Animation Director for EA Tiburon, Action/Fight Choreographer, Almost House Broken Bipedal Human
Orlando, Florida Area
- Current
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- Animation Director - MMA - EA Tiburon - at Electronic Arts
- Past
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- Sr. Technical Animation Director at Electronic Arts
- Animation Director at Electronic Arts
- Contract Animator at Versailles Studio
- Animation & Rigging Lead at Kleiser-Walczak
- Character Animator at Giant Studios
- Animator at Advanced Presentations
- Education
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- Savannah College of Art and Design
- George Mason University
- Recommended
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9 people have recommended Simon - Connections
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173
connections
- Industry
- Animation
- Websites
Simon Sherr’s Summary
Animation Director for Electronic Arts Tiburon, heading up gameplay and technical animation for EA Sports' new MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) franchise.
At EA I was one of the primary inventors of our middleware solution called "ANT" now used as the animation engine for all EA Sports titles, and many EA Games titles currently in development.
Video Games Work Summary as Animation Director EA
-Animation Director -- EA Sports MMA
-Animation Director -- Madden 2010 - I designed a system called Pro-Tak
-Animation Director -- Madden 2009 - I redesigned the madden tackle engine, transition system, locomotion systems, and created the new ball carrier state machine
-Animation Director -- NCAA 2009
-Sr. Technical Animation Director for EA Canada / EA Sports
-Animation Director -- NBA Street Homecourt
-Animation Director -- Marvel Nemesis:Rise of the Imperfects
-Gameplay Lead -- FIFA 2005
-Cinematics Lead - FIFA 2004
Pre-Vis Character Animator + Fight Choreography
-Doug Liman - "Jumper"
-Michael Bay - "Transformers"
-Lawrence Fishburne - "The Alchemist"
Feature Effects Rigging & Animation Lead @ Kleiser-Walczak
-"X2" - Animation&Rigging Lead.
-"The One" - Rigger
Feature Effects R&D
-Kleiser Walczak - "Last Samurai" - CG Stunt R&D
-Kleiser Walczak - "X2" - CG Stunt + Morph R&D
-Giant Studios - "Blade 2" - R&D
-Giant Studios - "LOTR"- Motion Capture R&D
-Giant Studios - "Matrix 2+3" - CG stunt R&D
Rigger for the Academy Award winning short "Ryan"
Character Animation in Advertising
-Pepsi
-NIKE
-Halls
-Papa John's Pizza
-CNN
-Discovery
-Mr Clean
-University of Maryland
Character Animation and Rigging Lead in Stereoscopic Ride Films
-Corkscrew Hill - Busch Gardens
-Santa Lights Up NY - Radio City Music Hall
Animated Shorts
-"Fruits of Labor" - SIGGRAPH electronic theatre - 2001
-"Ryan" - Academy Awards - Best Animated Short - 2005
Simon Sherr’s Specialties:
Character Animator, Animation Director, Middleware Tools Designer, Lead Rigger, Creature Motion Design, Contract Fight Choreographer, Motion Capture Performer, Maya Trainer, MotionBuilder Trainer, Actor, Animation instructor, Martial Arts Instructor, Contract M&M Removal (discounts for peanut), Small Hairless Ape Handler, Toy Repair, Fixer of Various Household Appliances (usually involving some form of tape, preferably duct but will consider electrical and/or scotch).
Simon Sherr’s Experience
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Animation Director - MMA - EA Tiburon -
Electronic Arts
(Public Company; ERTS; Computer Games industry)
2007 — Present (2 years )
I am currently the Animation Director for EA Sports MMA (Mixed Martial Arts). On MMA I have designed the gameplay workflow and all gameplay feature implementation. Improving and expanding the ANT layered state machine I invented, I have worked with Henry Allen and EA Tech to supervise the development of some amazing new tools for character animation and interaction (building off of the NBA street interaction system) including usage of Autodesk HumanIK to create partial body and single player interaction alignment. We have created a gamestate variable scripting tool that allowed us to data drive all aspects of gameplay, and implement a groundbreaking level of tuning parametrization. I have never been more proud of a game I have worked on from all aspects of visual quality, gameplay feel, workflow, and fun gameplay.
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Sr. Technical Animation Director
Electronic Arts
(Public Company; ERTS; Computer Games industry)
January 2007 — September 2007 (9 months)
As Senior Technical Animation Director at EA, I was focused hands-on with pre-production for an un-announced 2011 action title. I was dividing my time between my hands on work and working with game teams around the globe as well as working with EA's Worldwide group to improve animation technology and tool sharing as well as helping to lead middleware development on a global level for EA. For EA Canada I was consulting on all sports titles, aiding in the supervision of a shared system for rapid protoyping and rapid iteration for gameplay. I was also consulting with EA Florida, EA Chicago, EA UK, and EA Sweden (DICE) on middleware tools and my rapid iterative approach to game development. I was then asked to transfer to Orlando and work hands-on with NCAA and Madden (one of the best selling games in the world).
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Animation Director
Electronic Arts
(Public Company; ERTS; Computer Games industry)
January 2003 — January 2007 (4 years 1 month)
I was the animation director for NBA Street Homecourt (X-Box360 and PS3), we put to use for the first time a new suite of middleware tools, Primarily a new state-machine and interaction system that I designed and lead the development of with colleague Sergey Klibanov of EA Chicago and Geoff Johns of EA Canada. Prior to this work at EA I was a lead on FIFA 2004, FIFA 2005, and was Animation Director for Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects.
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Contract Animator
Versailles Studio
(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Motion Pictures and Film industry)
October 2003 — January 2006 (2 years 4 months)
Pre-Visualization for Feature Films, usually focusing on visual-effects heavy action sequences, and most recently fight choreography for action sequences. Films include "the Alchemist", "Jumper", and "Transformers"
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Animation & Rigging Lead
Kleiser-Walczak
(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Motion Pictures and Film industry)
August 2000 — January 2003 (2 years 6 months)
Animation and Rigging lead for Feature Effects, Advertising, and Character-Based Stereoscopic Ride Films
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Character Animator
Giant Studios
(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Animation industry)
June 1999 — July 2000 (1 year 2 months)
Character Animator, Rigger, Motion Capture Talent, CG Human R&D for Feature Film Special Effects, Advertising, and Television.
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Animator
Advanced Presentations
(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Graphic Design industry)
September 1995 — July 1996 (11 months)
3D Animation, Web Design, HTML programming, Java Programing, Presentation Graphics, Defense Contract Visualization.
Simon Sherr’s Education
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Savannah College of Art and Design
BFA , Animation , September 1997 — June 1999
Graduated Summa Cum Laude
- Activities and Societies:
- Martial Arts Student Union
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George Mason University
Psychology 1994 — 1997
- Activities and Societies:
- Pi Kappa Phi
Additional Information
Simon Sherr’s Websites:
Simon Sherr’s Interests:
Motorcycles, Motorcycle Racing, Surfing, Snowboarding, Martial Arts (MMA and Sanshou), Car Tuning (currently my 08 Corvette 3LT Z51), Acting.
Simon Sherr’s Groups:
Pi Kappa Phi (Zeta Epsilon), Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences
Simon Sherr’s Honors:
Summa Cum Laude - Savannah College of Art and Design
Animated People - Animation Magazine 2002
Academy Award - 2005 I worked as a Rigger on the academy award winning short film "Ryan"
Simon Sherr’s Contact Settings
Interested In:
- career opportunities
- consulting offers
- new ventures
- job inquiries
- expertise requests
- reference requests
- getting back in touch
