Dani Ferguson (She/They)

Weapons/Hardsurface Artist

Portland, OR, United States

Summary

My name is Dani Ferguson (She/They), I’m 30 years old, and I am a Weapons/Hard-surface Artist. My interests include playing online-games with my friends, working on my own personal 3D art and illustrative projects, cooking meals for my found family, and writing and running my Dungeons & Dragons campaign. I am self-motivated, excel at managing my own time and schedule, and I love collaborating with other people on projects to help bring creative worlds to life.

I spent the first five years of my career self-employed as a freelance 3D artist and illustrator using Maya, Substance Painter, and Clip Studio Paint and have learned the discipline required to manage my own time and schedule in order to meet the needs of my clients, and to advertise my own work and engage with potential clients.

During my time in college I began taking freelance jobs, first starting out as a generalist selling my 3D models on Artstation and Turbosquid. Not long after I was approached by the developer of Hot Dogs, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades (H3VR), RUST LTD. and they purchased a handful of my weapon models. Later that year I joined an indie studio called NOWWA to work as a weapons artist on their project, Bulletville. There, I worked with a small team of artists to help establish the project’s look and direction for weapons and vehicles and learned how to quickly iterate on models to create a modular weapon attachment system. My time there eventually came to an end when I entered an extended contract with RUST LTD. as a weapons artist on Hot Dogs, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades (H3VR). During my time with RUST LTD. I worked to create 3D models of various firearms varying from accurate depictions of modern day firearms to stylized pistols used as 3D tools to manipulate the environment.

On October 11th, 2022 I was approached by a recruiter from Lost Boys Interactive who invited me to apply for a position as a Junior Weapons Artist. After my interviews I was brought onto the team on December 5, 2022 working with Lost Boys Interactive’s team in co-developing Amazon Games’ New World. During my time there I learned how to incorporate Zbrush into my workflow, learned Amazon Games’ 3D weapons pipeline, and was responsible for creating weapon models and textures. One year later I received a promotion to Weapons Artist and had the additional responsibilities of helping establish the looks and materials for new weapon sets, providing data table entry for weapons, and helping with on boarding new weapons artists onto the team. While at Lost Boys Interactive we shipped New World’s first expansion Rise of the Angry Earth and worked on the upcoming release of New World: Aeternum. Unfortunately my time with Lost Boys Interactive ended on Sept 9th 2024 with another wave of layoffs.