Heavy Iron Studios

Technical Artist

June 2013 - October 2013 This engagement sharpened my ability to quickly build on top of a legacy pipeline, introduce testing discipline, and bridge art tools with deployment constraints. The mix of Perforce automation, shader/material cleanup, and hardware-focused delivery set the foundation for later technical art roles. I joined Heavy Iron to provide support on a contract slot-machine/arcade project and assisted in stabilizing a legacy MEL/Python pipeline. Applied test-driven practices to Perforce automation, refactored tools into maintainable modules, and partnered with engineers and artists to keep builds performant on bespoke arcade hardware.

Pipeline Reliability & Perforce Integration

Raised the reliability of artist-facing tools by wrapping Perforce operations in tested, predictable workflows.

• Built and maintained the Maya-integrated P4Wrapper, adding guardrails around checkout/revert flows and planning auto-changelist creation for safer defaults.
• Introduced unit tests to validate Perforce operations end-to-end, enabling rapid refactors without breaking dependent scripts.
• Trimmed a 5,000-line procedural MEL utility into a ~500-line object-oriented Python module, improving readability, logging, and error handling while preserving behavior.

Shader & Asset Pipeline Upgrades

Improved material handling and asset prep so artists could move faster with fewer manual fixes.

• Expanded Collada shader rename script to better normalize shader/material names during Collada import, reducing cleanup passes.
• Enhanced Static object optimization with diagnostics, icon-generation cleanup, and collision checks so scene exports stayed consistent.
• Kept the PyQt/SIP toolchain pinned and reproducible, preventing breakage across the Maya toolset.

Automation for Artists & QA

Delivered small wins that removed repetitive work and surfaced issues earlier.

• Authored an After Effects batch script that toggled multiple render states automatically, enabling unattended permutations and consistent naming to comply with vendor specifications.
• Added validation hooks and logging to Maya tools so improve the diagnosis of problematic scenes before export.

Hardware Deployment & Vendor Collaboration

Supported content delivery to bespoke hardware while aligning with external partners.

• Deployed Unity builds to custom EGM/arcade machines, tuning shaders and content for the target displays and form factor.
• Debugged assets and advised on import workflows so third-party content matched internal standards.
• Shared pipeline fixes and art improvements that were adopted by the team for the contract project.