Name: Sjoerd "Hourences" De Jong
Age: 30
Nationalities: Shared Dutch/Belgian
Status: Interested to hear about short/medium length contract opportunities and guest lectures.
Email: me@Hourences.com
(feel free to add me) - My LinkedIn Groups: Unreal Engine Developers and Level Design
PERMANENT/LONG TERM POSITIONS
January 2010 - Today: Creative Director/Project Lead - On-site - Teotl Studios - The Ball and Unmechanical - PC/Android and PC/iOS - Puzzle Action FPS and puzzle 2.5D - Unreal Engine 3
Details: I founded my own studio -
Teotl Studios and as the Creative Director and Project Lead I brought our first title to a successful end. I had a lot of responsibilities on "The Ball", I literally did the job of seven people at once, and still managed to deliver everything right on target.
Project Lead: As the Project Lead of the game I took care of the schedule and retained the overview on production. I managed a team of up to 15 people, and made sure that we did not miss a single deadline and milestone. We consistently hit every milestone that was imposed on us.
Business and Marketing: I took care of everything to do with Marketing and Business. I handled all communication with publishers, distributors, and funders of the game. I handled all legal documents, I handled all contract negotiations both with our developers and with publishers and distributors. I maintained our website and planned out the Marketing campaigns, and I implemented those campaigns. I took care of all interviews and all other communication with the press and the communities.
Creative Director: I came up with the original concept of the game, and created the first prototype. I designed the majority of the gameplay in the game, I styled the game and guided others to follow the style I set out, I safeguarded the visual consistency between the various different locations, and I designed the backstory and lore of the world. All creative decisions went by me.
Level Designer and Scripter: I scripted and designed about 30% of the game's levels. I had an hand in all levels, I set forth the basic design for all levels and often took care of the biggest and most important tasks myself, while leaving the creation of individual puzzles and fights to others. I was the architect behind the lay-outs of the levels, and the overall build up and pacing.
Technical Director: I safeguarded the performance of the game and set forth technical guidelines. I handled all technically complicated materials and effects, and I optimized all content that was delivered. I managed to bring an eigth hour long game with plenty of high resolution content down to an installer just little over 800 MB large.
Environment Artist: I took care of 90% of all environment art in the game. I created hundreds of textures, hundreds of materials, hundreds of props, and I took care of all lighting and atmosphere.
Effects Artist: I was the sole Effects Artist on the project. I took care of all particles and other effects, hundreds of them.
For Unmechanical, a game we jointly developed with Talawa Games, I took care of building out several areas as a Level Artist, I unified the art style of the entire game, and I acted as Tech Artist, cleaning up all art assets and levels and ensuring everything was technically as correct and as optimised as possible. I took care of almost the entire art and level conversion work from PC to mobile, and got the art and levels to run on iPad2 era hardware at a solid 30 FPS while retaining nearly all of the graphics of the PC game. I also took care of setting up the various distribution deals.
February 2008 - October 2009: Senior Level Designer/Artist - On-site - Starbreeze - Syndicate - PC/Xbox360/PS3 - Action Sci-fi FPS - In house engine
Details: Worked as a Senior Level Designer/Artist for
Starbreeze, Sweden, on the EA game Syndicate. I was primarily responsible for visualising environments, prototyping the first few levels of the game during pre-production, and prototyping the multiplay level design.
October 2004 - August 2007: Senior Level Artist - On-site - Khaeon - The Chronicles
of Spellborn - PC - Fantasy MMORPG - Unreal Engine 2
Details: As a Senior Level Artist at Khaeon in The Hague, The Netherlands, I had a lot of responsibilities, and I often took over a large number of tasks of my lead
or temporarily replaced him.
Regular Level Design work: I designed floorplans, modeled large parts of the landscapes (3DSMax), created and modified
textures, placed thousands of lights/trees/rocks/anything else, and made a large number of materials and effects.
Special Level Design work: I created and designed all skyboxes of the game, nearly all day/night cycles, all other atmosphere
settings, and all other technical challenging tasks.
Directed the environment: I had my hand deep into roughly 80 percent of all environments in the entire game, both on an
artistic as technical level. I issued technical guidelines and documents and assured that all art and levels that were made were
optimized for the Unreal Engine and its rendering. On an artistic level it was my responsibility to style the entire game world
and to guard the consistency. I set down the visual environment style the rest of the team followed, adjusted hundreds of textures
and atmosphere settings to ensure a consistent result and together with the concept artist decided on what visual direction to
take for what kind of environment.
Team Development: Advisory role to the leads on who to put on what task and for how long. Taught the entire Environment
Team (10 people at its peak) on how to use the Unreal Engine. Set up large parts of the environments team workflow and designed/directed almost
all the new environment tools (25+) in cooperation with a programmer.
Marketing support: Supported the Marketing department by providing them with dozens of specifically requested screenshots
and other marketing content.
September 2003 - September 2004: Environment Artist - On-site - Guerrilla Games - Shellshock Nam 67
- PC/Xbox/PS2 - 3rd person shooter - In house Engine
Details: Worked full time on-site for Guerrilla in Amsterdam,
The Netherlands on the games ShellShock : Nam 67' (Eidos) and to lesser extend on Killzone
(Sony). For Shellshock Nam 67' I was responsible for modeling the environment (Maya - large terrains and landscapes as well as
small objects) and finishing the visuals in the levels by filling them in with vegetation and objects and lighting them out. For
Killzone I performed cutscene work which included lighting out (Mental Ray rendering) most scenes, and performing basic compositing.
CONTRACT POSITIONS
February 2012 - May 2013: Level Artist - Remote Contract - Plastic Piranha - Rekoil - PC
- Multiplayer FPS - Unreal Engine 3
Details: Contracted by Plastic Piranha to optimize, visualize, design, and polish the levels for the Unreal Engine 3 FPS game Rekoil. I greatly improved performance of some of the levels, and pushed the entire game into a new direction style wise. Besides regular level design and art work, I touched up nearly all the levels in the game to ensure a consistent style and performance throughout the game.
February 2013 - April 2013: Lighting/Material Artist - Remote Contract - Toxic Games - Q.U.B.E - PC/iOS
- Puzzle Game - Unreal Engine 3
Details: Contracted by Toxic Games to upgrade the looks of their existing PC game and to port over those graphics to iOS, in particular regarding lighting and materials. conceptualised a new environment style based on their wishes and implemented it with the technically most sound way.
January 2007 - December 2007: Level Designer/Artist - Remote Contract - Webzen - Huxley - XBox360/PC
- Sci-fi MMOFPS - Unreal Engine 3
Details: Contracted by Webzen to develop multiplayer levels for the Unreal Engine 3 MMOFPS Huxley. Tasks included designing
the floorplans and gameplay of several levels and visualizing them by using assets that were provided to me as well as a number of self-
made assets, lighting it out and polishing it up with particles, materials and so on. Responsible for a good deal of the gameplay
and visual design in all the levels I created
.
December 2006 - February 2007: Level Designer/Artist - Remote Contract - Prophecy Games - Unreal Engine 3
Details: Contracted by Prophecy Games to help them get a prototype version of their UE3 game up in a very small amount of time. Tasks included assembling the demo levels out of numerous premade stand alone rooms, touching them all up to improve
the consistency between all the different areas, adding in streaming support and creating the surrounding landscape. I also relighted
the entire demo level and created most of the materials and (particle and light) effects for the environment.
June 2005 - September 2005: Level Designer/Artist - Remote Contract - Digital Extremes - Warpath -
Xbox/PC - Futuristic multiplayer FPS - Unreal Engine 2
Details: Contracted by
Digital Extremes on the game WarPath. An Unreal
Engine multiplayer FPS. I was contracted as a level designer and I created two levels for the game. I planned and designed the gameplay and floorplans, created the basic architecture, filled up my levels with existing assets, and I added in effects and lighted my levels.
May 2004 - August 2004: Level Designer/Artist - Remote Contract - Epic Games - Unreal Tournament 2004
ECE - PC - FPS - Unreal Engine 2
Details: Created ONS-Adara for Epic's UT2004 official Add-On pack "Editors Choice". I made the entire level including the concept,
gameplay design, models, most textures, and I did the sound and lighting.
May 2003 - September 2003: Level Designer/Artist - Remote Contract - Epic Games - Unreal Tournament
2004 - PC - FPS - Unreal Engine 2
Details: I created six maps (ONS-Torlan, DM-Rankin, DM-1on1-Idoma, DM-Rrajigar, ONS-Dria, ONS-Dawn) for
Unreal
Tournament 2004.
I was responsible for the concepts and designs of my levels, and for building them in the editor. Some levels were completely done by me (including the models,
textures, lighting) while on some I received some help from Epic Games. Two of the six levels I made were used in
the demo of the game, as well as for most press presentations, and for the E3 demo.
December 2002 - March 2003: 3D artist - Remote Contract- Streamline Studios - In house Engine
Details: I did some work for
Streamline Studios. I worked
on "Street Racing Syndicate" for the British developer Eutechnyx. I created a great number of low-poly buildings and structures, and textured.
January 2009 - Today: Game Design Head Teacher and Internship Coordinator - FutureGames - On-site
Details: Employed by
Future Games as Game Design Head Teacher and Internship Coordinator. Teaching Game Design and coordinating guest teachers and lecturers. Project Lead for the three game projects a game within the education. Preparing the students for their 6 month internships and following up on their progress and their relation to the companies they are at throughout those internships.
September 2008 - Today: Lecturer and Teacher - Various Educational Institutions - Unreal Engine 3
Details: I regularly go by universities and educations to talk and teach about the Unreal Engine and Level Design. The length of these lectures and classes varies from a couple of hours to several weeks. I have given one or more lectures at The Garden, Playground Squad, University of Gotland, and Stockholm University.
February 2012: Unreal Engine instructor – On-site Contract – Starbreeze - Unreal Engine 3
Details: Held a 4 day workshop for Starbreeze to guide their team into the use of Unreal Engine 3. I gave advice on how to best tackle certain problems and I talked them through various tools.
January 2008: Level Design and Unreal Engine instructor – On-site Contract – VStep - Unreal Engine 3
Details: 'Contracted by VStep for two days as an Unreal Engine instructor. I introduced their development team into the world of Unreal. I gave advice on how to best tackle certain problems and I talked them through various tools.
July 2007 - August 2007: Unreal Engine instructor – On-site Contract – Playlogic - Unreal Engine 3
Details: I was contracted by Playlogic for a period of five days (spread over 2 months) as an Unreal Engine instructor, and introduced their development team into the world of the Unreal Engine and its tools. I also spent a number of hours on production. I polished up their prototype and helped them meet their deadline.
April 2012 - May 2012: Helped out Kinesthetic Games with their prototype game Kung Fu Superstar. Took care of the final visual polish of their environments to make their environments shine as good as possible. Also handled the character lighting.
May 2008 - November 2009: Designed and directed the UT3 mod "The Ball". The mod was the steppingstone towards the commercial version, and it won a range of awards in some of the worlds largest competitions such as the ModDB MOTY and the MakeSomethingUnreal contest.
December 2007: Founded and directed the first UT3 HOLP map pack. With a small group of professional level designers we made six low poly but very hardcore CTF and DM levels for UT3, orientated towards competitive play.
April 2006 - December 2007: Helped out the team Red Nemesis with their large Unreal Tournament Singleplayer mod Residual
Decay, primarily as a Texture Artist. I created and touched up dozens of environment textures, and I occasionally also did some low poly landscapes for the levels.
March 2004 - May 2004: Converted one of my custom levels for the popular mod Jailbreak. Jailbreak was included on the UT2004 ECE DVD from Epic Games.
March 2004: Created a 1on1 map pack together
with a couple of level design buddies. The pack featured six high
quality 1on1 DM levels for UT2004. More info at : onevone.beyondunreal.com
November 2002: I created a level for the popular UT2003 mod Deathball
June 2002 - September 2002: I worked on my own Team Phalanx ' Xidia
Gold, a 17 map long singleplayer mod for UT based on an alternative Unreal universe in which a mining outpost becomes overrun
by Skaarj. I created around 7 maps for it, some textures and some decorational meshes.
February - June 2002: I worked on the giant UT singleplayer mod Operation
Na'Pali. The 40 map long singleplayer project was an unofficial sequel to Unreal, with improved graphics and
gameplay. I created 4 levels for the mod and helped out on several others. The mod received a number of awards, multiple page
magazine specials, and hundreds of thousands of downloads. We passed the quarter of a million downloads.
March 2002: I created a level for the popular mod Jailbreak 3.
December 2001 - April 2002: I worked on my own Team Phalanx' Xidia.
An Unreal Tournament Singleplay mod.
March 2000 - October 2008 : I was active as a hobbyist level designer for various games, most notably the Unreal Tournament series. Throughout the years, in my free time, I made
dozens of stand-alone levels, pulling in a great number of positive reviews and hundreds of thousands of downloads.
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Ran the day to day tasks of what was one of the biggest and oldest mapping sites in the world:
Nalicity for around four years. The website contained nearly 10.000 usermade levels and thousands of users.
Moderator for the forum "Gamedesign and Programming" at the biggest Belgian game portal: 9lives.be
Owner and manager of the two main Unreal Editor IRC support channels. Both support channels have been around for over ten years now.
Owner and manager of the "Unreal Engine Developers" and "Level Design" groups on LinkedIn. The two groups together have 7000+ members.
Organized a cross community level design survey - over a 1000 people participated in the survey, including 150 professionals.
I was one on the jury for the Scene From A Movie contest, organized by CGTalk and Game-Artist.net, and sponsored by Luxology, 3D.SK, CGTextures, Epic Games, Crazybump.
