When I turned 18, I simply left my Electronics studies in the middle of a course, without initially saying a word of it to my parents. I started to learn to draw and paint fulltime in a workshop in Angouleme and about a year later, started in a Game school called LISAA – when I purchased my first computer on my 19th birthday. It was a pretty difficult time, because I was learning computers, art and 3D. These subjects weren't like anything I had learnt in Electronics school and then there was the issue of money, which was a problem because life is very expensive when living in Paris. I had a student job and all, but after concentrating on 3D nonstop for three years, I got my first job in a Game company in 2005. And here we are.

I really enjoy working with other artists, whose style I like. I think it is more interesting to work in a team and continue to learn new tips from one another, than work alone. For example, work is completely different with a good 2D artist. I just enjoy it that much more, it's a very exciting process.

90% of my website shows my personal portfolio, I have not included the work experience from my time at F4 and Team17. I recently created two videos showing my MEL scripting and they include some of the work that I did for F4. The portfolio at samavan.com will give you an idea of the type of work I would like to create in a professional environment.

Going back to my time at F4 and Team 17, I continued to create 3D in my personal hours. I believe this to be very important, till you find the job that is right for you.


A year ago, I worked for a group called Studio Siesta, making a lot of Japanese-stylized characters. But the working language was 100% Japanese and it was too overwhelming for my wife, translating all those emails to English and then mine back to Japanese …in technical terminology. Overall, it was very a good experience. It is one that I hope to have again when my knowledge of the Japanese language improves.

There are no the exact specifications for the iPhone since it all depends on the gameplay. But this list will help most 3D artists who are interested to start developing for the iPhone, have a better sense of what parameters they'll work under. If you already abide by these in your daily work, then the optimization is going 'easier' for everyone at the end. Optimization work is the last hard remaining chunk of the work.

Also on the subject of iPhone, a client will often ask if I can create animations. I have to rig and skin the character and then create a full list of animations (walk, run cycles, jump, etc.).


It was very new to me initially, but with training and motivation through all these new projects, it is possible to develop something awesome.

But doing all the rigging and exporting all those models and animations, you really need to create custom tools to speed up the workflow. Otherwise, you will quickly lose your time and money.

Imagine a character with 20 animation cycles, you need to extract the bones from the rig and then export the animation data directly from your scene, making sure to give the right name to your exported file that will go into the correct directory. Manually, this is very dangerous and boring work. But with MEL scripting, this is just one click's work. I would like to say a big thank you to Mr. Gilles Hoff from F4, for having taught me so much about MEL scripting. I think this is my current ultimate weapon working as a freelance 3D artist.

But tools creation do not stop here, once you know MEL, everything that the machine can create for you will ultimately become a script, activated by a simple button to click. I have customized Maya so much in that respect, that I think my version of Maya cannot be called Maya anymore…

And then as a freelancer, I first learned Quest 3D while developing an application for a Japanese client – a kind of house-viewer with a large set of options. And more recently, since last year, I've started to work with Unity because a lot of indie guys are using it to develop iPhone applications.

I'm hoping to find some time to do a tutorial on custom programming tools in Unity.

Once we found the Shuriken idea, it was time to decide on how many levels, characters, weapons, gameplay, backgrounds, etc. Then we had to consider things like what we were capable of doing and the amount of time we could put in -- making the game was purely dependent on all these factors.


For example, if I were to work on Shuriken fulltime, this would be about one and a half month of work for the 3D production. But I work on it during my free time, so it'll be about 6 months of production time before the release.


And as usual, there is the period at the end of a production that is spent on resolving bugs, and working on optimization… and then probably we'll end up adding a few extra features.

To start is very easy, but to continue and see it through, you need a lot of motivation.


On my side, more than half of the 3D has been created for the game, and it already looks like something fun. Work is heavier than I had expected at the beginning, but we are making good progress and the game is taking its course.

For Shuriken, a large environment with one 1024x1024 diffuse and one 1024x1024 lightmap was roughly one full week of work and then some…

For my clients, I have an Excel sheet that I send out every time, it is a list of my work with example prices. This makes it easier to understand the speed of work and the cost factor.

To give you an example, today you can probably go with more than 250 batches on a PC game. You can easily deal with a lot of textures, etc…
On the iPhone, this is kind of different.
There is lot of optimization work to be done at the end of the production. I try to create the entire background on one texture, all the GUI on one texture too. Characters come in next, it is better to add all characters from the same level onto the same texture.


On Shuriken, the constraints are: 1024x1024 diffuse with 1024x1024 lightmap for the background, 512x512 GUI and another 512x512 for all the characters on the same set…

For optimal results on the iPhone, you should keep the number of textures to a minimal, this will allow the programmer to do a better job of optimization later on.

From my current client work, I do not have a date and title yet, the best is to check my website for updates.