Melissa Buffaloe

3D Artist

Melissa Buffaloe, 3D Artist

Rozengracht 163 2011LT Haarlem, The Netherlands

WORK HISTORY

GUERRILLA GAMES: June 2010 – present

Senior Environment Artist – My job is to take mockup geometry from level builders and lead small teams in fleshing out the environments of the various levels. When needed, I also model, texture, and create shaders.

KillZone 3

IGNITION ENTERTAINMENT: October 2009 – June 2010

Environment Director - I was responsible for working with the art director to create the look and feel of the environments for an unreleased game called Reich. I also managed the outsourced assets through our forums, giving the artists feedback and reference to get their work to the quality level we needed.

Treyarch: January 2005 – October 2009

Lead Environment Artist - As the lead environment artist on Call of Duty: World at War, when I wasn’t actually creating props and textures, a lot of my job was to give feedback to the environment team on individual assets, and to the build teams on the overall look of the levels. At the beginning of the project, I worked out a pipeline for the environment artists and researched new techniques for our team which really helped shape the end result. We also switched from Max to Maya on this project, so I spent a large amount of time getting the art team up to speed and helping to troubleshoot our tools integration with Maya. I set up schedules for each of the 7 artists on the team, and created props and textures for the levels I was assigned to.

Call of Duty Black Ops
Call of Duty: Nazi Zombies DLC
Call of Duty: World at War
Call of Duty 3
Call of Duty 2: Big Red One

The Film Foundry: January 2004 – January 2005

3D Artist

Modeling
UV layout and texturing
Matte painting
Setting up and lighting scenes for print
Animation and layouts

Artificial Studios: April 2003 – January 2005

Lead Texture Artist

Textured models and levels for tech demos used to sell licenses for the Reality Engine which was eventually acquired by Epic
Oversaw the remote team’stexture work for these tech demos

In the Spotlight Magazine: December 2001 – January 2003

Creating advertisements and helping with layout of magazine using Photoshop and Quark

Wagstaff Tile: August 1996 – May 2002

Painting a wide variety of designs on ceramic tile

Virtual Design Network: January 2001 – December 2001

Designing and developing dynamic web sites using Flash, Photoshop, and 3D Studio Max

Freelance Work

Texture painting
Modeling
UI design
Mural painting
2D design including ads, logos, CD covers brochures, etc.

Freelance Clients

Shepherd’s Pie Productions UV layout and procedural texturing
Signature Devices Texture Painting and UI development
3D Total Texture Painting

PUBLICATIONS

Some of my texture work is featured in a book called Texturing: Concepts and Techniques by Dennis Summers which was released in February 2004

EDUCATION

University of North Carolina at Greensboro: August 1996 – December 2000

BFA in Studio Art with Design Concentration

Worked from August 1999 – December 2000 as a studio assistant in the computer lab, where I provided technical support on hardware, software, and network issues.

Internship at the Mint Museum of Craft and Design May2000 – December 2000

SOFTWARE

Photoshop
Maya
3D Studio Max
ZBrush
Crazy Bump
Perforce
Radiant
Unreal Editor