ISAAC SOLOMON
Technical Artist/3D Artist/3D Animator

Thank you for taking the time to go over some of the projects I worked on, throughout my career!

I’ve been in the gaming industry for 15 years. Throughout my journey, I’ve had the opportunity to work in several disciplines. Of all the many disciplines I’ve been involved in, tech art, rigging and animation has been one of the most rewarding ones of all. Being able to breathe life to an inanimate object is simply rewarding and a magical experience. My experience goes from social gaming to more traditional ones as well.
 

One of the greatest projects I was part of was the creation of the new R15 Roblox rig. I had the privilege to work with a great team of engineers, as well as working closely with the CEO, to see this vision come to life. This time in my career, I was introduced to both animation and technical art.

Here’s a sizzle reel, revealing this new feature. This allowed creators to make themed animated packages, which wasn’t possible before, in its traditional legacy rig, known as R6.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XieIKfSml4o
 

We started with a basic need and vision. We wanted the Roblox avatars to have individuality, with not only skins, but with body language. During this process, we decided that 15 rotational joints would be the best option and would future proof the rig. This rig gave us the flexibility to animate, as well as motion capture data to it.
 

Each joint was placed very specifically, as this rig needed to not only fit the traditional blocky/boxy type avatars. It also needed to fit anthropomorphic meshes. While a challenge, we managed to successfully achieve this goal.
 

Once we finalized the rig, we needed to retrofit the old meshes into this new rig. The mesh manipulation took some manual labor in the process, including reworking the limbs in parts, to make them fit to the new R15 rig. Re-baking the textures, from the legacy mesh, to the new one was automated, via xNormal.
 

Once that process of converting the legacy meshes, over to individual parts, we needed to rig these new mesh parts. We had a deadline for the new rig and animations. Seeing that the holiday season was around, we had less than two weeks, and hundreds of meshes that needed to be re-rigged.
 

This was the time in which I got my hands dirty, and it was simply a very rewarding time in my career. I was able to make magic happen. I wrote an automation tool in MEL script, as well as one in Python, for those that were using 3DSMAX. This tool was one I was very proud of. At the press of a button, the tool would import each .MA file, unparent the mesh from the old rig, and parent the mesh to the new rig, export it out, rename it, and save it as both a .MA and .FBX file. A process which would have taken us a month, we were able to knock it out in a week. That was the moment where I started to dabble more into tech art. I’ve always loved and enjoyed the process of seeing the animation pipeline come through, from rigging, scripting, and animation.
 

As my journey continued, the next chapter landed me at Age of Learning Inc. Being there was an evolutionary adaptation, as the company was transitioning over from Adobe Flash/Animate, to Unity. Because many of the games at AofL were 2D, faith in transitioning over to 3D didn’t have the same confidence as they had, with their traditional pipeline. My team and I had to sell our new pipeline to the stakeholders.

The main objectives however were to transition over to 3D software and incorporate these animations and assets over to Unity as well. We were faced with a challenge of creating art that was seemingly 2D but were all 100% 3D in rigging and animation.

I faced myself with another challenge, but a rewarding one. All our rigs were created in Maya, as a template. The artist could swap out the texture, from the mesh, with new ones, and could continue to use the rig. I made the rig capable of being quite flexible with off-sets, sliders and helpers.
 

Here you can find the rigs and animations I’ve created for Age of Learning Inc. This game is called Fraction’s Café. Here you can find the rigs, animation and gameplay:
 

https://www.isaacsolomon.com/fractions-cafe
 

Here, you can find the rigs for Fraction’s Café, showing a breakdown of each:
https://www.isaacsolomon.com/aofl-rigs
 

The sequel is quite a step forward, as the quality improved, as I upgraded the rig, to accommodate other parts of an animal, such as tails. (Fraction’s Café 2)

https://www.isaacsolomon.com/fractions-cafe2
 

Once the vote of confidence was a success, for our 3D pipeline, the stakeholders gave the greenlight to do a 100% visually made 3D game, called Dimension Dungeon. There, I created the models, textures, rigs and animations for it.

Here, you can find the rigs, animation and gameplay:

https://www.isaacsolomon.com/dimension-dungeon 
 

Going forward, I oversaw rigging and animation, during my tenure at Age of Learning Inc. AofL partnered with Tencent, where we were creating an educational game for the Chinese market. Here you can find my rigs and animation; all of which were done in Maya, using a similar format, as the previous game. This was also a template/swappable rig, which I used to create rigs for different animals.
 

My time there led me to be on a broader project, as a Senior Animator, for Adventure Academy, where I created animal animations.
 

As my journey continued, I saw myself with the opportunity to work for an animation studio, called Counterpunch Studios. Being there allowed me to really grow in my Technical Art. I was faced with positive challenges that really made me think outside the box.
 

Counterpunch, being a game animation studio, we used Maya extensively. Because of this, we also needed to concatenate shots from Maya. The concatenation tool would separate, and stitch videos. These quick time videos were used as data, for Shotgrid, to which our clients would use to quality check and import into unreal engine.
 

At Counterpunch, I was in various disciplines. I animated facial shots for Mortal Kombat 1 (PS5/XBOX/Switch), as well as created automation tools that would concatenate videos for Marvel’s Midnight Suns (PS5/XBOX/Switch).

I also had the opportunity to also write a script that would divide in-game character lines, which would then be used as mo-cap “lip” data.

My journey led me to Supersocial, where I was the Lead Artist, creating both the asset and animation pipelines, on an undisclosed title. Having my past experiences, has given me the opportunity to be a versatile individual. I enjoy working with a great team, as this is the success of projects, no matter how big or small they are. Victories are made by a great team of individuals, as we all have our own unique talents, that when combined, amazing things happen.
 

More importantly, in the past, I’ve assisted in out-sourcing assets and animations for Roblox, Zynga, and Age of Learning Inc.
 

When I'm not creating games, I'm still gaming, by creating games on the side..

 

I'm also a retro video gamer enthusiast. Feel free to contact me in regards to anything!