Bradford Hillam

Technical Artist, Cinematic Design & Story Development

Cinematic Designer & CInematic Technical Artist

I'm a Cinematic Designer with a focus in technical art, scripting, storyboarding and development. I’ve worked with studios like Ascendant Studios, Telltale Games, 2K Sports & Pocket Gems


My most recent work was with Ascendant Studios doing CInematic Technical Art for Immortals of Aveum. With a focus on:

  • Initial setup of cinematics in sequencer, implementing animations, cameras, including creating level instances, triggers, and actors.

  • Planning and implementing transitions between gameplay and cinematics

  • Author cameras and actor performances for interactive dialog

  • Collaborate with level design to manage actors inside cinematics that transition to/from gameplay

  • Be the go-to person for Animation, Audio, VFX, and Lighting to assist them in creating great scenes in game.

  • Communicating closely with Level Design and Art to ensure that cinematic staging needs are accommodated.

  • Working with the Art Director and Lead Animator to faithfully execute the Director’s vision for each cinematic.

  • Identifying and fixing bugs in cinematics, proposing workflows and methodologies to speed up and bulletproof the production process.


I also work in preproduction cinematics, illustrations, short form writing, and animatics. I've worked on creative projects ranging from lead storyboard artist for a children's storybook app, to writing/storyboarding/directing a Borderlands 2 student animation, to editing videos for small projects and trailers.

I believe the best resource is a willingness to produce good content and the drive to see it though. I love creative challenges and working with projects that require thinking laterally to develop unique solutions.

Cinematic reel for Bradford Hillam. Contains scenes from Tales from the Borderlands Ep. 1, Tales from The HQ: Loose Canon Claptrap, & Max's Adventure animatic.

Here is the full version of Loose Cannon Claptrap. An animated short that I wrote, storyboarded, pitched to the writing team at Gearbox Software, and directed. The animation was graciously done by the students at the Academy of Art University