My name is Shayleen and I’m a senior 3D Character artist in the UK with 11+ years specialising in creating stylised characters, animals and props, as well as Art Directing for Twin Swans’ newest project. I have extensive experience collaborating with neighbouring disciplines in a team for production in Unity and Unreal on mobile AA and AAA.
Some of my notable projects include:
- SUPERVIVE
- Lynked: Banner of the Spark
- Battle Shapers
- Wylde Flowers
- Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart
- Borderlands 3
- Heroes of the Storm
Having worked in a range of aesthetics and genres with substantial experience in high to low modelling and optimisation pipelines for games; I have an in-depth knowledge of working with both PBR texturing pipelines and hand painted textures whilst being able to develop efficient pipelines to better streamline the workflow for flexibility and adaptability.
My strengths lie in effective communication and strong comprehension of the fundamentals and intricacies of art theory and stylisation, as well as a drive to collaborate with my clients and mentees in creating a product they can be proud of. Working on both bespoke hero designs and customisable character assets. I have a solid understanding of the needs of neighbouring disciplines in animation, engineering and production for testing and implementing the character models in-engine. I have also aided in developing and documenting pipelines for customisable character creators.
You can find more about my work and experience here:
https://shayleenhulbert.artstation.com/
https://shayleenhulbert.artstation.com/resume
If you are interested in working together, please don’t hesitate to email me at sh.designs@hotmail.co.uk
I’d love to hear from you!
Some brief testimonials from previous clients:
"She often brought creative suggestions to push the designs further and she always communicated clearly when something might cause issues down the line. That kind of awareness and professionalism is something we found really valuable."
“Her clear direction and well-crafted art bible ensured consistency and aligned perfectly with my artistic vision. Thanks to her expertise, the game's look improved significantly. I highly recommend Shayleen to anyone seeking skilled and strategic leadership for their art team.”
"She played a key role in developing the workflow of our characters bringing real value to the project, taking concepts and pushing them further, working diligently with tech animation, contributing many ideas and insights to the team. Would always be happy to have her working as part of my studio."
"Not only is she an exceptionally talented character artist, she brings an unparalleled level of quality and attention to detail that is such a rarity. An absolute delight to work & collaborate with."
"Shayleen is an exceptional character artist who consistently delivers outstanding work. She quickly adapted to our style and provided valuable creative additions, consistently exceeding expectations and delivering results that went beyond the concept."
"She has a great understanding of the technical side of building in-game models as well as when and how best to push stylization or realism, and her work was always high quality."
3D character art development for an unreleased project. Unable to give details at this time.
Worked with creative leadership to develop and define the high to low character pipeline for a stylised realism title in VR and mixed reality platforms. Using Maya, Zbrush, Substance Painter and Unity to deliver highly optimised real-time characters.
- Set and maintained a visual standard for a 3 person team across all 3D Character models, providing artistic and technical feedback on all character models
- Performed technical reviews of workflows and techniques across the character team
- Co-developed a robust character review checklist system with creative leadership, production and adjacent disciplines, streamlining the review process. Identifying opportunities to improve both quality and productivity
- Supported Art Direction to flesh out, define and enhance costume and facial designs for NPC characters
- Delivered characters within a strict VR hardware limitations, working with creative leadership on creative and technical solutions
- Mentored fellow artists in efficient and clean technical workflows, strengthening the character art pipeline
Project: Supervive
Collaborating closely with the outsourcing leads at Soulforge Studios to model skins, chromas, playable characters and props for Theorycraft Games’ newest release Supervive in Unreal Engine.
- Built detailed box modelled blockouts that were animation ready for early implementation and tests
- Sculpted hair, cloth and anatomy in ZBrush, and modelled hard surface armour and weapons in Maya for 16 skins and chromas
- Utilized using a comprehensive high-to-low PBR pipeline for Unreal Engine
- Implemented assets in Unreal engine using in house tools
- Liaised other outsource studios on the project to collaborate and align on animation pipelines
- Provided daily structured updates to the client on behalf of Soulforge Studios
Directed the art for Hunters Moon, a stop-motion inspired demo, leading an art team of four (an animator, two 3D artists, and a concept artist). to raise the demo's visual quality and cohesion. It was also my responsibility to build structure and support for the art team's next stage of development.
Please see the announcement post here for details: https://tinyurl.com/3drsxkzw
- Created, presented and maintained the project Art Bible. Setting the visual direction for the team
- Defined technical and visual guidelines that artists used as working references
- Planned the art schedule and resources with production and studio leadership
- Identified potential problems in the art pipeline to increase efficiency at a sustainable pace
- Gave regular feedback through concept breakdowns, paintovers and presentations to the art and production teams to hit agreed visual benchmarks
- Worked with design and leadership to plan and meet publisher milestones for the demo
Project: Lynked, Banner of the Spark
Working alongside the Art and Direction teams to maintain visual consistency across all models while building a highly flexible, time efficient pipeline for producing player skins upon release.
- Organically sculpted hair and cloth in Zbrush
- Modelled hard surface armor. props and bespoke mecha characters in Maya
- Built highly customisable cosmetics, hair, costume and props using tint masks, delivering 70+ skins and cosmetic variants
- Utilised a comprehensive high-to-low PBR pipeline for Unreal Engine
Project: Stampede: Racing Royale
Worked with art direction, concept art and technical animation teams on early style exploration which lead to the development of a customisable character creator that facilitated different heads and body shapes to wear a large range of collectable items.
- Created rapid character explorations in a range of styles with the art direction and concept art teams, helping to pin down the game’s art style in early development
- Alongside the technical animation team, assisted in developing the character costume creator, supporting multiple head and body types that could wear interchangeable items and colours
- Built diverse cosmetic variations of bodies, costume and props using tint masks in Unity
- Created adaptable, optimised characters with multiple levels of LODs to support extensive customisation in a 60 player game
Project: Wylde Flowers
- Modelled and textured handpainted farmyard animals and mecha for a unlit environment in Unity
- Used simplified highpoly sculpts in Zbrush to first create a black and white base for textures before adding hand painted details
- Used gradient maps in photoshop to create fast, efficient colour variations for each model
Project: Unannounced title, unable to give more details
- Sole character artist for the main cast in early visual exploration
- Defined early technical workflows for the main cast of characters
- Produced hard surface character props in Maya
- Implemented and tested character models in Unreal Engine
Project: Battle Shapers
Modelled and textured bespoke hard surface characters for Battle Shapers. Including the main character ‘Ada’, various in world enemies with environment-specific variations, level bosses and functional props.
- Created bespoke hard surface characters
- Built hard surface characters with complex animation requirements, e.g. The Volt Colossus and Ada’s Arm
- Made the grunt base enemy, that had 4 customisable variations and 4 weapons types that would adapt functionally to different environments
Volunteered as part of the core team for London's game industry community, Games Events London.
- Coordinated with other volunteers to create events focused on promoting diversity and inclusivity in the games industry
- Canvased for and communicated with prospective event speakers, reviewing presentations and planning their schedules
- Delegated tasks to event teams, overseeing ticket registration and general hospitality
- Provided ongoing support throughout the event to speakers and patrons to ensure a smooth experience for all involved
- Attended regular team meetings for the organisation, collaborating with other members to define future goals and events
Project: Ratchet & Clank, Rift Apart
- Full high to low hard surface modelling pipeline in Maya for lead hero character, Dr Nefarious
- Game res mesh built to be a complete quaded mesh for dynamic LODs in game
- Specular texturing pipeline in Substance Painter
Project: Angry Birds Legends - Cancelled
- Modelled and textured hand-painted 3D characters using Zbrush, Maya and Photoshop
- Used baked AO and object normals to create a black and white base texture
- Gradient maps and custom RGB channel maps were developed for dynamic character tinting and colour variations
- Models were developed to function with modular mesh swaps for character upgrades
I was commissioned to write and edit a 5 page spread workflow tutorial for issue 126 of 3DArtist, breaking down in detail my process for developing a stylised character using Sakura as an example. See the project used here: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/PmaOE1
It is still available to purchase online in a PDF format!
Project: Google Assistant Ride - showcased at CES 2019
www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvB-0DQB2YY
- Modelling and texturing the environment and props seen the traffic scene (shown at 1:04)
- Modelling and texturing the environment and props for the storm scene (shown at 1:21)
- Supported in any texturing and modelling across additional scenes
The ride was pre-vised in Unity to be used as visual direction for executive and construction teams before being showcased at CES
As the sole Character Artist, I was responsible for developing the style for the main cast, defining the character art pipeline and building game ready assets for Unity.
- Designed and created the main cast, side characters and crowd characters from character bios and design briefs provided by the direction team
- Collaborated with the design team to develop character concepts, using reference photography to represent a diverse cast
- Developed the character art style and pipeline for fast, efficient creation of expressive, game-ready characters for Unity
- Built bespoke and recyclable character models to fit a shared rig, facial blendshapes and animations, enabling rapid NPC and crowd generation in Maya
Project: Spyro Reignited Trilogy
- Built using a full high to low pipeline in Zbrush, Maya and textured in Substance Painter
Development of cosmetics for Heroes of the Storm
- Sculpted the highpoly in Zbrush and built the game resolution mesh in 3DCoat for the 2018 Lunar event
Development of cosmetics for Borderlands 3
- Developed 3 wearable hats for playable characters
- Sculpted in Zbrush, hard surface modelling in Maya and
- Texturing assets using a blend of hand-painted details in 3DCoat and PBR surfacing in Substance Painter
Project: Cancelled
Sculpted, modelled, retopologised, textured and implemented the two lead characters for Unity, one humanoid and one quadruped creature from provided concept art
Project: The Trail
- Created customisable character assets, including clothes, hair and faces
- Produced concept art for characters and props
- Designed the game logo and marketing assets for Steam, Apple and social media
- Worked with the programming team to create and implement art assets for minigame features