Tamara Johnston

• Drive production of 16 class 2 casino games per year with a team of 20 artists, animators, technical artists, audio designers, engineers, quality analysts and team leads
• Create complex Jira templates and dynamic Smartsheet postmortem templates
• Conduct game planning meetings, kickoffs, standups, sprint planning, game playthroughs and postmortems
• Identify, document and assign out bugs and tasks using Excel and Jira
• Develop game schedules from start to finish using Smartsheet
• Facilitate needs of each discipline; mitigate blockers; identify and address gaps in process
• Present monthly milestone updates for key stakeholders
• Document meetings, processes and standards on Confluence
• Train interns on game development

Co-developed and implemented a production process which increased team efficiency from 16 mobile games per year to 50. Successfully transferred process to main creative division, increasing overall company efficiency to 180 games per year.

• Hired, trained and directed Art Production Leads while overseeing company-wide creative production processes
• Harmonized communications between internal and external development teams
• Delineated all nuances of game choreography to artists, engineers and quality analysts using PowerPoint and Confluence
• Mentored artists, animators, and technical artists in USA and India as team increased from 2 heads to 20, and production increased from 4 apps to 7
• Upheld artist and animator schedules in Excel from concept phase to game delivery, providing frequent quality checks and feedback via Confluence and Jira
• Constructed wireframes, storyboards and asset lists for all mobile games using PowerPoint, Excel, Jira, Confluence and Perforce
• Provided daily artistic and technical direction on art assets and animations
• Conducted art and animation reviews with senior management
• Established and upheld Perforce user etiquette
• Ensured legal requirements were met for each game
• Documented all art processes using Confluence

Commanded mobile division of 15 engineers, technical artists, artists and quality analysts in USA and India, developing the first 16 from-scratch games for the Cashman Casino mobile slot app.

• Liaison between stakeholders, art, animation, audio, technical art, quality assurance, math and engineering teams
• Go-to resource for art and animation direction from creative and technical standpoints, with a focus on improving workflow quality and efficiency
• Conducted and documented bi-weekly meetings on mobile development tasks, schedules and issues
• Hosted and chronicled game reviews and game planning meetings; informed USA and India teams of all resulting change requests and bug reports
• Administered tasks and timelines for all games using MS Office, JIRA, Perforce
• Cleaned, packaged and delivered artwork and audio to offshore teams
• Led quality control on all Mobile/Facebook products

• Converted 30+ slots games from land-based to Facebook/iOS using After Effects, Photoshop and Tortoise SVN, reducing game size from 2 - 3 GB to 5 - 15 MB

• Hired and/or mentored 2 in-house and 7 remote Technical Artists on proprietary company processes

• Harmonizer between Tech Artists, Engineers, Artists, Quality Analysts, Audio and executive management
• Disseminated updates to company procedures and technologies to Mobile and Land-based Technical Art teams
• Worked closely with artists to maintain quality and organization in file deliveries