Jared Delamora

ANALYZING
PRODUCTIVITY

During this time, California set out its lockdown mandate and the studio had to transition to work from home. A month later, the directors and executives requested productivity updates from the art department’s.
Using ShotGrid, I collected data from previous and current projects and analyzed the duration of each completed task. This data presented a higher percentage of productivity than our previous projects. To understand why that was the case, I went ahead asked each team member their thoughts on the matter. It was concluded, due to the lockdown, team members had to be at home longer than previous years and many of them opt-in to work longer hours. Even though productivity was higher than previous years, I wanted to make sure our team contained good moral and avoid any team burn-out. To do so, weekly social meetings took place to keep moral up and outsourced some tedious tasks to prevent any burn-out.

ONBOARDING
VENDORS

While onboarding vendors we ran into a problem. The machines we initially sent out to the our outsource teams could not get delivered. The machines were crucial to getting work done since they contained proprietary software. I consulted with the Director of IT and the idea of utilizing virtual machines (VM’s) was mentioned.
For testing purposes, I went ahead consulted with our UI Technical Artist to help setup some of our team members with VMs.
Meanwhile, I communicated with our IT department to see if it’s possible to get our vendors setup with VM’s, and if so, how long would the setup take. I also consulted with our legal team, to make sure our team isn’t bypassing any legal matters. After getting the info from IT and getting the green light from legal, I went ahead created the initial documentation for our vendors so they can begin to utilize the VM’s. After onboarding the vendors with a tester VM, our UI Technical Artist took over the process and continued setting up VMs for our vendors.
This process was a great solution for any new onboarding vendor. Of course, with any new technology added to the workflow, brings up new challenges, but the end result gave us the solution we needed.

EXTERNAL
TEAMS

Communicated with external (VC) teams to help implement art into their platforms i.e. last gen consoles. Since our game releases to multiple platforms – some art needs to stay consistent through-out all platforms. Our department was considered the “Features Team”, any new art created by us may need to be passed down to other external teams. To help alleviate any confusion and help us communicate with other teams, I setup a slack channel to help communicate any changes. I also sent out email notices with updates to the teams respective leadership.

VENDORS
ON A DIFFRENT
TIMEZONE

We had various vendors located internationally with different time zone.
This caused our internal team to sometimes have communication problems and at times
the vendors productivity would drop due to response time. I went ahead onboard the vendors to our slack workspace with a limited vendors account. The vendors team also had access to our ShotGrid project with limited access. This helped our internal team and the vendors to communicate efficiently. This also helped me keep track vendors tasks and progress.

NBA2K21

FEATURED
TRAILERS

Below are the official trailers released for the PS5 and XBOX X/S versions of the game.