Chris Judkins

📩 / LinkedIn / Vimeo / IMDb

Experienced Visual Effects Artist and mentor, specialized in:

  • Realtime VFX authoring
    • I’m well versed in the entire asset pipeline from initial setup to final optimization.
  • Pipeline, Workflow, and Scope Planning
    • I’ve worked closely with tech artists and tools engineers to plan and develop VFX pipelines that allow artists to spend more time making art and less time troubleshooting it. I’ve aligned these efforts with producers and directors to inform long-term scoping and estimates.
  • Visual Development
    • I’ve collaborated with art directors to find and execute on the creative vision as it pertains to VFX, and defined best practices/style guides for fellow artists.
  • Gameplay Effects and Player Feedback
    • I pride myself on my ability to design effects that communicate gameplay clearly and intuitively.
  • Cross-Discipline Collaboration and Alignment
    • I work with animators, designers, engineers, and sound designers to find the best approach to a problem. I’ve also established project-wide working agreements to make collaboration as seamless as possible.
  • Mentoring and Team Growth
    • Knowledge is meant to be shared, and the best way to learn is to teach. I’ve taken every opportunity to mentor, onboard, and educate junior artists.

💼 Career Experience

Senior Visual Effects Artist @ Riot Games (2022 - 2024)
Unannounced Projects/R&D

  • Led efforts to help game teams understand how to best leverage bleeding-edge VFX techniques in Unreal Engine 5
  • Identified pain points in VFX pipelines and workflows, as well as cross-discipline working agreements, and formulated plans of action to address them

Senior Visual Effects Artist @ Blizzard Entertainment (2019 - 2022)
Diablo IV

  • Authored effects for player (abilities, combat states, character and screen effects), monsters and bosses (abilities, character, death states) and open-world features (PvP, events, quests, dungeons)
  • Collaborated and iterated with game designers, animators, gameplay engineers, and sound designers on features, assets, and engine functionality
  • Identified workflow issues and facilitated editor improvements
  • Worked with tech artists and rendering/engine engineers to ensure that VFX was performant across all supported platforms
  • Actively participated in hiring, onboarding, and mentoring team members

Visual Effects Artist @ Avalanche Studios (2017 - 2019)
Just Cause 4

As sole VFX artist on Just Cause 4, I was reponsible for authoring, implementing, optimizing, and troubleshooting effects across the game. During production we migrated to a completely new GPU-based particle backend, where I led the effort in mitigating risks and making sure that the transition was as frictionless as possible.

  • Authored and implemented visual effects related to vehicles, weaponry, traversal, weather, player experience, and cinematics
  • Worked with engineers to identify, design, and plan out necessary tech to tackle technical challenges
  • Migrated the VFX texture authoring pipeline from 3ds max/FumeFX to Houdini
  • Optimized effects to within strict processing and memory budgets while retaining visuals at extreme view distances for multiple platforms

Visual Effects Artist @ EA DICE (2015 - 2017)
Battlefield 1 / Star Wars: Battlefront

  • Created visual effects related to vehicles, gameplay, level ambience, and player experience.
  • Programmed shaders, both general surface shaders and procedural vertex animation.
  • Used Houdini to simulate assets for use in-engine
  • Scripted tools and automated workflows with Python
  • Optimized effects within strict processing and memory budgets while retaining identical visuals for multiple platforms

⌨️ Technical Proficencies

Primary Software (what I use on a day-to-day basis)

  • Unreal Engine 5
  • Blender
  • Procreate

Use-Case Software (situational tools)

  • Maya
  • Zbrush
  • Houdini
  • Photoshop
  • Substance Designer
  • Procreate Dreams

Coding and Scripting

  • Unreal Blueprint
  • Unreal Material Editor
  • Python
  • Lua
  • C#

📚 Education

8-week traditional art course
Kline Academy of Fine Arts - Los Angeles, CA (2024)

Vocational Degree in Realtime 3D Graphics
Futuregames - Stockholm, Sweden (2014 - 2016)

Vocational Degree in Digital Art
Nackademin Yrkeshögskola - Nacka, Sweden (2012 - 2014)

💬 Languages

🇺🇸English: Fluent
🇸🇪Swedish: Fluent
🇯🇵Japanese: Basic