Demo Reel
Viewmodel Animation
Call of Duty Warzone Mobile
Full-Body Animation (Mocap + Handkey)
Apex Legends Mobile
Personal Practice
Apex Legends Mobile
Personal Dialogue Practice
Evil
Resume
Dingyi (Dean) Zhou
San Francisco Bay Area, California, United States
[email protected]
510-324-6378
12 years of video game animation experience + 10 years of outsourcing experience.
Expertise in character animation, mocap, rigging, game development, team management, outsourcing management, and art directing.
Helped ship the most successful games, including Warzone Mobile, Apex Legends Mobile, Final Fantasy XV: A New Empire, and Game of War.
Chinese English bilingual game developer.
EXPERIENCE
Senior Character Animator
Azra Games | Sacramento, CA | January 2025 – Present
Develop and refine real-time in-game character animations, progressing from initial blocking to final polish.
Convey emotion and expressiveness through detailed facial animations.
Collaborate with the Narrative team to create animations for ambient scenes, quests, and dialogues.
Partner with Engineers and Tech Artists to enhance and optimize animation systems and pipelines.
Work closely with outsource vendors, providing feedback on both technical and artistic solutions.
Identify and resolve technical challenges while improving animation workflows and pipelines.
Lead Animator
Activision | Foster City, CA | April 2023 – November 2024
Led a growing global located team working on MTX animation for "Warzone Mobile."
Worked closely with riggers, animators, and vfx artists to push the art quality to the next level.
Made animation briefs for the internal teams and OS.
Supervised the OS character rigging work, setting up dynamic bones, and integrating MTX skins into the game.
Built up an animation pipeline from scratch.
Worked closely with riggers and modelers to optimize the rigging workflow for mobile, ease pain points, and speed up production.
Senior Character Animator
Respawn Entertainment | Los Angeles, CA | August 2022 – April 2023
Led a co-dev animation team to deliver all the animations for "Apex Legends Mobile." (Game of the Year 2022 on both iOS and Android)
Drove daily reviews for both motion capture and hand-keyed in-game animation.
Led the ideation process for animations, including skin entrances, emotes, skydives, etc.
Directed the mocap shooting.
Directed body acting, facial, and lip-sync animation for both in-game animations and cinematics.
Art-directed cinematics from storyboard to final render with scripts provided by the narrative team.
Senior Character Animator
Applovin Inc. | Palo Alto, CA | May 2020 – August 2022
MZ Inc. | Palo Alto, CA | June 2018 – May 2020
Animated and rigged characters with Maya, as well as created particle VFX with the in-house engine for games including “Final Fantasy XV: A New Empire,” “Crystalborne: Heroes of Fate,” “Game of War,” “Mobile Strike,” and “World War Rising” from preproduction to live-op phase.
Provided various character animations for other unannounced projects.
Collaborated with other art disciplines and engineers to bring the best-looking art assets into games.
Senior Character Animator/Rigger
Phoenix One Games Inc. | San Francisco, CA | July 2016 – June 2018
Kabam Inc. | San Francisco, CA | March 2014 – July 2016
Animated and rigged characters/buildings with Maya for “Guardian Kingdoms.”
Animated and rigged characters/buildings with Maya for an unannounced project.
Flash animated characters/effects/UI for the “Castle Age” and “Underworld Empire.”
Created particle VFX for all games made by the studio.
Created animated promotion videos for the marketing kits with Adobe After Effects.
Collaborated with other art disciplines and engineers to bring the best-looking art assets into games.
Animation Director
GameVision Studios | Chicago, IL | March 2015 – Present
Art directed and led multi-animation teams.
Provided feedback for daily internal reviews.
Provided technical support and troubleshot all issues between art and engine.
Worked with the directors of the world’s most famous IPs, such as Disney, Marvel, and Star Wars, to deliver high-quality animations that are on brand.
Character Animator
PennyPop Inc. | San Francisco, CA | November 2013 – March 2014
Animated the creatures/effects/UI with Adobe Flash for “Battle Camp.”
Designed/set up the monsters in Adobe Illustrator.
Created animated promotion videos for the marketing kits with Adobe After Effects.
Character Animator
Red Robot Labs, Inc. | Mountain View, CA | September 2012 – October 2013
Maya modeled, rigged, UV-mapped, textured, and animated characters for an unreleased project.
Flash designed and created animations for “Life is Magic.”
Animated characters/effects within the platform's limitations.
Worked with engineers to determine frame-rate parameters.
Mocap Animator
Mixamo Studio | San Francisco, CA | November 2011 – March 2012
Created animations with Motion Builder for the online motion database.
Skillfully use Motion Builder’s performance-related tool sets, cleaning up, characterization, constraints, motion blending, animation layers, pose controls, and story mode.
SOFTWARE
Autodesk Maya, Motion Builder
Adobe Suite
EDUCATION
Academy of Art University | San Francisco, CA
Master of Fine Arts in the Animation & Visual Effects, May 2012China Central Academy of Fine Arts | Beijing, China
Pre-M.F.A.in Experimental Animation and Film, May 2007
Bachelor of Fine Arts in Animation and Film, May 2006
LANGUAGES
Mandarin (Native proficiency)
English (Professional working proficiency)