👋 Hey! I'm Steve Z

Download .PDF version

I'm a technically-minded, real-time artist who experiments with rendering, bends vectors, & pushes parameters to make art unique to the videogames medium.

Most at-home when blending mathematics, sculpture, and sheer creative effort. 

Location: Bellevue, Washington
steve.a.zapata@gmail.com
SteveZapata.com
LinkedIn

Proficiencies

• Shaders | Shaderlab/Cg/GLSL, HLSL, Node Editors for Unity & Unreal

• 3D Graphics Math | Linear algebra, Trigonometry, Vector math, etc

• 3D Modeling & Sculpting | Blender, Zbrush

• Scripting | C# (4 yrs), C++ & Blueprint (2 yrs)

• Prototyping & Look Development

• Graphics Optimization | Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One, Mobile

• Unity & Unreal 5

• Documentation | Prototype Learnings,
  Asset use, Asset/art pipeline, etc

Experience

• Sr. Rendering Tech Artist, R&D Central | Riot Games, Inc.
  Stylized Rendering & Look-dev support for multiple game-teams and R&D projects.
  Supported Project L’s Character Shading & Animated Lighting System for the EVO 2023 debut.

• Tech Artist | Niantic, Inc.
  Pokemon Go & AR Prototyping | 3 yrs

• Guest 3D & Tech Artist | Aggro Crab Games.
  Supported early Look-dev, Pitch, & Vertical-slice development for Another Crab’s Treasure  | eta 2024.
  Made the Final Boss & Arena graphics for Going Under  | Released, 2020.

• 3D Lead, Tech Artist, Co-Founder | PolyKnight Games, LLC.
  Developed, Ported, & Released: InnerSpace | 5 yrs

• 3D Character Artist, R&D | Brain Performance Institute, Virtual Reality Lab.
  Interned, then hired as part-time. Employed here while completing my degree | 2 yrs

Achievements

• 2023 | Speaker at Riot’s annual Creative Town Hall | “Shading Pixels instead of Paper”

• 2022 | 14 Game Jams to date

• 2021 | 1st Place Award & Prize | Game Jolt’s Party Jam | Swatchbucklers

• 2019 | Best UX Award | Global Game Jam x Seattle Indies x Pacific Science Center

• 2018 | Independently developed first commercial title InnerSpace | Simultaneous release across: Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One, PC, Mac, Linux

• 2017 | IndieCade Selection | InnerSpace featured

• 2015 | B.A. in Arts and Technology | The University of Texas at Dallas

• 2014-18 | Work featured in digital & physical publications | Edge Magazine #278, Eurogamer, IGN, Kotaku, Playstation Blog, PC Gamer, Xbox Wire, Dallas Morning News, more...

• 2014 | Managed a successfully funded Kickstarter campaign | Campaign page

Don't forget to check out my EXPERIMENTS page for all kinds of bite-sized shader eye-candy 🍰 

And thank you for checking out my artwork!