Keith Merrill IV

Dual Citizen: Canadian and American
860 Jervis Street, Apt 1004
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
V6E 2B3
604-727-6000
keithmerrilliv@yahoo.ca

OBJECTIVE

To contribute to the development of high quality games in the following areas:

McGill University	September 1997 - July 2000

Bachelor of Science, major in Computer Science. Degree conferred November 2000.

Relevant courses:

Undergraduate Thesis (A-)	January 2000 - July 2000

Created a C++ software laboratory for experimenting with animations of plant growth using procedural modeling and texturing (shading) techniques.
Textured plant surfaces with RenderMan procedural shaders.
Generated plant architectures using tDOL-Systems (timed, deterministic L-Systems).
Code was written in C++, with the STL, using RenderMan and BMRT APIs.
Wrote an OpenGL utility for previewing and testing models.
Devised a generic XML scene description.

VertigoXmedia Incorporated (Montréal, Canada)	Oct 2001 - July 2002

Junior Software Developer - Mojo (Rendering Engine / Data Model) and Data Servers Teams

Designed, coded and documented a CG (Character Generator) scene description architecture in a core C++ DLL. The feature was used for previewing and editing scene layout and was designed for previewing dynamic scene behavior.
Designed, coded and documented an event driven editing system (in C++) to replace Visual Basic scripts used to compose automated television broadcasts. This feature was part of the above mentioned DLL.
Wrote several actions for the above system including display image, set text and query data source.
Enhanced a C++ error logging class used for debugging transactions with a custom data server.
Integrated and improved a HASP dongle-based license server on a custom data server.

Hummingbird Limited (Halifax, Canada)	May 1999 - August 1999

Student Software Developer - Business Intelligence Group/Armadillo Team

Added features to a configuration wizard for BI/Query, a corporate database query and reporting application, using C++, Java and XML.
Added Windows metafile (WMF) to bitmap (BMP) conversions in a C++ Win32 DLL.
Wrote a customized, constraint-based, Java layout manager for button grids generated by the wizard. Documented the design with UML diagrams using Rational Rose.
Modified XML DTDs to support added features.

Nortel Networks (Harlow, England)	May 1997 - August 1997

Student Software Developer - Software and System Engineering/MNDP Team

Developed a GUI and data exchange protocol for the Magellan Network Design Prototype using VisualWorks Smalltalk and the DesignMate application framework.
Wrote OOD/OOA specifications with UML diagrams and was exposed to Shlaer-Mellor OOD/OOA.
Created inter-process communication routines to drive a network-optimizing genetic algorithm.

Nortel Networks (Ottawa, Canada)	January 1997 - April 1997

Student Software Developer - Network Planning Systems Team

Developed a prototype network-planning environment in C++ with the Zinc application framework.
Added workflow modeling (graphical scripts) to demonstrate the flow of the network-planning process.
Ported the prototype from Sun SPARC workstations to PC's running Windows 95 and NT.

Nortel Networks (Ottawa, Canada)	September 1996 - December 1996

Student Software Developer - FiberWorld Planning Tools/SONET Planner Team

Designed, implemented and tested statistical reporting features for the SONET Planner network-planning application. Features were implemented using Symantec C++ on the PowerPC platform.
Added VT and STS based network-fill statistics to on-screen reports and data exports.
All tasks completed within deadline with little or no supervision.

Frostbite Productions (Montréal, Canada)	July 2001 - August 2001

Video Editor and Videographer

Composed a five-minute promotional music video with both live and synthetic footage.
Created character animation in 3D Studio Max by adding a Bidped skeleton and Physique modifiers to a third party mesh. Composited the animation in the video.
Used multiple overlays and effects to enhance and distort source video.
Planned clip transitions for quality and consistency of theme.

YouCAN! (Ottawa, Canada)	November 2000 - December 2001

Video Editor and Videographer

Taped seventeen hours of footage at a four-day international youth conference promoting peace and conflict resolution.
Produced a twenty-five minute educational video detailing an action planning process.