Will Christiansen

Work History

• Filmmaker/Photographer

  Will Christiansen Photography

  January 2003 - November 2027
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  Senior Animator

  343 Industries

  August 2011 - January 2026

  I am a senior animator at 343 Industries. For Halo 4 I was the character owner for the Elite and the system owner for assassinations and first-person/weapon animation (not all of the animation, rather the go-to guy for implementation questions, direction and tasking). I prototyped the functionality for the new Forerunner weapons and developed a new type of locomotion blending with an animation engineer which was initially implemented in the Elite and is now used for all characters. In addition to animation I have been an on-site portrait and event pho

  

  
• 

  Senior Animator

  Microsoft

  January 2011 - January 2026
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  Gameplay Animator

  343 Industries

  January 2011 - August 2011

  Kirkland, WA

  Brought on to work on Halo 4.

  
• 

  Animator

  Griptonite Games

  June 2010 - December 2010

  As an Animator at Griptonite Games I worked on Kung Fu Panda 2 - The Game! While animating for this project I made it a point to stay focused on quality locomotion, expressive and believable physicality and appeal!
  I also taught myself some Python and developed a few small but incredibly helpful tools to improve the efficiency of mine and other animator's workflows. These tools helped extend a certain amount of flexibility in the way the rig functioned at Griptonite as well.
• 

  Animator

  Bungie

  January 2009 - June 2010

  At Bungie I was brought on as a Character Animator at the beginning of Production on Halo: Reach (due out on September 14th).
  I was responsible for hand-keying gameplay animations, loops, performances and vignette moments. I also worked with quality mocap data to create some in-game performance animation, loops and idles.
  Aside from in-game animation I was also responsible for developing several helpful tools (written in Mel) for myself and the other animators; these tools were later included in the studio's toolset because of their usefulness. I also prototyped several systems including the super fun new vehicle death system, it's necessary content (created by me, in my free time) and it's relationship to the game's collision and ragdoll systems - this functionality ended up being a funny, realistic and exciting new addition to Halo as seen in the game's public beta.
  I also was responsible for animating many of the UI armor upgrade and post-game UI animations also seen in Reach's public beta.
• 

  Animator

  Multiverse

  March 2008 - September 2008

  Multiverse was a full on start-up atmosphere. The team's tasks were organized through the use of Scrum (I am a huge fan of Agile development methods). I was the sole animator at the company. It was my job to prototype animation, create production content, rig and to script with Mel to create tools to automate certain aspects of my workflow. I worked directly with the designers, environment artists and the art director during production of Multiverse Places.
  The art pipeline was a combination of both 3DS Max and Maya. It was often my job to smooth out bumps in the road for exporting/integrating the two software packages when it related to Animation.
• 

  Animator

  Factor 5

  August 2007 - January 2008

  Shipped: Lair (Downloadable Content)
  Brought characters and creatures to life for fun and engaging high quality, high end, video game titles including Lair's Downloadable Content, and other exciting un-announced games.

  

• Web Designer and Technical Support Specialist

  GoGorilla LLC

  October 2006 - July 2007

  I designed mini-web-sites, graphics for print and created advertising mock-ups for clients like, Capcom, Papa John's Pizza, Adobe and EA (to name a few). In addition to web design, video editing and motion graphics prototyping I also served as GoGorilla's internal Technical Support Specialist. I supported both PC and Mac computers.

• Webmaster and Technical Support

  Cirexx International

  July 2005 - January 2006

  As Webmaster I was in charge of the company's website and other online web/graphics related projects. I trained other web/graphic designer.
  I also provided technical support to employees on a regular basis and managed Cirexx's Google keyword content so that the company consistently appeared in the top results for searches related to PCB Manufacturing and Materials.

• Owner/Sole Proprietor

  Floating Point Graphics

  January 1998 - December 2003

  Mount Shasta, CA

  I started my own business at age twelve, fed up with lemonade stands and possessing a large amount of computer knowledge at an early age I decided I better make web sites, design letterhead and teach people how to use their computers and get paid for it. It turned out to be much more lucrative.

• Web Designer & Technical Support Specialist

  Snowcrest Inc.

  March 2000 - August 2003

  I was a web designer and technical support specialist during high school. While at Snowcrest I helped customers over the phone solve internet connection problems for both PC and Mac. Additionally I provided web design services for customers with web space. I followed strict HTML and CSS standards while writing code by hand.

• Camp Counselor

  College of the Siskyous Computer Camp

  June 2000 - August 2000

  Weed, CA

  As a computer camp counselor it was my primary goal in life to get as many kids playing Quake III with me as possible instead of sitting in blisteringly hot college-campus classrooms learning how to type faster or how to wrangle text and images in Microsoft Word and PowerPoint.