john chen

Work History

• 

  Available Now // Senior VFX 3D Artist

  Freelance

  2018 - Present
• 

  Modeller

  Pixel Zoo

  January 2021 - January 2021

  model and texture artist
• 

  Visual Effects Artist

  Alt.vfx

  January 2020 - August 2020

  brisbane

  Senior CG artist, pretty much did everything except for rigging and comp
• 

  3D Lead ( assets )

  Cutting Edge

  July 2017 - April 2018

  Currently leading a team of awesome artists on a secret DocuDrama.
• 

  Light Lead / 3D Artist

  Cutting Edge

  January 2016 - April 2018

  Feature Film and Television.
  
  Nest: Light Lead, Creature & Environment Concept Artist, Creature, Character & Environment artist.
  Underworld: Blood Wars (2016) - Lighter, Modeler, FX TD, Compositor
  Powers Season 2 - 3D artist ( Generalist & CG Sequence lead )
  

  

  
• 

  CG Generalist - Pan, Tarzan, Gods of Egypt

  Rising Sun Pictures

  November 2014 - June 2015

  Adelaide, Australia

  Modeller - Poly modelling of organic and hard surface environments and props from concept images and reference photos.
  Zbrush and mudbox surfacing, sculpting and texturing of organic and hard surface assets.
  Maya / Zbrush / Mudbox / Mari
  Lighting TD - Beauty shot lighting of environments, digidoubles, FX Simulations and vehicles. Trouble shooting scene/asset and render errors. Creating and optimising multi-pass, light masking render passes, working with compositors to deliver shot finals. Creative lighting for look development.
  Houdini / Mantra / Arnold / Maya
  Processing and developing pipeline tools for processing of raw onset HDRI's for use with Houdini and Mantra. Developed custom Nuke plugin for color balancing of HDRI.
  Nuke / ptGui

  

  

  
• 

  Tracking and Matchmove/Model and Texture Artist

  Luma Pictures

  July 2014 - October 2014

  Melbourne, Australia

  Groom and hair artist
  CG Character Modelling Artist
  Tracking and Matchmove Artist

  

  

• Freelance VFX and 3D Artist

  VFXFORGE

  October 2011 - September 2014

  Worldwide

  As a VFX artist I can deliver camera matchmoves and mid level compositing and lighting for Film and TV.
  As a 3D artist I specialize in creating photo reel CG animals and stylised characters for animation. I am a capable generalist in most areas of 3D and have produced full 3D characters for animation features.
• 

  Matchmove and Tracking Artist

  Luma Pictures

  March 2014 - June 2014

  Melbourne

  Matchmove and Camera Tracking for Hollywood feature films.
  Current Projects: Guardians of the Galaxy, Heart of the Sea
  Past Projects: Captain America, The Winter Soldier
• 

  Tracking and Matchmove Artist

  Luma Pictures

  December 2013 - January 2014

  Melbourne

  Show : Captain America 2 - The Winter Soldier
  Responsibilities -
  - Preparing undistortion plates and lens distortion calculation,
  - Solving a variety of 3D Camera tracks with Syntheyes,
  - Solving difficult hand held and no parallax shots using tripod solves.
  - Object tracking with Syntheyes.
  - Proxy set modelling based on point cloud data from camera solve.
  - Delivering final camera and object solves to compositor and layout artists using pipeline tools.
  - Matchmove animation of Human characters for 3D FX interaction and wound replacement.
  - Matchmove rigid objects such as weapons, cars and debri.
  Delivered all shots on time and was the sole tracker for the last week of the project.
  Bonus: Modeled,textured and shaded paper pamphlet for additional FX in car crash scene.

• Compositor

  Rapix Media

  December 2013 - December 2013

  Compositor for the new Dami Im music video "Alive", Task included, tracking, rotoscope, screen replacement and composite. Tools: Nuke

• Pre Visualization Artist

  Nezui

  July 2013 - December 2013

  Brisbane, Australia

  Currently in pre-production, I am a previz artist assisting director in shot planning, camera layout, animation blocking and basic set layout.
  Cyan Eyed - https://www.cyan-eyed.com/
  - Camera layout using matchmoved and keyframed camera with 3D Equalizer and Maya / 3DS Max.
  - Blocking character poses and timing.
  - Preparing playblasts for dailies and asset management.
  - Debugging 3DS Max > Maya round trip workflow using CAT > HUMANIK
  - Working on review shots and finalling shots.

• Lead Lighter & Shading Artist

  What Comics Entertainment

  February 2011 - December 2013

  Greater Los Angeles Area

  Responsible for the main bulk of lighting and look development of the Cerebus 3D animated feature. Working directly with the producer along with over 50 artists worldwide to achieve a CG realization of Dave Sim's epic cult comic "Cerebus the Aardvark".
  The film environment spans from external epic mountain landscapes, dark forest and lairs and intimate indoor scenes and dark epic indoor environments.
  Lighting required a lot of shader / texture balancing as well as faking global illumination as the show did not use GI or FG by placing manual lights.
  I was also responsible for the majority of lead character shading development, taking the generic maya shaders and optimising them for mental Ray shaders.
  As well as handling the lighting I have been contributed to modelling, rigging, hero dynamic shots, majority of hair systems used.
• 

  Trainee in rotoscopy and matchmoving

  Rising Sun Pictures

  2013 - 2013

  Adelaide, Australia

  Took part in a small selected team of trainees to learn and practice Rotoscoping and Matchmoving in a real production environment using real production plates from movies such as "Prometheus" "Harry Potter" "Burt Wonderstone" and "Hunger Games".
  Tasks involved
  Rotoscope of full body talents in motion
  Rotoscope of hands flipping a coin
  Rotoscope of Hair
  Plate cleanup, such as dust busting, tracker removal and rotopaint.
  Match move and track cameras and talents
  Using Lidar scan to solve a track
  Solving handheld tracks
  Solving camera with minimal onset data
  Solving camera with onset measurement
  Importing solved camera into Maya and establishing scale and layout.
  Basic compositing of CG creature into live action plate, using rotoscope mattes and render AOV's.

• Freelance 3D Artist & Compositor

  VMP

  August 2011 - September 2011

  Brisbane

  Contracts to complete an animated 3D and motiongraphics piece for the Queensland Literary Awards 2011.
  Autodesk maya entertainment suite and After Effects were the primary tools used to create 17 short animated sequences.

• Oncall SEO

  DEJAN SEO

  February 2009 - January 2011

  search engine optimization campaign strategist.

• Chief Editor / SEM content writer / General Manager

  Li'l Engine

  September 2009 - January 2010

• Senior Helpdesk Analyst

  University of Queensland

  January 2000 - January 2006

  Senior helpdesk analyst at UQ's Information Technology Services.