Karen Mangum

2190 Camino De Los Robles
Menlo Park, CA 94025
650.926.9902
karen@mangum.org
karen_mangum@yahoo.com

Professional History:

Nov 2002 - Mar 2003: Catalytic, Inc. - Private Contract

I helped a tiny start-up with their first website and promotional materials. I designed and set up a website and templates to cover their basic sales, marketing and promotional needs. I also designed and printed a set of product information datasheets, a complete set of icons to be used with the software (program and desktop icons), and several alternate company logos.

Nov 2001 - March 2002: Juniper Networks, Inc.

Micro Magic, Inc. was purchased by Juniper Networks, Inc. in November, 2000.

My responsibilities at Juniper Networks included maintaining the Micro Magic Tools documentation, tutorials, training materials, guides and website. This included converting all MMT documents and the MMT website into Juniper Networks standardized templates to conform with company standards, and incorporating new features as they were developed.

I was also responsible for internal group documents and internal group webpages. These internal documents organized and localized information, manuals, design guides, etc. which were to be used by the group in developing new technologies and products.

Feb 1998 - Nov 2001: Micro Magic, Inc.

Micro Magic, Inc. was a small company providing custom VLSI chips and VLSI design software. I was initially hired as a contractor to work on user manuals for the company's major software product. Programmer's notes and descriptions were converted into lay-English, and put into a standardized document template using FrameMaker/UNIX.

Eventually my duties expanded to incorporate not only software documentation, but printed and on-line interactive user manuals and tutorials. Documentation sets were several hundred pages long, for two major and two minor layout-and-design software programs, as well as several other informational guides, tutorials and references.

I helped create the MMI logo and corporate packaging.

I designed and maintained the Micro Magic, Inc. (MMI) website. I created all graphics, (screen snapshots to custom artwork), website layouts and templates, and implementation in HTML (code written for UNIX-based systems). Content was provided by various groups within the company (marketing, engineering, etc.). My responsibilities also included uploading new content and features, and maintaining all internal and external on-line documentation.

I was also responsible for trade shows and demonstrations. These duties included designing the MMI booth for the Design Automation Conference (DEC), generating all engineering promotional graphics and illustrations and getting these reproduced, and making all arrangements relating to the booth and trade shows.

Apr 1997 - Feb 1998: Fujitsu Software Corporation:

My primary duties here were creating animations of 3D human-body "Avatars" using commercially available mesh models. This included refining texture maps and palette to conform to current product limitations, and testing mesh-mapping of current artwork for replaceable heads.

I was also responsible for writing, editing, and illustrating the user manual for a customized sprite-editing and -animation software package. This software and manual were part of the primary tools for clients intending to build and run their own worlds using Fujitsu's technology.

I also trained users and in-house personnel in the editing/animation software.

Apr 1997 - Feb 1998: Individual Private Commissions

I focussed on the creation and animation of 3D, non-human Avatars for use in on-line Virtual Communities. These individual commissions include a low polygon-count wireframe model with minimal texture-mapping for use with a real-time rendering engine, and very high-polygon count animated models to be displayed using 2D snapshots (video-style).

I met with the client and generated concept sketches of the characters, which were then translated into a simple 3D model for approval before beginning sophisticated modelling and animation.

Feb 1997 - Apr 1997: Electric Communities:

I was primarily responsible for generation and animation of 2D human-body Avatars for a Virtual Community project. Each Avatar was composed of multiple layers for modularity and interchangeability, with animation of their various activities limited to the fewest frames possible.

I assumed management duties for an out-of-house contract art company. My duties included art-directing the Avatars' development, meeting with the artists on the project, assigning tasks and reviewing work, as well as training in animation techniques for our needs.

May 1995 - Jan 1997: Fujitsu Software Corporation:

My duties at Fujitsu concentrated on the design, creation and complete animation of 2D human-body Avatars for WorldsAway On-Line project. This groundbreaking on-line community required multiple stage, realistic animations of everyday activities.

Each Avatar required numerous animations for these specific activities in front, side and rear views. I created three different male-female human pairs. Currently, the pair of Avatars completed early 1996 are among the most popular body types, especially the male. The most current animations were not yet processed when I left.

I was the only human-body Avatar animator for this term.

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Animation for Video Games

Oct 1995 - Jan 1996: Sega of America:

Worked on clean -up and correction of hero animations for Sega game "XPERTS". SGI-rendered images needed extensive retouching and smoothing to render them useful for limitations of the intended platform. Also necessitated correcting errors in anatomy, movement, and sizing due to poor initial kinetic modeling.

Jan 1995 - Apr 1995: Clearwater Software:

Created tilemapped backgrounds for Michael Jordan Basketball game, using TUME tile editing software. This was a conversion from Sega Genesis to GameGear.

Jul 1994 - Mar 1995: Digital Delirium:

Main Character animations and 32x32 tiled backgrounds, for Atari Jaguar game based on "Tiny Toons" television cartoon series. All artwork and animations had to conform to studio style-sheets. I converted the animations into computer format from their original hand-drawn cells. Backgrounds were very large, reflected specific television episodes, and included tiled animations and small incidental sprites.

Dec 1993 - Jul 1994: Accolade:

Project "Fireteam Rogue" - worked on conversions of tiled backgrounds from Sega format to Super Nintendo format.

Project "Juggernauts" - worked on initial backgrounds for first three levels of game.

Oct 1991 - Apr 1994: Electronic Arts:

Project "Ring of Doom", a Sega Genesis game based on JRR Tolkein's Lord of the Rings trilogy. A major undertaking, I was responsible for game and level design, and design, layout, and implementation of all backgrounds and primary background sprites and tile animations.

Oct 1991 - Mar 1995: Additional small projects, such as title screens, for the above mentioned companies and others, on systems ranging from Amiga to GameGear.