Website powered by
Jaakko Saari
Jaakko Saari
Freelance CG Artist, Project Associate Professor at DHU
Yokohama, Japan

Summary

I am senior Environment Artist and Project Associate Professor at Digital Hollywood University in Tokyo.

I have created several photorealistic environments for virtual production and have lead larger teams to create Unreal Engine content, characters, fully custom metahumans and animations.

I am currently teaching Unreal Engine at Digital Hollywood University.

My previous employment includes work as Senior Environment artist for Territory Studio, Technical Artist for Adobe, 3D environment artist for BCN Visuals, VFX modeler for 3rd Films and many more.

Skills

3D ModelingDigital SculptingEnvironment ModelingTexturingArchitectural VisualizationLevel DesignPBR TexturingSubstanceFurniture modelingVirtual Production

Software proficiency

Substance 3D Designer
Substance 3D Designer
ZBrush
ZBrush
Blender
Blender
Substance 3D Painter
Substance 3D Painter
3DCoat
3DCoat
3ds Max
3ds Max
Maya
Maya

Reel

Productions

    • TV Production
      Home Invasion
    • Year
      2021
    • Role
      Environment Artist
    • Company
      3rd Films
    • Movie
      Leaving Earth
    • Year
      2015
    • Role
      Concept artist for Solar Sail Ship
    • Company
      Big Break Films

Experience

  • Founder at SonaGraf Co Ltd
    Yokohama, Japan
    December 2022 - Present

  • Senior Environment Artist at BCN Visuals
    Barcelona
    May 2022 - June 2024

  • Freelance Senior Environment Artist at Territory Studio
    London, United Kingdom
    September 2021 - December 2021

    I was freelance Senior Environment Artist for Territory Studio projects in end of 2021. It was very valuable experience and I got to learn a lot about Unreal Engine especially.

  • Technical Artist at Adobe
    Tokyo, Japan
    December 2019 - March 2020

    I helped to kickstart Substance sales for AEC companies in Japan as a demo artist and technical artist.

  • Freelance Environment Artist at 3rd Films
    Los Angeles, United States of America
    January 2019 - October 2021

    I have been working with Don Bitters and his company 3rd films as freelance Environment Artist for several years. I have been mainly focusing on real-time environments using Unreal Engine for Virtual Production. But also classic render engines such as V-Ray.

  • Environment Artist at Fireframe Oy
    Helsinki, Finland
    December 2020 - February 2021

    I was freelance environment artist at Fireframe.