Ken Henderson   kensart@mac.com               objective To help projects develop and define groundbreaking visuals, memorable characters and immersive experiences. work experience Freelance Illustrator / Concept designer Current Having been in the entertainment industry for most of my professional life I have worked on almost evI want to inspire and be inspired by the visions of what could be and the execution and craft that goes into defining those visions.ery type of project, in almost every artistic capacity. My abilities to solve problems creatively either through artwork or systems has allowed me to help shape numerous productions vision and team structures to achieve those visions. My focus now is on the art, the inspiration behind the concepts and the realization of industry leading visuals. Perpetual Entertainment May 2005 – May - 2006 - Art Director: Visual development lead and Art Team manager for Next-Gen MMORPG based on the Star Trek franchise. Responsible for overall look and feel development, hiring and management of entire art team including outsource houses and contractors. Responsible for look research, Main character, 2ndary character, NPC, Starship and location conceptual design direction, storyboards, cinematics, color concepts, texture creation and any other aspect of look development for the game. Involved in the creation and definition of all production processes relating to the creation of the game including approval process, naming conventions, workflows, role definitions and general project policy. Freelance Illustrator / Concept designer Nov 2004 - May 2005 Worked on freelance projects for Video Games, Childrens books and various personal projects. LucasArts Entertainment Ltd., San Rafael, CA June 2003 - Nov 2004 - Pre / Post Production Art Manager: Manager for the User Interface, Special Effects and Technical Art teams within company. Help to manage project resource needs based on these teams and act as a liaison to production for production / personnel solutions within these disciplines. Work to assess production methodologies and help to refine and enhance those methodologies through proposals, staff mentoring and team meetings. Help to refine overall company production methodologies and assess and propose potential solutions. Also work to bridge the gap and open lines of communication between different LucasFilm divisions in order to share knowledge, techniques and expertise to increase skill level of existing staff and lay the groundwork for future collaborative efforts. The areas that the groups I managed focused on were pre-vis, cut scene creation, character execution, special FX, compositing of gameplay trailers, Marketing artwork, scripting to enhance production workflow and art team support. Titles I helped structure production processes for, that I was directly involved in and that my teams worked on while at LucasArts were: Games: Mercenaries Star Wars Battlefront Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords Star Wars Republic Commando Armed and Dangerous - Planet Moon - (helped with Cut-scene effort while at LucasArts) Secret Weapons Over Normandy - (managed an FX artist who worked on the project while at LucasArts) Escape Factory Ltd., Seattle, WA Nov 2001 - May 2003 - Art Director: Visual development lead and Art Team manager for a video game company. Responsible for overall look and feel development and management of 7-person team to create assets needed to realize that vision. Responsible for look research, Main character, 2ndary character, NPC and location conceptual design, storyboards, cinematics, color concepts, texture creation, some 3D model asset creation and any other aspect of look development for the game. Involved in the creation and definition of all production processes related to the creation of the game including approval process, naming conventions, role definitions and general company policy. When the company lost its only project I led the effort to find new IP within the company. I organized and managed a company wide push to develop new IP and helped to choose 3 unique IP to develop from 47 submitted concepts. Assisted in the development and structure of each project through conceptual illustrations, gameplay concepts and story structure. Vancouver Film School, Vancouver, B.C. Sept 2001 - Nov 2001 - 3D Mentor: Assisted final term advanced students to better prepare their work for the 3D job market by commenting on the visual execution of their work and helping direct them on how/why it could be better. Mainframe Entertainment Inc., Vancouver, B.C. Feb 1996 - Mar 2001 - Art Department Head: Mar 2000 - Mar 2001 Led the visual development of all future projects. Met with clients to discuss their expectations, deliverables, parameters etc. Created set and character designs for some of the proposals. Art directed the majority of the promos and created numerous character concepts for all upcoming and potential projects during this time. Created a series of production check-lists needed to ensure proper feedback from those working on the promos so that we could compile a wish list for how, if the project was picked up, we should proceed in terms of a production pipeline. Met with other department heads to discuss production methodology and implement systems for current and upcoming projects. Implemented systems of production for design approval, and overall pipeline for the creation and delivery of models from design to 3D textured final / production ready models. Hired, trained, managed all designers and design teams on all productions. Ensured that all designers had the proper equipment, working environment and worked to resolve problems with them and senior management. Met with senior management to discuss overall direction of the company, strategy and company policies. - Production Designer / Art Director, Transformers - Beast Machines: Jan 1999 - Feb 2000 Supervised entire visual design of series. Created pipeline methodology for efficient delivery of designs to modeling supervisor, approval process, and supervision and feedback for individual modelers. Met with Directors, and the Producer to ensure that integrity of series concept was upheld. Hired, trained and managed team of 5 designers. Worked with the client on visual development and script deliverables. Created conceptual artwork in Photoshop and Illustrator. This artwork consisted of original character / environmental / prop conceptual designs, textures, matte paintings and reference material for the production. Created a custom catalogue of textures and all other visual material that was referenced as a guide during the project. - Exec Suite Animator: Sept 1997 - Dec 1998 Animator and designer on numerous development projects. Also worked on conceptual development team doing design work for Shadow Raiders and animated on the IMAX ride-film ReBoot the Ride. - Senior Animator: May 1996 - October 1996 Animator on ReBoot season III, Beast Wars (Beasties) season I. - Junior Animator: Feb 1996 - Apr 1996 Animator Beast Wars season I. Productions worked on while at Mainframe Entertainment: Action Man - (managed Art team on project, project consulting) Barbie in the Nutcracker - (project consultation, script consultation, development conceptualization, managed Art teams on project) Beast Wars, Season I and II - (animator) Casper's Haunted Christmas - (managed Art teams on project) Heavy Gear - (development and series consulting, managed Art teams on project) ReBoot season III - (animator, FX artist) Scary Godmother - (conceptual design, proof of concept Art Direction, development design) Shadow Raiders / War Planets - (look development designer / concept artist, some texture work) Transformers, Beast Machines - (Production / Conceptual designer, Art Director) Weird-Ohs - (some concept design, texture work) Apple Computers / Tower Records Jun 1995 - Aug 1995 - Art Director / Animator / Character Designer: Created, animated and designed one of the first Multi-session CD-ROMs for Tower Records and Apple Computer. Summer music sampler was distributed across the USA. Harley Street Software, Victoria, B.C. Feb 1994 - May 1995 - Art Director / Animator / Character Designer / Graphic Designer: Created all visual material, from CD-ROM design to package design. Created all illustrations, manuals, icons, ads etc. Dark Horse Comics Sept 1993 - Dec 1993 - Background pencils: Created background illustrations on three issues of the Eisner award winning series, Grendel War Child. Bowes Productions, Victoria, B.C. Feb 1993 - Jan 1994 - Animator / Background artist / Character cleanup / Storyboard artist: Worked on numerous clay animated short films in a variety of capacities. education Vancouver Film School, Vancouver, British Columbia - 1996 Certificate of Excellence Diploma, Alias Power Animator University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia - 1990 BFA, First Class Honours Degree in Fine Arts (drawing and painting) G.P. Vanier Senior Secondary, Courtenay, British Columbia - 1984 Graduated skills Skills: Conceptual design (characters, vehicles, environments, props, weapons) Software: Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Image Ready, Softimage, Maya, Flash, Adobe After Effects, Quark XPress, UNIX, MS Word, MS Excel Engines: UNReal, proprietary technologies references Available on request.