Game Dev/about Drew Medina
Drew Medina - Artist & Game Developer
1/24 - Released the free "Octopetz" Android stereo 3D app!
Professional AAA Game Credits
current position: Sr. Lighting Artist - Crystal Dynamics
"working on the future of Tomb Raider" Crystal Dynamics
"Marvel's Avengers" (Sr. Lighting) Crystal Dynamics
"Grand Theft Auto 5" (Sr. Enviro/Lighting) Rockstar
"MaxPayne 3"(studio art dir./Env.& lighting) - Rockstar
"RedDead Redemption 2"(Enviro/lighting) - Rockstar
"RedDead Redemption" (Sr. Environment art) - Rockstar
"Bully Scholarship Ed."(art dir./Env art/tech) - Rockstar
"Turok" (lead Environment & art) - Maddoc Studios
"Tomb Raider Legend"(LeadEnviro) - Crystal Dynamics
"The Matrix: Path of Neo"(Sr. Enviro art) - Shiny Ent.
"Enter The Matrix" (Environment art)- Shiny Ent.
"Need for speed Underground" (Enviro art) - EA Games
"Test Drive Offroad: Wide Open" (Enviro art) - EA games
"Smugglers Run" (Environment art) - Angel Studios
"Road Rash 64" (Enviro art) - PCPL / THQ
"JetMoto 3" (Art Dir.,design & Enviro) - PCPL / THQ
"Gauntlet Legends Arcade" (Enviro art) - Atari Games
"RollerForceVR" (Indie - Creator/AD) - Indie/Oculus
"iOmoonVR" (Indie - Creator/AD) - Indie/Oculus
Game Development Studios
Crystal Dynamics (current and awesome!!!)
Rockstar Games
Headtrip Games
MadDoc Studios
Shiny Entertainment
Electronic Arts / EA Games
Angel Studios
THQ / locomotive games
Pacific Coast Power & Light
Atari Games (original CoinOp - Milpitas CA)
Sculpture Skills:
- Polymer clay: hand sculpting
- Silicone molding of casts, 3D prints
- Casting: resin, plastics, rotocasting, coldcast metals, soft rubber, chocolate
- 3D printing: PLA & Resin
Background:
Puerto Rican American born in New York City, raised in New Jersey. I really loved the jersey suburbs and also spent a good amount of my childhood weekends in NYC/Rockaway Beach projects with family. I believe this cross culture mix gave me some unique experiences and perspectives that hopefully lives somewhere in my art.
- B.F.A. Film & Animation 1996 - The University Of The Arts, Philadelphia PA
- Game Developer since 1998 - started at the original Atari Games, Milpitas CA. Hired based on early web VRML creations.
- Positions Held: 3D Artist, Creative Director, Environment Artist, Lead Artist, Project Art Director, Studio Art Director, Lighting Artist, Senior Artist, CEO Indy Studio, Outsourcing manager, Training
- Realtime Skills: Modelling, Texturing, Advanced Lighting, world creation, VFX and Dynamics, Animation, Scripting, Audio, Gameplay controls, Virtual Reality Creation, Holography, 3D audio, VR Modelling, Unreal5
- Stereoscopic skills: Stereo 3D creation, 2-D conversion using tools and deep AI, 3D cameras and rigs, Lightfield 3D, Lenticular image and physical card creation, Holographic, Virtual Reality, Spherical 360 SBS
- Fine Art Skills: cartoons, illustration, hand animation, Sculpture, life drawing, molding & casting, metal casting, electroplating, 3D printing (Resin/FDM), Darkroom photography
- Random info: 11yr. old background extra in Ghostbusters 2 and shook Harold Ramis's hand! I have an irrational love for anything stereoscopic 3-D and Dragon's Lair.
Computer Experience
IBM terminal (1981) In 3rd grade I was able to just play on a terminal, I fell in love with green characters on a black screen. I spent the time making ascii mountains by stacking layers of letters, I believe this moment sparked my love for computers.
Atari 400/600XL/800XL (1982) I convinced my parents to get me an Atari400, oh those McDonalds keys! Somehow we got an Atari600, and eventually an Atari800XL. This is my favorite computer ever, I still check it out in emulation. I taught myself basic programming at 9yrs. old by copying pages of lines of code from "Compute!" magazine. I also used an Atari artist drawing tablet to draw pixel art and animations in EA's Animation app. I even had an Okimate color printer that took hours to print a color print.
Apple II (1985) I was kicked out of computer class for making the screens and printers print endless text using basic, ended up in piano class.
Apple Macintosh classic (1990) High School Photoshop 1
Amiga (early 90s) Renders and animation using Imagine
VideoToaster video editing (early 90s) Editing for film class
MOOG synthesizer (early 90s) 808 Synth effects and audio for film.
Silicon Graphics SGI (mid 90s) Trained in Alias Wavefront but never got enough time on it, what a beast!
Apple PowerMac (late 90s) I did lots of early 3D work using Strata StudioPro & Media100 video editing, working at editing houses and community art centers.
PC's (2000s) Various PC software and tech: 3DMax, Maya, Zbrush, Unity, Blender, Resolve, Unreal4, Unreal5, Cakewalk, AE...
VR (2015-present) Oculus Rift indie Dev, helped test and dev on all kits from CV1 to Final Rift. Also Dev'd on Oculus GearVR, Google Cardboard, HTC Vive
Raspberry Pi: Emulation
Looking Glass Holography: Light field stereoscopic 3D, holographic Realtime art and video production using Unity and RGBD imagery.
3D lenticular production: Creation of custom lenticular art prints using art, AI, depth and lenticular lenses.
AI Art: Stable DiffusionXL, Stable Video Diffusion, Deforum, Stable Cascade, Runway ML, AnimateDiff w/ prompt travel, DiscoDiffusion, Jax, Deepdream, VQGAN+CLIP, Pytti, BoostingMonocularDepth, RIFE/FILM, ebsynth, DallE2