bio

BIO

NAME:  Kevin Meek

HOME:  Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

OCCUPATION: Head of Art (Principal Art Lead), Humanoid Origin

FORMER:  Character and Environment Director, BioWare
Senior Artist, Serious:Labs
Art Lead &  3D Generalist Artist, Piranha Games Inc. 
Environment Art Mentor, Think Tank Training Centre

CAREER

I am currently employed as the Head of Art (Principal Art Lead) at Humanoid Origin. Humanoid is a Casey Hudson (Director / Executive Producer of Star Wars: Knights of the old Republic, Mass Effect trilogy) (former General Manager at BioWare) founded, independent game studio. My role is at the studio-level - an interdisciplinary art leadership position where I help build and lead the Art Department. I have overseen the departmental growth from the first artist onward, while creating and managing game-wide schedules and budgets, and ensuring the various teams are hitting quality and production goals - helping wherever needed. I collaborate with Production and other studio leaders to set overall objectives for the studio and game, drive high level unity between design/art/narrative departments, manage the creation of assets, design interdisciplinary art workflows, and create specific content.


As the Character and Environment Director on the Mass Effect Legendary Edition at BioWare, I was responsible for leading a team of Environment, Character, and Lighting Artists through the process of remastering the beloved trilogy of games. My role included helping to set up the pipelines and tools, creating art quality targets, scheduling, tasking, and training of multiple teams across many countries and timezones. I led game-wide art reviews, providing actionable, qualitative feedback to the team based on artistic, gameplay, and technical direction. Throughout development I acted as a key liaison between content creation teams, programming, and production departments. I worked closely with marketing and branding teams on everything from key-art to release trailers and web content. I supported external product partners, and participated in dozens of interviews with gaming journalists from around the world.

Also at BioWare, I helped ship the online multiplayer action role-playing game, Anthem. I led a team focused on creating the first-person explorable hubs, non-playable levels (main menu, character customization, victory/loot reward, etc...), as well as the environments that housed our first-person cinematic scenes.

Lastly, I briefly helped pre-production efforts for Mass Effect 5 in an Environment/World Director role.

  • Mass Effect Legendary Edition (2021) - Xbox One/Series X, PS4/PS5, PC - Character and Environment Director

  • Anthem (2019) - Xbox One, PS4, PC - Lead Environment Artist

Serious:Labs creates interactive training simulators and serious games.  As the Senior Artist, I was primarily responsible for the creation and implementation of 3D environment art and hard surface vehicle modeling & texturing.  Additionally I was responsible for the creation of in-engine cinematics for linear training courses, the review and management of cinematics and art created both in house & outsourced, and the mentoring of other artists.

At Piranha Games, I was employed as the Lead Artist with additional 3D environment art, technical art, and world building responsibilities. 

My main responsibilities included environment art creation, world lighting and world building, leading the content teams with task management and scheduling, providing risk assessment and mitigation, and working to implement and communicate the Art Director's vision.  I designed and maintained content pipelines and new systems, provided technical art review, researched new software and assessed workflow solutions.  I acted as a liaison between the content teams and the engineering leads, directors, producers, and company owners. 

I found solutions to critical content related issues and bugs, implemented strategies for content optimization, and provided technical know-how to help push the in-game art quality and features.

  • MechWarrior Online (2013) - PC - Generalist 3D Artist, Art Lead, Level Artist

  • Borderlands 2 (2012) - PC, OS X, Xbox 360, PS3 - Outsource Texture Artist

  • Duke Nukem Forever (2011) - Xbox 360, PS3, PC - Level Artist, Technical Artist

  • Days of Thunder (2010) - Xbox 360, PS3, PC - UI Artist

  • Bass Pro Shops: The Hunt (2010) - Xbox 360, Wii, PC - Generalist Artist

  • Bass Pro Shops: The Strike (2009) - Xbox 360, Wii, PC - Generalist Artist

I’ve been employed as a 3D modelling / environment art mentor at the Think Tank Training Center off and on since 2013 as my schedule allows. I meet with students to critique their work, teach new techniques, help solve any technical or artistic problems, and guide them through the completion of their final projects and demo reels.  I have taught students everything from basic UV unwrapping, modelling, and texturing techniques, to advanced lighting, particle effects creation, world building, and cloth simulation.

EDUCATION

I graduated from the University of Lethbridge with my Bachelor's of Fine Arts Degree in New Media in 2008. 

The University of Lethbridge’s New Media program was designed for an entertainment industry that has shifted their hiring focus away from a workforce that is purely technical, to one that is additionally more artistically developed. As a result of that mind-set I am both educated with a formal art and design background, in addition to being highly skilled with programs such as Autodesk’s 3ds Max, Maya, Adobe’s entire creative suite, Unreal Engine, Frostbite Engine, and many more industry utilized programs and game engines.

During my four years at the University of Lethbridge I excelled not only in my New Media courses but also through studies in General Liberal Education.  In New Media I expanded my foundation as a high level generalist through courses in traditional art, web design, video and audio editing, cinematography and lighting, print design, 3D modeling and animation, 3D architectural rendering, composting and particle effects, as well as formal leadership and production management courses.  Additionally the liberal education program gave me a broad survey of disciplinary approaches in the humanities, sciences, and social sciences - which included courses in computer programming, sociology, and economics - in addition to continuing my studies in music and music theory.