James Ku

Principal Character Artist

Located in Los Angeles, CA

Experience

 

Cloud Imperium Games - May 2016 to June 2023

Sr. Principal Character Artist

  • Create characters for Star Citizen & Squadron 42 game

  • Establish a high artistic quality bar for the CIG Character Team

  • R&D new tools and workflows

  • Development on proprietary Hair Card Grooming Tool and Hair Pipeline

  • Training and education for the character art team

  • Reviews and paint overs on character art

Encore VFX - July 2015 to April 2016

Senior Character Modeler - Onsite Contractor

  • Create characters for The Flash, Supergirl and Legends of Tomorrow TV shows

  • Sculpt, poly model, texture, shade, pose, and hair grooming

MPC Los Angeles - February 2015 to May 2015

Senior Character Modeler - Onsite Contractor

  • Model and sculpt four characters for a "Heroes of the Storm" commercial

  • Sculpt and texture two characters for "Raid" commercials

Blur Studio - June 2007 to January 2015

Character Modeling Supervisor - 2012 to 2015

  • Supervise and performance reviews for character team

  • Interview potential character modeling hires

  • Managing the character modeling pipeline

  • Testing new tools and techniques for production

  • Handle inter-departmental issues that arise

Lead Character Modeler - 2010 to 2015

  • Artistic reviews including giving notes and paint overs

  • Asset organization and management

  • Quality check the character models per project

  • Final character polish in the context of finished shot

  • Work with producers on scheduling

  • Build project's main characters

Senior Character Modeler - 2007 to 2010

  • Poly model, sculpt, texture, shade and render characters

  • Create facial expression morphs/shapes for rigging and animation

  • Create and style hair for characters

Whatif Productions - 2002 to 2007

Digital Artist / 3D Generalist - 2002 to 2007

  • All aspects of 3D real time content creation.
    Modeling, texturing, rigging and animation of various demo
    scenes and characters for proprietary engine.

  • Extensive quality assurance testing for various builds of the
    proprietary engine and 3ds max exporter.

Big Huge Games - Summer 2001

Art Intern - 2001(4 months)

  • Creation of low polygon assets for Rise of Nations.

  • Created various versions of the main Rise of Nation UI.

  • Created various game UI icons of game units, research and
    resource elements for Rise of Nations.

 

Education

Johns Hopkins University

B.A. in Biology