My name is Eric Dziurzynski and I am a digital artist. In 1995 I saw Toy Story and immediately knew that I wanted to work in 3d Graphics. Ever since then I have been doing anything I could to get into the 3d graphics field. Outside of my passion for art and 3d graphics, I enjoy playing sports like soccer, softball, and touch-football. I am also a fierce competitor in foosball and darts and I love video games & movies.
Since December 2007 I have been freelancing for all sorts of companies doing 3d animation and modeling. Most recently I have been freelancing for ABC News making animations of things like buildings collapsing during earthquakes and the Freedom Tower being built for Good Morning America. I've also done character design, modeling, rigging and animation
for characters on the Multiverse Virtual Worlds platform. It's pretty similar to developing for
most traditional game engines. My clients include ABC, Sovoz, Metaversatility, Novamente
& NextPert..
My last full-time job was working as a machinimist for the Electric Sheep Company making videos from in-game footage. I had the opportunity to work closely with writers, digital actors, voice-over talent and sound and music professionals to create a wide array of different machinima projects. I served as the director, editor and virtual cameraman for almost all the machinima projects for MTV"s Virtual Worlds. Most of the time I was the person scheduling filming sessions, keeping track of assets and ensuring we hit our deadlines as well..
I would say the most noteworthy was a 13 part series of 30-second tv spots that aired on MTV during new episodes of 'The Hills' in the fall of 2007. They were narrative-based videos about different characters that lived in MTV's Virtual Worlds. It was a great project and really pushed the limits of what was possible with machinima in this environment.
I also worked on some orientation videos for 'The L-Word' in Second Life as well as hosted
my own show, covering events in MTV's virtual worlds. This turned into a bi-weekly event recap show that was aired inside MTV's Virtual Worlds and showcased on their 2d website. These are just some of the many projects I worked on but I also made a couple of machinima music videos to promote machinima contests within vMTV's user-base and made some sizzle reels to highlight sponsorship by Pepsi, AT&T, Ford Modeling and Secret Deodorant within vMTV.
After graduate school I worked for Proton Media for almost a year. I was the only 3d modeler
in the company and worked primarily as a 3d Artist for the ProtoSphere application. I cleaned-up and optimized previously out-sourced work and created new assets for the application. I made new models and textures for classrooms and doctor's offices. Mostly desks, chairs, tables, plants, flowers, trees and such. I also created some new characters
for use with their motion capture data. I worked within strict polygon limits (1800 triangles)
and maintained
a moving jaw, multiple fingers, blinking eyes and round eyeballs that could look around. I also
helped establish interchangeable body parts for the characters and different body types and ethnicities. I worked closely with the programming team and also found an excellent outsourcing option for Proton Media in Hungary which I oversaw and managed on all outsourced projects.
I attended the University of Pennsylvania for both my undergraduate and graduate studies because I felt that Penn had comprehensive programs for learning about the 3d graphics industry. As an undergrad, I started in the Digital Media Design program within the computer science department. DMD offered me the chance to take courses in fine arts, communications as well as in computer science.
Although I enjoyed this program, I wanted a stronger concentration in Fine Arts and
so transferred to the School of Design in my senior year and finished with a BFA degree
and a minor in Computer Science.
In September of 2004, I enrolled in Penn's new masters program in Computer Graphics and Game Technology. I am proud to say that I was one of a handful of students to graduate from this new program, which taught me about all aspects of the computer game industry. In addition to programming and art courses, I also got to take an entrepreneurship class. At the end of the program, we had the opportunity to work on a short playable game demo using the Gamebryo game engine.
I've also taken a couple of continuing education classes at NYU to focus and hone my work
in both Digital Character Animation and Storyboarding.