Dingyi (Dean) Zhou
San Francisco Bay Area, California, United States
dingyizhou.com@gmail.com
510-324-6378
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12 years of video game animation experience + 10 years of outsourcing experience.
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Expertise in character animation, mocap, rigging, game development, team management, outsourcing management, and art directing.
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Helped ship the most successful games, including Warzone Mobile, Apex Legends Mobile, Final Fantasy XV: A New Empire, and Game of War.
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Chinese English bilingual game developer.
EXPERIENCE
Lead Animator
Activision | Foster City, CA | April 2023 – November 2024
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Led a growing global located team working on MTX animation for "Warzone Mobile."
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Worked closely with riggers, animators, and vfx artists to push the art quality to the next level.
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Made animation briefs for the internal teams and OS.
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Supervised the OS character rigging work, setting up dynamic bones, and integrating MTX skins into the game.
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Built up an animation pipeline from scratch.
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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
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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)
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Drove daily reviews for both motion capture and hand-keyed in-game animation.
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Led the ideation process for animations, including skin entrances, emotes, skydives, etc.
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Directed the mocap shooting.
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Directed body acting, facial, and lip-sync animation for both in-game animations and cinematics.
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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
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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.
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Provided various character animations for other unannounced projects.
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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
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Animated and rigged characters/buildings with Maya for “Guardian Kingdoms.”
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Animated and rigged characters/buildings with Maya for an unannounced project.
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Flash animated characters/effects/UI for the “Castle Age” and “Underworld Empire.”
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Created particle VFX for all games made by the studio.
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Created animated promotion videos for the marketing kits with Adobe After Effects.
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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
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Art directed and led multi-animation teams.
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Provided feedback for daily internal reviews.
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Provided technical support and troubleshot all issues between art and engine.
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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
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Animated the creatures/effects/UI with Adobe Flash for “Battle Camp.”
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Designed/set up the monsters in Adobe Illustrator.
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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
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Maya modeled, rigged, UV-mapped, textured, and animated characters for an unreleased project.
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Flash designed and created animations for “Life is Magic.”
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Animated characters/effects within the platform's limitations.
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Worked with engineers to determine frame-rate parameters.
Character Animator
The Base Studio | Foster City, CA | April 2012 - May 2012
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Maya key-frame animated characters for a short film titled “Call of Dude.”
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Collaborated with other animators to create a character performance process.
Mocap Animator
Mixamo Studio | San Francisco, CA | November 2011 – March 2012
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Created animations with Motion Builder for the online motion database.
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Skillfully use Motion Builder’s performance-related tool sets, cleaning up, characterization, constraints, motion blending, animation layers, pose controls, and story mode.
Cinematic Character Animator
Anitime Studio | San Francisco, CA | January 2011 – May 2013
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Animated characters with Maya for a VFX short film titled "Kui."
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Animated realistic creatures with Maya for a VFX short film titled "Storm in Sight 2: Battle in San Francisco."
SKILLS & EXPERTISE
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2D/3D Character Animation, 2D/3D Character Rigging, Mocap, 3D nCloth simulation, Story-boarding, Character Design.
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Animation Team Management, Art Directing, Animation Pipeline/Planning/Estimate, Outsource Supervision.
SOFTWARE
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Autodesk Maya (Animation, Rigging, nCloth, Modeling, Texturing, UV Mapping)
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Adobe Photoshop, Flash, After Effects, Illustrator, Premier
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Autodesk Motion Builder (Cleaning up, Characterization, Constraints, Motion blending, Animation layers, Pose controls and Story mode.)
EDUCATION
Academy of Art University | San Francisco, CA
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Master of Fine Arts in the Animation & Visual Effects, May 2012
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Awards/Honors: Art work was selected by spring show every year.
Animation Workshop | San Francisco, CA
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Trained under Jean-Denis Haas, animator at ILM.
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Trained under Mike Makarewicz, Victor Navone, Rob Thompson, Terry Song, Bruce Kuei and Raphael Suter, animators at Pixar.
China Central Academy of Fine Arts | Beijing, China
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Pre-M.F.A.in Experimental Animation and Film, May 2007
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Bachelor of Fine Arts in Animation and Film, May 2006
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Awards/Honors: Received Academy Award Scholarship for academic excellence.
LANGUAGES
Mandarin (Native proficiency)
English (Professional working proficiency)