Experience

• Senior Character Artist at Phoenix Labs

  United States

  September 2023 - Present

• CG Character Designer at Disney Animation

  Los Angeles

  July 2022 - August 2023

  Mikel worked with Art Directors and Character Designers to create Visual Development sculptures of our characters early in development. Reviewed models from our vendor studio and delivered notes on best representing our characters for production, both written and actual 3D reference files for development. Mikel also worked with layout and advanced scouting to help facilitate location and camera placement to push overall cinematography.

• CG Character Designer at Netflix Animation

  Los Angeles

  February 2020 - July 2022

  I worked with Animation Directors and Production Designers on many Series and Feature animation productions to help develop characters, working to bring these visual designs to life. I also had the opportunity to push and shape the overall vision of some projects depending on the production's needs and visual style language.

• Character Artist at Stalwart Games

  Westlake Village, United States of America

  August 2019 - February 2020

  Created high fidelity stylized characters from hard-surfaced to organic in design while having the ability to work independently with minimal supervision. Collaborating with the Visual Development team directly to ensure the vision of the characters matches the original design intent.

• Character Artist at Ironklad Studios

  West Hollywood, United States of America

  May 2019 - June 2019

  Worked with a small in-house team starting from ideation to a fully realized character asset. Collaborated directly with the art director and high-level international team across multiple disciplines creating character assets and hand-painted textures and maps.

• Character Artist at MedStar Sitel

  Washington DC, United States of America

  January 2018 - January 2019

  Virtual and augmented reality are becoming the next generation of workforce-related tools. Mikel helped pioneer training materials for tomorrow’s workforce of surgeons helping to develop life-like experiences within the OR. Mikel utilized principles of design fundamentals and anatomy to deliver technically clean models for production.

• Senior Artist at Dig-it! Games LLC

  Bethesda , United States of America

  October 2013 - February 2018

  Mikel worked with a philanthropic archaeologist and founder of educational videogames to change the way kids experience learning through gameplay using a small budget to encourage engagement. In addition, Mikel spearheaded the direction of the studio's design aesthetic and language for many projects in development, including the studio's most popular title Roterra. Mikel also acted as the bridge between production and leadership.

  Co-creating the studio's most critically acclaimed title, Roterra - Flip the Fairytale, featured #1 in Apple's App Store in over 17 countries for puzzle games.