Hello, and welcome.

Thank you for taking the time to review my submission.

I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce myself to you, and tell you a little about who Travis Vroman is.

I began my road originally on the path of traditional artwork, having gone to the Middle School of the Arts and Dreyfoos School of the arts. There, I was able to get a solid understanding of the elements of art, including color, emphasis, form, structure, layout and design. For many years, I have loved playing video games of all kinds. Around the early point in high school, I developed an interest in making them. In 2001, I purchased a license to the Torque Game Engine from GarageGames, which further increased my desires to make games. When World of Warcraft was released, I was so amazed at all you could do in the game that it finalized my decision to pursue the development of great games, in particular, World of Warcraft. For me, working at Blizzard would like be a dream that becomes reality. I combined my past art studies with that of the technical side of game development when I went to school, fine-tuned my skills, and later earned a Bachelor of Science in Game Art and Design. During my time in school, I was involved in many independent projects, one of which I helped develop the Material Editor in the upcoming Torque 3D game engine.

I am actually applying for a few positions that I feel I fit well. First and foremost I am interested in both the 3D Environment Artist and/or the Senior 3D Environment Artist positions. One of my strongest abilities is creating environment assets and placing them in the world to make scenes believable. Nothing is worse than looking at a level full of perfectly-aligned crates, tables and chairs. Nobody positions objects perfectly in real life, so why should an environment be any different? It is the attention to the little details that counts. The half-full mug sitting on the table, the pile of rubble formed at the bottom of a destroyed object or building. Even something as simple as a waving flag can make a huge difference in contrast to a static one. I firmly believe that with my attention to detail and skills to create real time assets that I fit this position well.

I also believe that my skill set matches the Dungeon Artist position listed on the website as well. While I have the skill set to create environments, I also have a strong understanding of what would and would not work in a dungeon setting. For example, this might include laying out a boss room so that the target’s line of sight does not become an issue for ranged players, making a large enough hit box for 10 melee players to be able to fight a boss without stacking on each other, or creating hazards in a dungeon that make fights harder, but not impossible.

Again, thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to review my submission, and I look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Travis Vroman
Environment/Technical Artist
http://www.travisvroman.com/blizzard
Email: travisvroman@gmail.com