How Can My Experience Complement Your Team?

Hey there,
I’m Zachary Morningstar and welcome to my portfolio page.

Here you will find a collection of projects, studio experience, my associated skill sets, and case studies surrounding my favorite creative endeavors.

With over 9 years of decentralized work experience I’m here for your current and future project aspirations. Feel free to reach out and we can talk about your current project needs. Bare minimum, if I’m not your guy, I probably know someone in the industry who is. I’d love to get you to where you need to be.

Contact | ZacharyMMorningstar@gmail.com

Resume

Project Management & Funding

Working With Decentralized Teams

Over the past 9 years I have both led, and been a part of numerous decentralized teams. From Switzerland, United States, Poland, Finland, to Portugal. I’ve personally set up collaborative work flows and environments, spanning anything from perforce servers, github repositories, Trello, Noted Pro, Slack, and more.

Being able to both serve files in a collective repository while simultaneously planning, tracking, assigning work has been pivotal in my personal and client work.

Need someone to either set up a collaborative team / work environment or desire someone who can join your established setup with ease? Then feel free to reach out.

Acquiring Funding

I know what it takes to seek out and pitch content for future funding, and I have the track record that reflects that. Let’s see how my skills can be useful on your team.

I’ve been successful in securing funding from multiple sources for my commercial projects. Starting with a successful Kickstarter, and an early access VR game developed on Vive kits (courtesy of Valve), and most recently I wrote, submitted, and secured a grant from Epic Game’s for my game, Ira Act 1: Pilgrimage. Since then I’ve picked up a sponsorship from AMD who has been gracious enough to provide me with high end PC development hardware.

View game funding case study

Documentation

I’ve created documentation for various companies and projects, including but not limited to, company wide Blueprint coding best practices for Siili Auto and Ford. This documentation was extensive and was decimated via writing, images, and videos, with a focus on readability, maintainability, and optimization.

Is your team in need of clean and clear documentation?

Game Development

Game Design

Over the years I’ve gained extensive experience in both game design, system programming, advanced blueprint development, and game engine tools in Unreal Engine. I’ve created and tested various games for both VR, PC, and ported to consoles.

Ira Act 1: Pilgrimage is by far my favorite, and well known game project. I created the entire experience from the ground up. It was no easy task, but it was a labor of love. I created a story engine within Unreal to facilitate all my game play actions within a framework that made scripting scenes a snap. Feel free to check out the Ira Act 1 Pilgrimage case study for more info, and in depth breakdowns of what has been created, and how that could be leveraged in your current projects.

View game design case study

Tool Creation

I’ve created numerous Unreal Engine based tools to the extent that it’s hard to keep track of them all. From the Noted Pro collaboration tool, Brightroom’s pre-visualization plugin, to powerline spline tools featured by folks from Ubisoft, and incorporated in Epic Games example content. For more information on tools I’ve created feel free to check out my tools portfolio page. [Dedicated page coming soon.]

Real Time Virtual Productions & Simulations

Virtual Production

I’ve created a number of training videos based on simulated environments in Unreal Engine. My favorite example being the Silver lake Dune Buggy Rental Training Video in my portfolio below.

I had the privilege of attending Epic Game’s first Unreal World Building Fellowship. I got to learn alongside some of the industry’s most talented individuals in the field. Learning to use Lumen and Nanite to produce performative stunning results ready for the virtual stage.

Silver Lake Project

Epic Games World Building fellowship