/TD role and further develop my art and coding skills in the areas of  rigging, lighting and overall pipeline development.

Skills

Software: 

Maya, Max, MotionBuilder, Mudbox, Relight, Character Studio, CryEngine, Unreal Engine, Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, Final Cut Pro 

Programming languages:

Proficient: Python, MEL, MaxScript, SQL

Familiar: C/C++, Java, Perl

Experience

Hawaii Animation Studios, Honolulu, HI 2010 - present

Pipeline Technical Director - Reign of the Dinosaurs, various NDA demos

Helped build object-oriented pipeline in Python. Built auto-rig parts and wrote tools in Maya (PyMel) for the rigging pipeline and used parts and tools to rig characters. Wrote new classes and methods for the lighting pipeline to work with existing framework. Wrote scene exporters and rendering tools for Relight renderer.

Sony Computer Entertainment America, San Diego, CA 2010

Maya/MotionBuilder TD - Killzone 3

Cleaned up and converted shots for Killzone 3 cinematics. QC'd shots in MotionBuilder to make sure all assets were in scene and animation looked right.

Avatar Reality, Honolulu, HI 2007 – 2010

Technical Artist/Animator - Blue Mars

Developed character animation pipeline for adding mocap animations to CryEngine.  Wrote tools in MaxScript to convert mocap animation to 3DS Max rig.  Built and skinned Max and Maya rig. Cleaned up mocap animations and created loops and transition animations.

Electronic Arts, Redwood City, CA 2006 – 2007

Assistant Technical Artist - The Sims 3

Weight painted body and face meshes for animation and customization for the Create-A-Sim tool.

Education

Ex’pression College for Digital Arts, Emeryville, CA Graduated 2006

Bachelor of Applied Science in Animation and Visual Effects 

University of Delaware, Newark, DE Graduated 2001

Bachelor of Arts in Computer and Information Sciences

References available upon request.