Francisco Rojas | Character Modeler

Professional Summary

Character modeler skilled in taking assets from concept to production across various industries, including games and 3D printing. Proficient in sculpting, modeling, and texturing using Maya, ZBrush, and Substance Painter. Proven ability to lead teams and collaborate to deliver high-quality characters on schedule.

Work Experience

• CG Lead at Studio X AAU | San Francisco, CA | Sep 2023 - Dec 2024
  • Served as CG Lead for a student-led production course as part of my MFA program. This unpaid role involved supporting and guiding a team of artists, offering guidance on character modeling and texturing pipelines. Developed and facilitated workshops on creating complex hard surface and organic models, leveraging industry-standard tools such as Maya, ZBrush, Substance Painter, Arnold, and Unreal Engine.
• Instructor at Escena, School of Animation | Mexico City | Jul 2019 - Jul 2021
  • Taught introductory 3-month ZBrush courses during the pandemic, instructing groups of up to 15 university students both on-site and online. Developed and delivered a curriculum focused on ZBrush and Maya, emphasizing digital sculpting workflows for creating stylized and realistic models.
• Freelance Character Artist | Orlando, FL | Jul 2019 - Aug 2020
  • Collaborated with students and professors at Full Sail University on academic and personal projects in an unpaid role. Completed a one-month contract sculpting and modeling all opponents and environmental props for the VR boxing game The Thrill of the Fight, including integrating optimized characters, textures, and hair cards into Unity.
• Character Artist Internship at Sony Interactive Entertainment | San Diego, CA | May 2018 - Jul 2018
  • Worked with the character artist team in modeling crowd hair and props for the game MLB The Show 2019. Gained experience implementing player faces using photogrammetry and retopologizing models in Maya for game engine integration.

Education

• Master of Fine Arts in Animation and Visual Effects at Academy of Art University | San Francisco, CA | Jun 2022 - May 2025
• Bachelor of Science in Computer Animation at Full Sail University | Winter Park, FL | Aug 2015 - Jul 2017

Skills

• Technical Skills
  • ZBrush, Maya, Marvelous Designer, Substance Painter, Mari, Photoshop, xGen, Hair Cards, Unreal Engine, Unity, Marmoset Toolbag, Arnold, Redshift
• Artistic and Production Skills
  • Character surfacing and materials, real-time asset optimization, high-poly to low-poly baking, UV unwrapping, PBR texturing workflow, organic and hard-surface modeling, sculpting stylized and realistic characters, digital anatomy (human and creature), hair and fur grooming, photogrammetry cleanup, topology and edge flow for animation
• Pipeline and Workflow Skills
  • Game-ready asset creation, shader setup, rendering for portfolio and production, documentation of character pipelines, version control integration, collaboration with rigging and technical artists, asset implementation into game engines (Unreal, Unity), performance optimization 
• Soft Skills
  • Team leadership and mentorship, cross-disciplinary communication, problem solving, feedback incorporation, iterative development, time management, adaptability in remote/hybrid environments
• Languages
  • English (fluent), Spanish (fluent)