Chris Sprance

Character Technical Director

Chris Sprance

Character Technical Director/Web Developer/SysAdmin

My name is Chris Sprance. I am an artist, programmer, maker, and man of many hats. Proficient in the next-gen game art workflow with a deep understanding of the technical and procedural content pipeline including the constraints that revolve around games and real-time content. With over 13+ years of experience working in the AAA and indie games industry I've been a part of a lot of problem solving and enjoyed every second of it!

Work

Red Storm Entertainment:

Character Technical Director - (2021 - Current)
  • Managed the Character Technical Art Team
  • Pipeline TD
  • Managed multiple outsourcing partners
  • Reviewed character art work and vanity items
Senior Technical Artist - (2021 - 2021)
Technical Artist - (2019 - 2021)
  • TCTD: Heartland
  • Created tools and assets for Snowdrop.
  • Rigging/Weighting
  • Scripts
  • Performance Optimization
  • Shaders
  • Characters
  • Outsourcing

Entrada Interactive:

Lead Technical Artist/Art Lead - (2012 - 2021)
  • Shipped Miscreated on Steam
  • Helped design and implement many of the games core systems.
  • Managed the artists to ensure all members of the team had a task and understood their role and troubleshoot any issues along the way.
    • Used JIRA and Confluence.
  • Solved pipeline problems.
  • Created many of the games are assets including: weapons, props, vehicles, vegetation, and creatures.
  • Developed tools for animators, level designers and artists to solve common production problems and streamline their workflow.
    • Tools to automate the creation of LOD meshes.
    • Automate common CRYENGINE export setup duties within different artists DCC (Maya, Modo, 3DS Max)
    • Proficient with PyMel, Mel, MaxScript, and Modos python TDSDK
  • Maintained the Steam Inventory requirements to allow players to trade and sell items on the Steam Marketplace.
  • Created a localization system and helped translate large portions of the game to many different languages.
  • Developed tools and map visualization applications to catalog and analyze the world's design and art assets to allow team members to accurately get an overview of the worlds performance and quickly identify and solve any issues.
    • Used Python to create a system to parse game files and store metadata within a sqlite3 database.
    • Used Electron and Typescript along with Leaflet.js to design map visualization tools to display metadata on a 2d representation of the game world.
  • Maintained the loot spawn system within the game.
  • Maintained and created many of the crafting recipes within the game.
  • Created the vast majority of item icons used in the UI
    • Designed a system to automate the entire process using CRYENGINE and Pythons Pillow library.
  • Maintained official community Discord and wrote bots to help automate and prevent abuse as well as special features unique to our community, to help aid in the sharing of content and ideas within the community.
  • Helped create and maintained company's social media web presence
  • SysAdmin to company's web servers.
    • Dockerized all services
  • Created company's official website
  • Designed and created game websites
  • Liason to the company's various contractors
    • Worked with I3d and it's various data centers to help roll out patches, solve server issues and resolve common production issues.
    • Worked with Easy Anti Cheat (Now Kamu) to help solve any issues in production.
    • Organized, recruited and on-boarded the games many community dev testers.
  • Helped design, create and implement the games base-building system from an art perspective.
  • Created libraries and tools to interact with the games servers using XMLRPC via RCON
    • node-misrcon - A typescript library to send RCON commands
    • misrcon-cli - A python library to send RCON commands
    • MisRCON - An Electron/React/Typescript application to manage a custom server using RCON. Widely used by the community.
    • Miscreated web base server browser - A web based version of MisRCON in addition to a server browser.
  • Created web applications to track cheat reports and incoming game telemetry requests to help catch cheaters.

Marketing Provisions:

Web Developer - (2009 - 2010)
  • Created websites for clients using Joomla
  • Worked with clients to approve design
  • Created Federal Firearm License system to streamline the process for Carolina Custom Firearms
  • Created any graphics needed for website.

Freelance Web Developer/Graphic Designer:

Web Developer - (2009 - Current)
  • Contributed to open source projects.
  • Designed custom websites and applications for a variety of clients.
  • Billboards/Magazine Ads/Marquee Sign programming

Education

HGTC - Computer Science

Technical Skills

  • Shaders (HLSL/GLSL/Node Graph)
  • Optimization
  • Tools
  • XBox/PS Console Development
  • 3D Modelling - Low Poly/Hi Poly/Mid Poly
  • Character Tech-Art
  • Baking
  • Rigging
  • Texturing
  • Skinning
  • Version Control
  • Graphic Design
  • Social Media Management
  • Javascript
  • Python
  • Typescript
  • LUA
  • React/Redux/Next.js/Express/Nuxt/Vue
  • Docker/Kubernetes/Microservices
  • DevOps/SysAdmin
  • C++

Software Proficiency

  • Modo
  • Maya
  • 3DS Max
  • Houdini/Houdini Engine
  • Photoshop
  • Illustrator
  • Substance Painter
  • Substance Designer
  • Quixel Suite
  • CRYENGINE
  • Unreal Engine
  • Snowdrop Engine
  • Unity
  • Git
  • Perforce
  • Emacs... lol just kidding