Mark Ishak

Mark Ishak

Senior Lighting Artist

Senior Lighting Artist / 21 yrs

Seattle, WA

Hire Me
• Lighter with 14 years of experience in the electronic entertainment industry.
• Working knowledge of several major development tools particularly for lighting and texture painting.
• 10 shipped titles on Xbox, Xbox 360, XBox One, PC, GC, PS2, PS3, and PS4.
• B.A. in Graphic Design and color theory.
• Supervisory experience.
• Avid Gamer.
• Willing to relocate.

Adept in: Maya, Mental Ray, 3D Studio MAX, UDK, CryEngine, Unity 3D, & PhotoShop

Specialties: Lighting Direction and Execution.
Work History
  • Senior Lighting Artist

    Red Storm Entertainment

    May 2014 - Present
    Cary, NC

    Lighting, Atmospherics, FX

  • Lighting Artist

    343 Industries

    August 2013 - May 2014

    Employment Type: Contract (Yoh)

    Duties Included:
    • Researching, profiling, and developing new lighting tech and pipelines.
    • Utilizing advanced lighting techniques to create lighting, atmospherics, and post process effects for in-game and cinematic content.
    • Teaching/Mentoring other artists in lighting aesthetics and techniques.

  • Lighting Artist

    343 Industries

    May 2012 - January 2013

    Employment Type: Contract (Yoh)

    Console Titles: Halo 4 (go to https://vimeo.com/56671330 to view reel).

    Duties Included:
    • Utilizing advanced lighting techniques to create lighting, atmospherics, and post process effects for in-game and cinematic content.

  • Senior Lighting Artist

    Zipper Interactive

    January 2012 - June 2012

    Employment Type: Permanent
    Reason for Leaving: Company Closed.

    Duties Included:
    • Creating lighting concept paintovers in pre-production.
    • Consultations with Art Director on overall lighting direction/cinematography of projects.
    • Creating/maintaining lighting schedules for Producers, troubleshooting lighting related issues, and in-depth reporting of technical problems to relevant parties.
    • Creating lighting, atmospherics, and post process effects for both pre-rendered cinematics and in-game content.
    • Utilizing advanced lighting techniques.
    • Teachi

  • Senior Lighting Artist

    Liquid Entertainment

    March 2007 - January 2012

    Employment Type: Permanent
    Reason for Leaving: New Opportunity

    Console Titles: Rise of the Argonauts, Thor, Unannounced Title.

    Duties Included:
    • Creating lighting concept paintovers in pre-production.
    • Consultations with Art Director on overall lighting direction/cinematography of projects.
    • Being solely responsible for lighting entire projects, creating/maintaining lighting schedules for Producers, troubleshooting lighting related issues, and in-depth reporting of technical problems to relevant parties.
    • Creating lighting, atmospherics, and post

  • Lighting Artist

    Treyarch

    January 2007 - March 2007

    Employment Type: Contract

    Console Titles: Spiderman 3: The Movie Game

    Duties Included:
    • Contracted for a few months to recreate from scratch and modify lighting, gobos, light behaviors, and color effects for interiors via proprietary software and Max.
    • Creating and modifying shader attributes and geometry in Max for lighting consistency.

  • Lighting Artist

    Neversoft

    March 2006 - October 2006

    Employment Type: Permanent
    Reason for Leaving: Lay Offs

    Console Titles: Tony Hawk's Project 8

    Duties Included:
    • Using lightmaps, shadowmaps, ambient color maps, vertex lighting, Pre-Computed Radiance Transfer, and creating light rigs via Max and other proprietary lighting tools to light interiors and exteriors.
    • Creating and modifying lighting and screen-space effects such as Bloom, color and saturation, Depth of Field, noise, etc.
    • Creating and modifying shader attributes such as specularity and normal maps for lighting consistency.
    • Modifying geo

  • Lighter

    Electronic Arts

    January 2005 - December 2005

    Employment Type: Contract

    Console Titles: The Godfather: The Game, From Russia with Love.

    Duties Included:
    • Aiding in the creation, debug, and modification of new, studio-wide, static and entity lighting pipeline tools & technology.
    • Using vertex lighting, lightmaps, shadowmaps, vertex blending, vertex smoothing, IBL nodes, and creating light rigs via Maya and other proprietary lighting tools to light interiors and landscapes.
    • Entity & Static lighting IGCs and pre-rendered cinematics.
    • Mentoring an intern.
    • Color correcting skyboxes to match ligh

  • Associate Artist/Lighter

    TKO Software

    October 2003 - December 2004

    Employment Type: Permanent
    Reason for Leaving: Company Closed.

    PC Title: Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault Multiplayer developed for Electronic Arts.

    Duties Included:
    • Creating detailed style guides to direct the course of art creation and design.
    • Creating L.O.D’s and collision for art assets.
    • Creating, optimizing, and revising textures and normal maps for art assets.
    • Creating, placing, and manipulating lights in multiplayer levels via Max to light and beautify game levels.
    • Organizing and executing scan-line rendering of top-down terrain shadowm

  • Story Editor

    FOX/ABC

    November 2002 - September 2003

    Employment Type: Contract

    Shows: American Idol: Season 2, Mr. Personality, Paradise Hotel, The Bachelor: Season 3

    Duties Included:
    • Assisted in creating story arc for episodes in reality television series’.
    • Liaison between producing and editing teams.
    • Leader of teams of five to ten people in logging stock footage for all episodes.
    • Operating an Avid video editing system.
    • Logging stock footage.

  • Quality Assurance Engineer/Customer Support Representative

    Activision

    February 2002 - November 2002

    Employment Type: Contract

    PC Titles: Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, Spiderman, Medieval: Total War, Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix, Star Trek: Star Fleet Command III

    Duties Included:
    • Single Player Lead for Return to Castle Wolfenstein (GOTY).
    • Creating and executing test plans.
    • Accurately describing game discrepancies and defects.
    • Play-testing software.
    • Determining hardware/software compatibility & master CD verification.
    • Aiding customers technical support needs in a friendly and professional manner via tele

Education
  • Framingham State College

    1997 - 2001
  • Algonquin Regional High School

    ? - ?