Spark Unlimited · Activision · 2004
Lead Animator on Call of Duty: Finest Hour — the first console entry in the Call of Duty franchise. Three interwoven WWII campaigns following American, British, and Soviet soldiers through citizen soldier stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Released November 2004 on PS2, Xbox, and GameCube.
Call of Duty: Finest Hour — first console CoD, Spark Unlimited for Activision, 2004.
Official Trailer — Call of Duty: Finest Hour
Gameplay Trailer — in-game combat footage
American campaign — urban warfare in the streets of Aachen. The citizen soldier in the thick of battle.
Soviet campaign — the fight to retake Stalingrad. Sergeant Tanya Pavelovna leading the counter-assault.
British campaign — Edward Carlyle and the SAS across the North African and European theater.
Infantry combat — the grounded WWII action that defined the CoD franchise tone.
American campaign — featuring the 761st Tank Battalion "Black Panthers," the historic African American armor unit.
Citizen soldiers — ordinary people doing extraordinary things. The animation direction that defined Finest Hour's tone.
Animation · Character Production · 2003–2004
Led character animation and supervised the art team through the full production cycle. Character authenticity was central — each of the three playable protagonists needed distinct movement language reflecting their background and combat role. Built and managed the animation pipeline for the first console CoD production.
Chuck Walker — American soldier, one of three playable characters across the WWII campaigns.
Edward Carlyle — British SAS operative, North African theater campaign.
Tanya Pavelovna — Soviet soldier and one of gaming's early female WWII protagonists.
Sherman tank attack — concept art defining the large-scale WWII combat set pieces.
Aachen Theater — concept art for the German urban warfare campaign environments.
Concept art — the visual development grounding the game's WWII authenticity.
Press · 2004
Finest Hour received strong coverage at launch as the franchise's first console entry — validating the console translation of the PC original. Pages shown below are from the original Game Informer magazine publication.
Game Informer — Finest Hour coverage. Click to read all 5 pages.