Tamara Johnston Email & Phone Number

Suwanee, Ga, Us

Duluth, Georgia, Us

Key stakeholder in nearly doubling game performance in field while exceeding customer expectations and producing high quality Class 2 slot products at a regular cadence over a period of 1.5 years• Directly manage game development studio• Spearhead game design and process discussions, develop product roadmaps and game schedules, maintain cross-company collaboration and studio morale• Product representative at gaming shows, hosting game demos and online interviews with publishers and slot influencers • Conduct yearly and mid-year performance reviews of game studio leads, along with daily mentoring• Interview job candidates in all departments across company • Define priorities for Systems engineers across company-wide projects • Document and maintain studio processes, game schedules and budgets using Smartsheet, Confluence, Jira, and Slack• Continual on-site and online market research

Duluth, Georgia, Us

• Drive production of 16 class 2 casino games per year with a team of 20 artists, animators, technical artists, audio designers, engineers, quality analysts and team leads • Create complex Jira templates and dynamic Smartsheet postmortem templates • Conduct game planning meetings, kickoffs, standups, sprint planning, game playthroughs and postmortems • Identify, document and assign out bugs and tasks using Excel and Jira• Develop game schedules from start to finish using Smartsheet• Facilitate needs of each discipline; mitigate blockers; identify and address gaps in process • Present monthly milestone updates for key stakeholders • Document meetings, processes and standards on Confluence• Train interns on game development

North Ryde, Nsw, Au

Co-developed and implemented a production process which increased team efficiency from 16 mobile slot games per year to 50. Successfully transferred process to main creative division, increasing overall company efficiency to 180 games per year.• Hired, trained and directed Art Production Leads while overseeing company-wide creative production processes• Harmonized communications between internal and external development teams• Delineated all nuances of game choreography to artists, engineers and quality analysts using PowerPoint and Confluence• Mentored artists, animators, and technical artists in USA and India as team increased from 2 heads to 20, and production increased from 4 apps to 7• Upheld artist and animator schedules in Excel from concept phase to game delivery, providing frequent quality checks and feedback via Confluence and Jira• Constructed wireframes, storyboards and asset lists for all mobile games using PowerPoint, Excel, Jira, Confluence and Perforce• Provided daily artistic and technical direction on art assets and animations• Conducted art and animation reviews with senior management• Established and upheld Perforce user etiquette• Ensured legal requirements were met for each game• Documented all art processes using Confluence

North Ryde, Nsw, Au

• Upheld artist and animator schedules in Excel from concept phase to game delivery, providing frequent quality checks and feedback via Confluence and Jira• Trained new artists and animators on various game production processes across 5 apps• Laid out wireframes, storyboards, asset lists and game choreography for all mobile games using PowerPoint, Excel, Jira, Confluence and Perforce• Defined and communicated all nuances of game choreography to artists, engineers and QAs using PowerPoint and Confluence• Provided daily artistic and technical direction on art assets and animations• Led art and animation reviews with senior management• Defined and upheld Perforce user etiquette• Facilitated communications between internal and external development teams (Gimmie Games, Product Madness, Big Fish, New Media Games)• Ensured legal requirements were met for each game• Documented all art and animation processes using Confluence

Decatur, Georgia, Us

Commanded mobile division of 15 engineers, technical artists, artists and quaity analysts in USA and India, developing the first 16 from-scratch games for the Cashman Casino mobile slot app.• Liaison between stakeholders, art, animation, audio, technical art, quality assurance, math and engineering teams• Go-to resource for art and animation direction from creative and technical standpoints, with a focus on improving workflow quality and efficiency • Conducted and documented bi-weekly meetings on mobile development tasks, schedules and issues • Hosted and chronicled game reviews and game planning meetings; informed USA and India teams of all resulting change requests and bug reports • Administered tasks and timelines for all games using MS Office, JIRA, Perforce • Cleaned, packaged and delivered artwork and audio to offshore teams • Led quality control on all Mobile/Facebook products

Decatur, Georgia, Us

• Hired and/or mentored 2 in-house and 7 remote Technical Artists on proprietary company processes/procedures• Disseminated updates to company processes and technology to Mobile and Land-based Technical Art teams• Worked closely with artists to maintain quality and organization in file deliveries• Harmonizer between Tech Artists, Engineers, Artists, Quality Analysts, Audio and upper management• Provided start to finish Technical Art on land-based games using After Effects, Photoshop and Tortoise SVN

Decatur, Georgia, Us

• Lead Technical Artist for Emerald Empire Slots app, which appeared in iOS App Store• Trained two Technical Artists in India on conversion process• Led meetings between Atlanta, Vegas, Austin and India to coordinate processes• Created schedules for development team in India, working closely with them to meet deadlines• Converted most slots games from land-based to iOS using After Effects and Photoshop• Reduced game size from 2-3 GB (land-based) to 5-15 MB (iOS)• Repainted artwork in Photoshop to make it more optimal for Mobile purposes• Used glow effects and timeline animation in After Effects to optimize animated graphics

Decatur, Georgia, Us

• Sole Technical Artist on Jackpot Dreams Casino Facebook app and Long Teng Hu Xiao land-based slot game.• Provide technical art on 30+ land-based, Facebook and Mobile casino games.• Work closely with artists, engineers, project managers and QAs to deliver stunning and stable games to casinos.• Gather still artwork, animations and fonts into various After Effects scenes, organized and tagged in a way to work with coding language.• Perform self-QA on all games to ensure quality deliveries.

• Rockin' Finance - Illustrated children's book covers and pages; Created game characters and environments• Clutter 3 - Painted scenes and game assets, PuzzlesByJoe logo• Ivey Poker - Modeled and textured dozens of high-poly heads and hairstyles representing various professional poker players, including Phil Ivey.• Gateway Gaming - Created 3D and 2D artwork for various slot machine games, including Crystal Rewards, Dueling Devils, and Dirty Devil. Artwork includes environments, characters, graphic design, UI design, animation, lighting, rendering, compositing, special effects, video editing, and motion graphics.• Thex Interactive - Created vector and raster graphics for various Android applications, including Brewster and Amplified Unlimited.• Graphic Design - Performed branding work on The Unveiling 1.0 and 2.0, a novel series by K.L. Collins. Reworked book cover, business card design, logo, website design, and illustrated two graffiti images for use within the books.

• Define artistic style of 2D and 3D character content for Ubisoft, Mattel and Visimonde• Develop character creation workflow process for both in-house artists and external clients• Train new artists on workflow processes• Integrate character and environment assets into EUP Tool Suite• Author tool integration, rigging and clothing creation tutorials for external clients• Manage spreadsheets for all character assets• Model and textured bodies, hairstyles, faces, clothing, and accessories for most avatars and all NPCs for “Imagine Town,” “Innerstar University,” and “Rinksters” web-base virtual worlds

• Manage, schedule and mentor a team of 4 artists for World of Kaneva• Acting project manager, producer, art director and artist• Create detailed “tear sheets” with images and descriptions for artists to reference• Ensure all assets have gone through quality assurance before go-live

• Engine Lead, importing all character assets into Kaneva Game Engine• Develop clean-up and LOD workflow processes for outsourced 3D art assets• Develop and oversee UV process for User Generated Content• Create outfits, stuffed animals, plants, holiday items and trophies for World of Kaneva

• Sole character technical artist for the Aura 3D Engine Application and the Kaneva Engine• Ran final QA check on all characters, weapons, armor, and other items for “Phylon” and “The Chronicle” before importing them into Aura 3D Game Engine• Efficiently mastered complex proprietary software while multitasking many other duties• Writer of several quests for “Phylon”, and spell/grammar checker on all remaining quests• Lead character rigger• Modeled, unwrapped, textured, rigged, animated, and/or LOD'd many bipedal, quadrupedal, and polypedal characters, as well as buildings, terrains, ships, and props

• Rig and animate human and non-human characters, including bipeds, quadrupeds and vehicles for racing games for Scientific Games• Provide concept and 3D artwork for puzzle games