Zerply

Marque Pierre Sondergaard

World's Most Enthusiastic Texture Artist!

Senior Texture Artist / Senior Look Development / 14 yrs

Montréal, Canada

Hire Me

Visual Effects Artist

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023)

Senior Texture Artist

Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021)

Texture Artist

Playmobil: The Missing Piece (2019)

Senior Surfacing Artist

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017)

Texture Artist

Life of Bri' n Chris

Skills

Texture Painting Texturing Look Development

Software

Katana Substance Painter Mari

For the past 10+ years I have worked as a texture artist in film across studios in London, Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver.

Not only am I ever more in love with this work, after a decade of toiling in the trenches, but I have also enjoyed starting teaching and mentoring other artists. That has taken place in my workplace, where I have mentored junior artists fresh out of school up to being independent midlevel artists, as well as in colleges and universities, where I have taught texturing to beginners.

I am a texture artist's texture artist: I obsessively collect techniques, facts and bits of VFX history from texturing, asset work and CGI in general. This is what I do, this is my life's work. I'd be happy to share it with you!

Work History

Podcaster

The Naked Texture Artist podcast

June 2023 - Present

Montreal, Quebec, Canada · Hybrid

The Naked Texture Artist is a podcast where VFX/animation veterans have deep and honest conversations about their challenges and growth as working artists.

Find the podcast on iTunes, YouTube, Spotify, Android, SoundCloud, or wherever you find your podcasts.
Mentor

Think Tank Training Centre

December 2022 - Present

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada · Remote
Texture Artist

American Museum of Natural History

January 2025 - March 2025
Lead Texture Artist & Art Director

VeVe

November 2023 - May 2024

Texturing of real-time assets, mostly characters, in Substance Painter and Mari for Unity.
Lead Texture Artist

VeVe

December 2023 - May 2024
Senior Texture Artist

Alchemy 24

March 2023 - September 2023

Montreal, Quebec, Canada · Hybrid
Senior Texture Artist

Industrial Light & Magic

August 2022 - March 2023

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Instructor

The Animation Workshop, VIA University College

September 2022 - October 2022

Viborg, Middle Jutland, Denmark

Teaching a module on Mari for creature texturing. That included writing the curriculum, demonstrating techniques as well as supervising and guiding the individual work of each student.
Texture Artist

ScanlineVFX

February 2022 - August 2022

Montreal, Canada
Organic Texture Artist

Method Studios

July 2021 - February 2022

Montreal, Canada
Texture Artist

Cinesite

February 2021 - July 2021

Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Texture Artist

ScanlineVFX

July 2020 - December 2020

Montreal, Canada Area
Senior Surfacing Artist

Rocket Science VFX

April 2019 - July 2020

Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Senior Texture Artist

Digital District

May 2017 - February 2019

Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Guest Lecturer

Dawson College

April 2017 - July 2017

Montreal, Canada Area

Teaching texture painting and Mari
Texture Artist

Digital Dimension

November 2016 - March 2017

Montreal, Canada Area
Texture Artist

Atomic Fiction

September 2015 - September 2016

Montreal, Canada Area

Surfacing work for hardsurface assets done in Mari, Katana, Maya, Vray and Nuke. Lesser modelling work as well.
Texture Artist

Passion Pictures

August 2015 - August 2015

London, United Kingdom

Painting textures for characters and props for commercials for Wall's and Compare the Market.
Texture Artist & 3D Generalist

Lipsync Post

April 2015 - June 2015

London, United Kingdom

Texturing environments for Olympus (2015), 3D generalist work: modelling for DMP projections, animation of environments, layout, camera and shot lighting work. Software used: Mari, Maya, Arnold and Nuke.
lighting td

Lipsync Post

April 2015 - May 2015
Texture Artist

Nexus Productions

January 2015 - March 2015

London, United Kingdom

Creating textures for vehicles, indoor and outdoor environments in Mari for a commercial.
Texture Artist & 3D Generalist

Lipsync Post

August 2014 - January 2015

London, United Kingdom

Texturing vehicles for Kajaki (2014). Texturing organic and hardsurface environments for Olympus (2015), 3D generalist work: modelling, layout and environment, as well as helping manage subcontractor texture team. Software used: Mari, Maya, Arnold, Crazy Bump and Nuke.
Texture Artist

Mila Film

November 2013 - July 2014

Painting characters and props for ambitious animated short coming out of Disney Animation.
3D Generalist

Lipsync Post

March 2014 - April 2014

London

Modelling, texturing, lookdev and lighting.

'A Little Chaos' (2014)
'Face of an Angel' (2014)
Texture Artist

Framestore

August 2013 - October 2013

London, United Kingdom

Colouring in UV maps. Mostly photo projection work on hardsurface assets.
'Jupiter Ascending' (2014)
Texture Artist

Reliance MediaWorks

January 2012 - January 2013

London

Colouring in UV maps.
'Ender's Game' (2013)
'Dead Man Down' (2013)
'Battle of the Year' (2013)
'G.I. Joe: Retaliation' (2013)'
'The Watch' (2012)
'Rock of Ages' (2012)
European Development Account Manager

Sony Computer Entertainment Europe

November 2010 - July 2011

London, United Kingdom

Managing all aspects of the digital publishing process for developers in the Nordic region and the Benelux countries; including evangelising new and existing platforms as well as sourcing new developers for the PlayStation platforms; and speaking at conferences on behalf of SCEE and organising local PlayStation developer events in my territories. In addition to this I managed internal projects focused on bringing more MMOs and freemium games to PlayStation platforms.
3rd Party Relations Executive

Imagination Technologies

February 2008 - October 2010

Managed all aspects of our 20,000 members strong developer program; including identifying key 3rd party game developers globally and establishing and maintaining strong working relationships as well as developing partnerships, championing them across the business, working with developer technology support and identifying business opportunities with OEMs and other partners; creating collateral for learning materials and promotion (PR, video, web, articles, newsletters and social media); organising competitions and other events for the community; managing external art teams, for internal development projects; representing Imagination Technologies towards trade bodies, at tradeshows and by speaking at conferences. Under my stewardship the developer program grew from 2,800 members to 20,600.
Difficulty, Alpha & Beta Tester

Various

April 2002 - September 2007

Testing for difficulty, bugs and gameplay issues for companies such as Reflections, Ubisoft, EA, Ensemble Studios, Monolith, Sony Online Entertainment, NCSoft, Atari, Blizzard and Relic.
Localization Tester

Testronic

2007 - 2007

London, United Kingdom

Localisation testing on the games Pursuit Force: Extreme Justice (PSP & PS2), Locoroco (PSP), Lair (PS3) and others.
Team Leader

Heroes Team

April 2004 - August 2005

The Heroes is a development team consisting of the cream of games students at University of Teesside. We are currently developing our first commercial project, a game for the Raptor arcade platform. I started the outfit, and was the de facto leader, while also engaging in grunt work (texturing, level design, modelling etc.).
Texture Artist

Half Life: Nightwatch Mod Team

2004 - 2005

Making different kinds of texture art (props, characters and environments) for the Half Life 2 modification Nightwatch, as well as helping fellow artists with their texturing tasks.
Texture Artist

Stormforge Development

2003 - 2005

Making different kinds of texture art (props, characters and environments) for the Half Life 2 add-on Umbra Pax, as well as helping fellow artists with their texturing tasks. Minor modelling tasks.
Mentor

University of Teesside

June 2003 - July 2004

Mentoring college and university students to overcome personal and intellectual obstacles and acquire a sense of direction and belief in themselves and their abilities. I won the mentor of the year award 2003/2004.
Marketing Associate

Approximity GmbH

April 1999 - September 2002
Project Manager

Confex

January 1998 - February 2000

Copenhagen Area, Denmark

Responsible for development and management of a personal portfolio of business conferences. Tasks including project management, editorial research and analysis, writing of reports, correspondence, marketing and conference materials. During the execution of conferences I doubled as moderator. I worked with educating the employees of CONFEX in written communication through lectures and coaching.
Senior Investment Advisor

Copenhagen Investment Group

1995 - 1996

Headhunted to C.I.G. All aspects counselling and sales work regarding trading with financial instruments on the European stock indexes and leading bonds. Responsible for a personal portfolio of both private and corporate accounts. Coaching of other Investment Advisors.
Investment Advisor

Krogmann & Partners A/S

1994 - 1995

All aspects counselling and sales work regarding trading with financial instruments on the English stock index FTSE. Responsible for a personal portfolio of both private and corporate accounts. Best selling Investment Advisor at K&P. I personally increased company gross sales by 23% over 10 months.