Dario Dinatale

- Workstation Pic
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Summary of what I specialize in: 3d Modeling, Mapping, Animation, Unwrapping/Skinning, Sound Design, Concept Painting, Reference-Gathering, Concept Art, and Architectural and Fashion Concepts. Also fluent in Photography, Cinematography, Video Editing, Game Design, and Writing (books, articles, screenplays, scripts), having written a 250,000 word novel (Harry Potter size), and close to 2 million words total in all written material (currently working on a second novel).

Work History: I don't actually "work" (I'm a freelance projectician, "working" from home) but was offered an all-in-one artist position at Psyonix (a small developer that contributed to Gears of War, Unreal Tournament 3, and Unreal Tournament 2004) for an Xbox Live Arcade game.
At one point, I was going to make video tutorials on Adobe Audition (sound design program) for the website of Layers Magazine (Adobe stuff), but declined, so I could focus on my projects.

Email:
dario@deefrag.com
(pretty-please no "just to chat" emails. Wayyy too busy.)

Writing

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Technical Experience | Wrote a 250,000 word novel, and presently working on a second. Have written nearly 2-million words total in my career, including: novels, film screenplays & scripts (not feature-length), game design documents (which are game screenplays), software design documentation, short stories, poems, and in-game mission lore.

Said Experience | Extremely comfortable writing anything you can read... minus text-books, license agreements, and corporate press releases [vomits]. Anything half-interesting that you can read.

Photography




- My Flickr Photos
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Technical Experience | Full understanding of photography, composition, lens optics, wireless flash systems, soft-boxes, lighting, contrast, and yes, Photoshop. I shoot people (whether portraits or freestyle), landscapes, night-shooting, animals, urban, and frequently use a green-screen to blend photography with computer graphics.
[example: a composite (blend) of 4 photos, plus tons of Photoshop painting and effects]

Said Experience | If you hand me a camera and ANY kind of photography equipment, I will hand you pictures.

3d Studio Max 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 2008, 2009, 2010


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Technical Experience | Modeling, Unwrapping / Skinning, Rendering

Said Experience | Extremely comfortable with all versions of 3dsMax, capable of learning the most complex methods and tools in a single day, and heavily accustomed to content creation blended with other apps.

Adobe Photoshop 4, 5, 6, 7, CS, CS2, CS3, CS4, CS5


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Technical Experience | Deep Knowledge of PS, years of experience in all fields, and daily use for every topic imaginable, including creation of high-quality displacement-based normal maps for unwrapped 3d models.

Said Experience | My grave will say R.I.P. on it. Rest In Photoshop.

Adobe Audition & General Sound Design

- Gunreal Sound Demo MP3
- Thief Sound Demo MP3
- The Dark Sketch (12-minute film)
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Technical Experience | Advanced Knowledge of Adobe Audition, creating all areas of sound for games and film. Was going to create sound design video tutorials for the website of Adobe's "Layers" Magazine, but declined (to focus on my work).

Said Experience | Passionate about excellence in sound design, constructing all manner of sounds (including ambient music) by reworking, mixing, very heavy general manipulation, and even compositing select frequencies of multiple sounds to create entirely new ones, at film-quality, often with little or no resemblance to the original source audio. My sound design is comparable to the best of the best in both film and games, in quality, style, appeal, and compatibility with the theme. My sound design for the Gunreal mod matches or exceeds the quality of nearly all current and next-gen video games.

Sound Design Philosophy | Could write a book on the philosophy of sound design, covering the theory of artistic sound design, how to create a stunning atmosphere, defining and sticking to styles, working with stock audio, and making it all take over the audience's imagination, which brings the overall presentation to levels unachievable by high quality sound effects alone.

Adobe Premiere & General Video Production


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Technical Experience | Good knowledge of nearly all aspects of Premiere. Created a 12-minute independent film, controlling 100% of technical process, including editing (in Premiere), cinematography, grading, compositing, sound, and computer animation.

Said Experience | Good understanding of all elements of Premiere, and very comfortable/experienced with the entire process of film-making, from acting to directing, writing, and delivering a message more powerfully by way of highly selective editing. Simply put, movie-making is my friend.

Hammer (Half-Life 2)



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Experience | Solid experience with all aspects of Hammer, and author of DM_Plaza17 (a large, 5-star voted DM and TDM map, constructed in 10 days)

Said Experience | Learning Hammer while building Plaza17 was a christening ordeal that has left me extremely comfortable with Hammer, and began my fruitful journey into the Source engine. Today, I can make beyond retail-quality maps in an extremely short time, without the additional cleanup-time of optimization, as my knowledge of the engine, entities, and theory of Source mapping has reached "the comfort zone".

Author of DM_Plaza17
- Voted 5 stars on FilePlanet (both versions; beta and final. Both posted on Half-Life 2 front page)
- Voted 9.7/10 on FileFront
- Voted 5 stars in all categories on Map Factory (gameplay, design, originality, ambience, framerate)

Unreal Editor


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Technical Experience | Deep knowledge of UnrealEd, including creation and management of packages, shaders, and all forms of custom content.

Said Experience | Extremely comfortable with UnrealEd, with years of experience. My two main maps are two of the most atmospheric UT2004 maps ever made.

Author of:
ONS-Torlanights (night-time conversion of ONS-Torlan)
ONS-Dreamus (desert dust-storm, made to learn Unreal Ed in-depth)
ONS-Dreamus2 (a "Make Something Unreal Contest" winner)
ONS-Dreamus2SE (atmospheric effects exercise - wind/smoke/clouds/dust/fire)

Dromed (Thief 2)


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Experience (general) | Conceptualized and constructed a visual and audio-heavy Thief 2 mission (never completed), with a dense story, gameplay spanning three nights, carefully done atmosphere, and graphics and creative invention of effects that were new to the Thief engine. Using simple methods of exploitation, I was able to fake such foreign effects as Volumetric Lighting, Volumetric Shadows (even in the shape of a character walking through fog), very realistic particle systems (fire, smoke, and water), and circular sprites (which look like crystal balls) suspended by 3d ropes in such a way as to make the sprite look 3d when viewed from any angle. Also hashed together severeal new objects by salvaging existing objects (such as using kitchen cutting boards to build bent-looking wooden rails, which was very novel at the time, and almost unseen in Thief)
Technical achievements: (click links to see examples)
- [first time any volume lighting / volume fog effects were seen in Thief engine]
- [these sprites look 3d and natural no matter what angle you view them from]
- [this suspended orb is a sprite, looking perfectly 3d as you rotate around]
- [first time realistic fire was seen in Thief]
- [bent, natural-looking rails made of stretched kitchen cutting boards]
- [first time a very realistic forest was portrayed in Thief]
- [fake volumetric fog covers the ceiling]
- [partially-completed hall with chandelier suspended by blow-gun darts, with upside-down gold waste-basket on top, and nearby rails made of stretched pen-holders, with shrunken waste-baskets on top]

"Faceless" (unreleased) Screenshots & Sounds Praise:
- "Thats genius work of magnificent ART" (quote by dealasteal)
- "Those are phantasmagoric, they are like "The Inverted Manse" meets "Calendra's Legacy" meets "The Seventh Crystal" (quote by ShadowWolf, comparing Faceless to the three most popular Thief 2 missions at the time)
- "...seriously, that mission looks AWESOME!" (van Hellsing)
- "Just one word, Fantastic." (azrarhn)
- "The lighting especially looks absolutely brilliant..." (Tomi)
- "Amazing.... I absolutely love it!!" (sterlino)
- "No need to say more! Amazing graphics, atmospheric environments and I love the music. All look at it, this is art." (The Phantom)
- "With such beautiful FMs under development, who needs Thief III?" (G'len)
- "Unbelievable atmosphere, unique architecture, good texture use overall..." (Renzatic)
- "Simply breathtaking!" (Izeman)
- "I am so looking forward to playing this FM (fan mission). I have been awing over it far more then any upcoming FM for months now and I think I am sure that this will be my most favorite FM to play of all time." (Dark Ghost Lord)

Web & Software Design
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Technical Experience | Years of experience fleshing out website interfaces in Photoshop, then building them up in Expression Web (FrontPage) or Dreamweaver, based on those concepts.
Made Deefrag.com, Alphaila.com, Zietanus.com (unfinished), and Gunreal.com.
Also see this practice template.

Said Experience | Passionate about all forms of website and program interface design, and could write a book on its theory.

	- A Photoshop concept of the Omega Theme, for WordPress blogs. After completion, this Photoshop concept was passed to a web programmer, to be stripped down, and turned into a useable theme. (final product - still unfinished, until I find a programmer)
	- A Photoshop concept of a make-believe Unreal Editor 3 (Unreal Engine 2 version), originally based on a screenshot of the actual editor (looks like this). This is basically a wish-list of features and layout.
	- A Photoshop concept of Gunreal's shopping interface. Like the Omega Theme, the final working version was created using this as the source for everything.
	- A Photoshop concept of a make-believe Unreal Editor 4 feature, called Unreal Classroom.
	- A Photoshop concept of an early interface idea for a somewhat RPG-style Gunreal game-mode (back when it was planned for Half-Life 2).
	- A Photoshop concept of an idea for Windows with dual start-menus. (link to description page)