Jon Jones

Current

3D Art Producer at Conceptopolis, LLC

Past

Art Outsourcing Manager at 2K Games Austin
Art Production Manager at NCsoft Austin
Foreground Artist at Ready At Dawn Studios

Contract Artist at Commgraphics
Account Manager and Marketing Manager at Liquid Development
2D / 3D Artist at Liquid Development
Character Artist at 4D Rulers Inc.
Artist at Three Romans

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Jon Jones’s Summary

Jon Jones has been developing games professionally for eight years and has been involved in the video game art community for thirteen years. Jon is recognized by many as an expert on the subject of outsourcing art. He specializes as an Art Outsourcing Manager. Most recently he held that role at 2K Games Austin, an incubator studio developing a prototype for a strategy MMO. Prior to that he built and ran an entirely outsourced art team at NCsoft Austin on Dungeon Runners, a critically-acclaimed free to play MMORPG from the world’s largest MMOG publisher.

Jon is also socially active within the games industry and the video game art community. Recently, he spoke at the Casual Games Association's Casual Connect Seattle conference on the subject of managing an outsourced art team, and he has a six-page feature article on outsourcing in a new game development magazine coming out in late 2009. For his work with artists, he’s spoken at the Savannah College of Art and Design on the subject of building a great portfolio, and is a panelist in an upcoming SIGGRAPH Professional Portfolio Review in Austin. He’s also forged relationships with faculty at SCAD and the Gemini School of Visual Arts in Austin to get the inside track on the latest and greatest graduates they have as potential job candidates.

Finally, he runs a blog titled "Jon Jones, smArtist" (www.thejonjones.com) where he's detailed his experiences in the management, production and dealing with artists as well as best practices, tools, and styles of thought that have helped to learn and develop his skills and further the education of other art managers.

Jon Jones’s Specialties:

Have run every aspect of a completely outsourced art team. Can start an art team from scratch with minimal support, or step into the middle of development and adapt quickly, find ways to improve the process and keep the art rolling in on time. Also 3DSMAX, Maya, Lightwave 3D, ZBrush, Mudbox, Character Studio, Photoshop, Deep UV, Deep Paint, Perforce, SourceSafe, HanSoft, Confluence, Microsoft Excel, most standard forms of wiki software and some experience with Microsoft Project.

Jon Jones’s Experience

3D Art Producer

Conceptopolis, LLC

(Computer Games industry)

October 2009 — Present (2 months)

I manage a team of highly skilled artists providing the following 3D art services to the game industry: Character modeling, texturing and rigging, including normal, specular, bump and diffuse maps. Also, 3D Environment modeling, including buildings, weapons, props and terrain.

Email me! jon at conceptopolis dot com
Art Outsourcing Manager

2K Games Austin

(Public Company; TTWO; Computer Games industry)

September 2008 — October 2009 (1 year 2 months)

• Worked on a very small incubator team that was developing a pre-production prototype for an MMO strategy title.

• I joined the team to develop a robust art outsourcing pipeline from the ground up to prepare to outsource up to 80% of the game’s total art assets, to find and test outsourcing vendors, selected an art studio to develop a great deal of concept art (everything from avatar characters to ground units to different cultures’ architecture to large, splashy marketing pieces), to work with the art director to develop a unique art style, cast a dragnet across various art schools and online forums to find and hire an art intern which I then brought aboard and helped manage, and also created art myself where needed.

• In addition to the management and direction aspects of my role, over the course of the project I also designed a fully functional and robust morph target \ wire parameter-driven fully customizable player avatar creation system based in 3DSMAX, developed the overall design of the city layouts throughout the various ages of history, designed a fully modular and customizable system of player throne rooms they can outfit with items they win or buy in the game, modeled, textured, rigged and facial-rigged characters, and created a series of low polygon highly optimized building models with a small set of textures that can be reused across that nation’s entire series of buildings appropriate to that age.
Art Production Manager

NCsoft Austin

(Public Company; 201-500 employees; Computer Games industry)

June 2006 — August 2008 (2 years 3 months)

• I'm working on Dungeon Runners, a casual free-to-download massively multiplayer online role playing game with an optional monthly subscription fee for access to premium content. Dungeon Runners has scored 89% in PC Gamer, 8/10 in Games for Windows and consistently ranks highly among the web’s top free games.

• I run an art team composed of external artists, ranging from 15 to 30 at a time, depending on the scale of outsourced production needs for each content build cycle.

• My responsibilities encompass everything related to art production, including the following: art direction (jointly with lead designer), hiring and managing external artists, negotiation, putting together contracts, budgeting, scheduling, documentation, and ingame implementation.

• I currently outsource the production of the following: Concept art, modeling, texturing, rigging, animation, particle effects, world building, engine integration, documentation, organizational documents and video tutorials.
Foreground Artist

Ready At Dawn Studios

(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Computer Games industry)

October 2004 — June 2006 (1 year 9 months)

• I worked on Daxter PSP, a critically acclaimed multi-million selling action platformer starring Daxter, the eponymous wise-cracking loudmouth comprising half of Sony’s premier platformer duo, Jak and Daxter.

• I modeled, UVed, textured, rigged, optimized, repurposed and posed several ingame and cinematic character models in Maya and Photoshop.

• I concepted, modeled, UVed, textured, rigged, animated and implemented over 400 animated props, including vehicles, weapons, moving platforms, animated doors, environmental hazards, spinning death traps, and weapons of mass destruction.

• I concepted, modeled, UVed, rigged, animated, created visibility for and assembled a gameplay-intensive portion of a hotel level and also the entire final boss level.
Contract Artist

Commgraphics

(Computer Games industry)

June 2004 — March 2005 (10 months)

• Worked on NanoLegends, a platforming educational game about cellular biology and cancer awareness targeting junior high school children.

• Modeled, UVed, and rigged kid-friendly characters and big goofy monsters in Maya.

• Helped scout, interview, negotiate with, train and manage new talent to replace him when he was hired at Ready At Dawn Studios.
Account Manager and Marketing Manager

Liquid Development

(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Computer Games industry)

March 2004 — October 2004 (8 months)

I divide my time between prospecting new business, managing client accounts, building deal proposals, developing marketing campaigns and managing Liquid Development's public profile.
2D / 3D Artist

Liquid Development

(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Computer Games industry)

May 2003 — October 2004 (1 year 6 months)

• Worked as a contract artist on over a dozen titles, including East Coast Games' Spoils of War, WildTangent's NCAA Coca-Cola Madness, Origin's Ultima X Odyssey, Irrational's SWAT 4, Microsoft's Mythica, ResponDesign's Yourself! Fitness and Maxis' The Sims 2.

• Modeled, optimized, repurposed, UVed, textured, and rigged all manner of characters, vehicles and weapons in 3D Studio MAX, Maya and Photoshop.

• Built an ingame user interface in Photoshop for Yourself! Fitness.
Character Artist

4D Rulers Inc.

(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Computer Games industry)

April 2001 — November 2003 (2 years 8 months)

• Worked on Gore: The Ultimate Soldier and Secret Service: Security Breach.

• Conceived and modeled characters and objects in Lightwave and 3D Studio MAX.
Artist

Three Romans

(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Computer Games industry)

September 2002 — December 2002 (4 months)

Created vehicle models for Ultimate Demolition Derby.