Екатерина Васильева

Junior 3D Artist with 2+ years of hands-on experience creating production-ready 3D assets for games. Experienced in character and environment art, hand-painted and PBR texturing, high-poly sculpting, retopology, UVs, rigging, facial rigs, animation, cinematics, VFX integration, and real-time optimization. Experienced with both Unreal Engine 5 and Unity, with a strong understanding of the complete game art pipeline from modeling and texturing to rigging, animation, scene assembly, and engine integration.

Have worked as both an individual contributor and art lead on multidisciplinary indie game projects, taking ownership of visual direction, asset production, and art pipeline organization.

Art Lead / 3D Artist Strategy game at Hunter's Guild (2025-06 – Present)

• Led the art direction and 3D production pipeline for the project, establishing the visual style and coordinating asset creation.
• Created a complete playable environment in Unity, including a world map and a large set of unique hand-painted environment assets.
• Designed, modeled, sculpted, retopologized, UV-unwrapped, and textured two main character models in Blender.
• Created character textures using both PBR and hand-painted workflows.
• Built custom facial rigs and full character rigs for animation.
• Animated both characters and integrated character animation into cinematic cutscenes.
• Created a custom monster character and prepared it for animation and real-time rendering.
• Produced cinematic combat sequences featuring a running rat, bow and crossbow attacks, character animation, and VFX.
• Created and animated environmental assets for cinematics, including furniture, tables, chairs, and other scene props.
• Built and staged cinematic environments in Unity, combining 3D assets, animation, lighting, and VFX.

Art Lead / 3D Artist Strategy game at Cirriadus (2024-08 – 2025-06)

• Created 6 production-ready character models with custom rigs and 40+ unique animations.
• Integrated character models, rigs, and animations into Unreal Engine 5.
• Implemented animation State Machines for gameplay characters.
• Modeled 100+ environment assets, including organic and hard-surface props, buildings, vehicles, and vegetation.
• Created animated interactive objects using blend shapes.
• Developed and integrated Foliage Systems for a stylized cloud forest environment.
• Created custom shaders and real-time materials in Unreal Engine 5.
• Optimized a large seamless environment with dynamic lighting, maintaining stable performance around 120 FPS.
• Created and maintained GDD documentation and technical specifications.
• Prepared technical tasks for programmers, game designers, narrative designers, sound designers, and VFX artists.
• Organized references, backlogs, sprint plans, and task tracking throughout production.
• Created project presentations and represented the team at HSE Design and Game Slice events.
• Award: Best Visual Style — Game Future Fest 2025.

3D Artist — Boomer Shooter at Morphing (2024-01 – 2024-03)

• Created 4 unique enemy character models with custom rigs and 20 unique animations.
• Sculpted and animated weapon assets for the main character.
• Implemented seamless transitions between 5 weapon configurations using additional rigging and blend shapes.
• Modeled and textured 4 combat arenas and interior environment assets.
• Optimized assets and environments for Unreal Engine 5 real-time rendering.
• Achieved stable performance around 120 FPS on a large seamless environment with dynamic lighting.

3D Artist — Horror Game at HELLMART (2024-09 – 2024-12)

• Created and prepared character assets for a psychological horror game.
• Set up Mixamo-based animation rigs for 15 NPC characters.
• Created 10+ horror-oriented character animations using blend shapes.
• Sculpted, retopologized, textured, rigged, and animated the main character.
• Prepared character assets for real-time implementation.

Bachelor's Degree in Game Design – HSE University (2026-06)

Immersive Technopreneurship – Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (2025-08)

Fine Arts – B.V. Ioganson Academic Art Lyceum (2016-09 – 2022-05)