I've spent over a decade directing art for some of the most recognizable franchises in gaming. My shipped credits include Halo Infinite, Rainbow Six Siege, and Rainbow Six Extraction, and my work extends into visual development at Meta alongside global brands including Google, Microsoft, Intel, Boeing, and Volkswagen.
I'm currently available for freelance engagements across the full spectrum, short contracts, long-term art direction, and pipeline consulting. Whether a studio needs someone to establish a visual direction from scratch, lead a team through production, or modernize their art pipeline with AI tooling, that's the work I do.
I also run a mentorship program, a cohort-based program developing game artists across concept, character, and environment art disciplines.
"Always Be Creating - Samwise Didier"
Currently working on an unannounced project at Meta.
North Peak Entertainment is a small indie studio located in Ottawa, Canada that strives to create new narrative experiences that bring art, design, and storytelling into a unique package.
At Skybox Labs, I was an Art Director currently managing multiple IP projects and Co-Dev projects. My day-to-day consists of growing and evolving our art department and guiding artists. I also focus on cultivating relationships with future Co-Dev teams and developing our internal IPs.
While Art Director on Halo Infinite I focused on establishing co-development with 343 Industries. My duties also include focusing on department growth and ensuring all artists and designers are fulfilled and growing in their career paths while balancing their workloads and deadlines to ensure we deliver a new level of quality for the Halo universe.
Art Director - Halo Infinite
Art Director - Multiple Internal IP teams
Art Director - Co-Dev
Led a 10-person character art team on Rainbow Six Siege, delivering four live seasons plus continuous interstitial store content between them. Owned deliverable alignment with art directors and discipline leads, bi-weekly 1:1s, goal-setting, and character pipeline tooling.
- Delivered operators and cosmetic content on Siege's fixed seasonal cadence, with skin and store drops shipping continuously between season dates
- Partnered directly with SEGA on the Yakuza cross-IP collaboration, establishing concepts and first iterations of the operator skins through licensor review into production
- Delivered the first operator asset handoff to the Rainbow Six Mobile production team, establishing the source package that team optimized for mobile
- Built the operator asset package for Ubisoft Store custom operator figures, translating in-game loadouts into a physical merchandise production pipeline
- Resolved character workflow and tooling blockers inside the team rather than escalating them
As a Professor at Humber College, I teach many branches of Game Development for Art. My classes teach students how to build competitive portfolios and a professional understanding of creating games from concept to shipping a title.
- Game Production management and planning
- Art DCC workflows
- Unreal & Unity technical art
- Visual shaders and particle simulations
- Lighting and VFX
- Optimization and technical analysis
Joined during the final production push and shipped the title in January 2022. Delivered characters, gameplay assets, environment work, and brand and marketing artwork across the project and unannounced future titles.
- Delivered the Smasher, the game's flagship heavy enemy, extending the concept into final design; modelled it to contract through doorways, resolving the traversal constraint in-engine alongside tech artists and riggers
- Delivered operator-variant enemies against existing Rainbow Six character canon, and objective-based gameplay assets built from the project's shared biomass feature set
- Established the environment carapace look with the art director and the environment outsourcing team, building assets to engine integration spec
- Produced 2D concepting and brand illustration for marketing, including material for unannounced Ubisoft titles
- Mentored artists to hold visual consistency across the team and worked with art directors and managers on production improvements, the basis for moving into the Team Lead role
Sole art director on Hot Wheels Unlimited, reporting to the studio art director. Led a 7-person department across 3D, 2D, animation, cinematics, technical art, and UI/UX, supporting other studio titles alongside the primary project.
Joined as the project was awarded by Mattel; directed art through full production, launch, and post-launch content
Delivered the collection and progression metagame: vehicle collection tiers, daily challenges, garage and storefront UI, subscription content
-Shipped the track builder, the game's player-creation system, alongside environment and customization content
-Owned the Mattel licensor relationship day to day, holding brand consistency across vehicle content, toy set tie-ins, and brand themes through licensor review
-Directed technical art workflows for performance across multi-generation mobile devices on iOS and Android, and UI/UX for a young-audience player base
-Owned timelines, estimation, and budget for art delivery; ran daily cross-department coordination on bugs, reviews, implementation, and asset performance
-Staffed the department against the production and post-launch roadmap; owned training, mentorship, and career progression
Art director on two titles in concurrent production: Bendy and the Dark Revival, sequel to Bendy and the Ink Machine, and Showdown Bandit, a new original IP. Joined as the studio was standing up production teams for both and built the art department and its workflows from scratch.
- Established the art department's key workflows across all five disciplines on both titles: concept, environment and character, animation, UI/UX, and marketing
- Scaled contributing artist teams to 40 on Dark Revival and 25 on Showdown Bandit across all disciplines, staffing against two independent production plans
- Owned pre-production and production planning for both titles, reporting art production goals to studio leadership bi-weekly
- Shipped a retail merchandise line for both IPs with Walmart as primary distributor, producing 3D files for toy development and supplying license materials to external manufacturing vendors
- Directed a modular level system built to be interchangeable with level designers, and established the animation pipeline covering both in-game and cinematic output
- Established brand guidelines evolving Bendy from its previous installment, and original brand identity for Showdown Bandit
- Directed marketing output across social, retail storefronts, and digital storefronts, including Steam
Produced a significant portion of the character work directly alongside directing
As the Art Director and 3D Lead at Kindly Beast I am responsible for managing and directing the entire Art department and production of multiple titles while also developing and intergrating our 3D workflows and production standard. My responsibilites range from training and mentoring employees to ensure every artist and designer is working at their best potential and ensure the best career progression. While managing the production of multiple titles at Kindly Beast my daily responsibilites consist of communicating with all departments to address bugs, reviews, timelines, budgets and implementation of final assets, to ensure the vision and quality of the game is fullfilled.
Creative technology studio delivering interactive experiences, VR, virtual exhibits, and large-format multi-touch installations for enterprise clients. Joined as a 3D generalist and moved into Art Lead, establishing production workflows across the studio's major partner accounts.
- Delivered interactive experiences for global brands including Microsoft, Google, Amazon AWS, Intel, Boeing, Honda, and Volkswagen, working from ideation to launch across 3D, 2D, UI/UX, experience flow, animation, branding, and performance
- Shipped against immovable tradeshow floor dates, coordinating booth construction and on-floor interactive features alongside the digital build
- Held client brand and product guideline compliance across concurrent accounts, working directly with partners to confirm goals were met before launch
- Converted product manufacturing files into engine-ready real-time assets, bridging client CAD data and game engine pipelines
- Stood up motion capture spaces for large-scale VR tracking and mocap animation, and developed new pipelines for emerging technology to bring into partner projects
- Took production leadership over 3D assets, characters, and environments, including level layout and player experience on interactive builds
I was the 3D Artist and VFX Artist and was responsible for creating visual effects for multiple shows such as Shadow Hunters and Murdoch Mysteries. My responsibilities included creating 3D assets and room layouts from architectural drawings, lighting scenes and texturing assets and unwrapping assets for the lead artist as well as creating particle simulations or effect shots in 3DS Max and Maya, then importing those clean plates into Nuke for compositing.