David Mercadel

I am a world builder that is passionate about creating realistic and fantastical highly detailed environments from concept art. I love creating and contributing to immersive areas for players to explore and get lost in. I work well on a team and on my own to get things done.

Specialties: environment and prop design/modeling, texture mapping, drawing

WORK EXPERIENCE 

Pebblekick Inc.

3D Asset Artist - Pasadena, CA                                                                       10/2017 - 02/2021                                  

• Responsible for consulting with the Chile creative team members on what additional assets should be created to further enhance the visual storytelling of the current project.
• Assist in creating and designing hard surface assets in 3Ds Max. As well as stylizing textures to fit the current project’s aesthetic in Adobe Photoshop or Substance painter. 
• Regularly examined models, including compiling textures to ensure all features were made correctly and functioned properly.
• Assist with the creation and optimization of LODs for architectural static meshes. 
• Inspect meshes for proper edge flow, resolution, and inverted or overlapping polygons. 
• Check meshes for correct orientation and pivot points. To ensure a smooth transition to other departments in the pipeline. 
• Create custom collisions for complex static meshes or that are concave static meshes.
• Assist in the designing and creating of promotional material for games, including setting up renderings of models, screenshots, videos of gameplay, banners, and thumbnails. 
• Performed cross-functional support to Quality Assurance for testing playthroughs. 
• Regularly provide feedback to the developer team regarding game mechanic issues. 
• Perform regression testing on resolved issues to make sure no new issues have occurred.
• Maintain the asset list, ensuring all team members have critical functions and regular input to advance team goals.
• Implement Trello for more effective remote team collaboration. Creating more lists and cards to make sure the entire team knew what was currently being worked on and who was completing the task. daily maintenance on cards of assigning tasks to the QA team.  

Eatel Businesses Venyu

Network Operations Center (NOC) Technician - Baton Rouge, LA               09/2015 - 10/2017                  

• Monitored clients’ critical networking elements as well as backups of their SQL and exchange servers. 
• Investigation and troubleshooting of errors in the event that backups failed or did not fully complete.
• Maintained a variety of scheduled tape rotations while balancing data management for clients.
• Provided direct technical support to clients for minor issues and where applicable, escalated cases to level 2 engineers or networking for more severe issues.
• Monitored and reported facility issues involving generator activity, power fluctuations, or temperatures exceeding maximum limits. 

Pro Unlimited - Electronic Arts (EA)

Compliance Quality Assurance Tester - Baton Rouge, LA                 02/2015 - 09/2015                                                     

• Checked first-party compliance standards to make sure the title is ready for submission.
• Reviewed extensive checklists to ensure all standards are met. 
• Drafted bug report in the event of direct violation of first-party standards and then sent to developers to be fixed.  
• Perform regression testing verifying that corrections were implemented in the newest build and no further issues had occurred.
• Maintained a constant dialogue between Sony analysts outside the company and test leads inside the company ensuring weekly deadlines were met. By communicating the most important or significant issues and then trickling them down in severity to various smaller issues.

Toxic Creativity

3D Artist, Designer - Rancho Cucamonga, CA                                               09/2013 - 10/2014                                                                    

• Designed and modeled a variety of hard surface environments, vehicles, and props in 3Ds Max. Ranging from small assets to fill the scene, all the way to the main character-controlled ships.
• Created hand-painted stylized textures as well as detailed tileable textures in Photoshop. 
• Consistently met asset completion deadlines by maintaining a list of the largest to smallest meshes to make.
• Regularly interfaced with team members to review the newest implementations, analyze, and critique new assets.

EDUCATION 

Bachelor of Science, Game Art and Design                                                                2006 - 2009

Westwood College, Upland, CA

Certificate Of Completion: Maya 2022 Essential Training                                                    2021

LinkedIn Learning, Sunnyvale, CA

Certificate Of Completion: Current-Gen 3D Game Prop Production                                    2022                                        

Michigan State University, MI

Professional certificate program 

Unreal Engine Foundations

Certificate Of Completion: Getting Started with Unreal Engine                                            2022

Certificate Of Completion: Blueprints, Animation, Audio, & Environments

Certificate Of Completion: Sequencer-Cinematography, Interfaces, Visual Effects, Pipelines, and Production

Rochester Institute of Technology, NY