Mike Best @Mike-Best

I a CG industry veteran who has provided technical art and animation for both games and television for over 15 years. I am currently based in Vancouver, Canada where I is am the Technical Art Director at Piranha Games. His last completed project was at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe in London, UK, where he worked EyePet, a critically acclaimed augmented reality game for the PS3. The game was recently released in Europe and is due for release in early 2010 in North America. I designed and implemented a cutting edge facial animation pipeline, which help bring an high level of facial animation fidelity to the game. Since studying film and video production at Emily Carr College of Art and Design in Vancouver, I have been fascinated by the process of bringing animated characters to life.

Over the last 12 years I have worked on a number of triple-A games titles as well as commercial and television projects. My roles in the industry have been varied. As an Art Director at Firefly Studios I was responsible for the graphical look and feel of games that included Stronghold and Space Colony. While freelancing I did both animation and modeling work for commercials. During my time at Electronic Arts and Sony I shifted more to the technical art and animation side of production, with a strong emphasis on creature and facial technology development. This technical art focus has culminated in my current role at Piranha where I oversee all aspects of the technical art and animation pipelines.