Team — Patrol Mars

TLDR:

Machinista.com (Heikki Anttila’s personal web page & portfolio)

The long version of meet the team:

Patrol mars is a passion project of mine. Hopefully the project gets enough traction to expand into a small team – and that way achieve more. That being said now team is just one person, Heikki Anttila (that is me).

My background was initially in product/industrial design but during studies I figured that other, fictional worlds excite me a lot. This made me put extra time in the computer lab and work learn 3D art skills. Through a few twists I got to Blur Studio, at that time in Venice California. I spent 9 years at Blur and worked on some great projects and with some truly great people, both in talent and character.

I started as a 3D artist doing 3D modeling & texturing and what was called scene assembly at Blur – lighting, compositing and ‘solve everything that is SNAFU because deadline is soon here’. From 2007 I worked as a CG supervisor which at Blur is a combined role of an AD and a project manager. Basically I worked with the director, the producer, department supervisors and also lead the lighting/comp team to make projects happen — Hopefully in time and budget, and also awesome. The projects varied between short films and broadcast graphics, however by far the largest bulk was video game trailers and cinematics.

Blur was an extraordinary place to experience and holds a very special place in my heart.

Not quite all projects I worked on at Blur are here but most are. Trials Rising was at Ubisoft Redlynx.

In 2012 homeland called and I moved back to Finland to the modest sized farm in Southern Finland where I grew up. I live here nowadays and also do the farming. For a few years I mixed the practical work and freelancing for Blur. I worked on assets for Ubisoft’s the Division trailer, Elder Scrolls trailer, Halo 4 ad. I also did some other mixed things like pre-visalization work for trailers and a ride film, some technical animation, 3D modeling and general gimmickry for Dishonored 2 trailer and Samsung VR phone ad.

Dawn of War in 2004 was another highlight of Blur years. Still a great trailer after over 5 years,

A personal project from 2012 or so. Drone race car.

Empire Earth III was the 1st project that Heikki supervised at Blur. Model also by Heikki. 2007

Fox football robot broadcast project was fun as it reached broader audience

Co-Supervising 26 minutes of Halo cinematics with Dave Wilson was one the highlight of the Blur years.

Prey 2, a game that never happened in the format that Blur's 2011 E3 trailer presented it.

SWOTR trailer was a fun one. 1st real Star Wars related project at Blur Studio.

Heikki was sequence Lead on Force Unleashed 2 cinematics.

Vader from Force Unleashed II TV-spot that Heikki Anttila supervised, This was also "Heikki's shot".

As a freelance gig Heikki Anttila did some high resolution props for the Division trailer by Blur Studio

Dawn of War Warhammer 40k Character. 3D model and texturing Heikki Anttila. 2004

After a short stint at, then unannounced, mobile game startup Armada Interactive I joined Ubisoft Redlynx in 2016. I worked as an Art Director at the console game department. My last tasks at Redlynx were creating a few funbike designs for Trials Rising. However most of the time at Redlynx I worked on an unannounced title that I cannot talk about. Or I would have to eat you.

Just before Covid hit I decided to take a leap of faith and jump into working on my own indie game Patrol Mars. I rented an office room, did some fixing up there and finally painted the walls on Friday the 13th of March 2020. On following Monday was the 1st day that our kids stayed at home due to the pandemic. In July after 4 months I painted the office back to white and returned the keys without having used the office for a single day. So work from home it is – situation that many are now very familiar with. And that is where we are at.