Kris Kelly

Kris Kelly is the son of Atlanta Jamaicans George Kelly and Myrna Campbell-Kelly. His work as a 3D character artist is being noticed by the Gaming and Next-Gen Creativity industry. He was recently appointed as an Artist Ambassador for INTEL Corporation the world’s largest multinational computer chip manufacturer.

Kris grew up as a gamer and adored Star Wars and Final Fantasy. He still plays with friends on his PC and console. Star Wars-, Marvel-, and DC-inspired sculptures adorn the shelves and work surfaces of his home. Not surprisingly, those gaming roots run deep and continue to influence his career. 

His website bills him as a Character Artist – Specializing in Creature and Character Modeling, Texture Painting, Look Development and 3D Modeling. He is poised to play a part in the augmented/virtual realities and metaverse frontiers.

Kris has appeared in commercials in Intel’s ‘Game & Create ‘ series, showing off their new 11TH Gen processors. These commercials show off his workflow as a 3D Character Artist, his ability to work anywhere, and the seamless transition between Creating and Gaming.

His main tool for work is the powerful Razer Blade 15, sporting the Intel Core i9-11900H processor paired with NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 graphics. The system’s eight cores and 16 threads, running at up to 4.9GHz, provided fast, responsive rendering times, and support for PCIe 4.0 SSD storage removed any bottlenecks in editing and transferring large graphical assets. The system’s 15.6-inch HDR OLED touch display, with 100 percent coverage of the DCI-P3 color space, was also crucial for ensuring color accuracy in his design work.

With his painting and modeling skills he has demonstrated he can do photo-real humans, not just monsters and aliens and cute little robots. This has not gone unnoticed in the visual effects and digital sculpting worlds and as a result he is getting a steady stream of work.

Kris always knew he wanted to craft the stunning digital figures found throughout movies, shows, and games. However, he no connections or inside track and so he relied on common wisdom: go to school, stand out, be a star.

Born in Atlanta, Georgia, he moved to Los Angeles in 2007, fresh from the Savannah College of Art and Design, certain he would find success in Hollywood digital effects. Instead, he ran into the Great Recession and unrelenting rejection.

Undaunted he remained focused. He toiled to build his skills with Zbrush, a digital sculpting tool while also taking on whatever side gigs he could find. Like so many other freelancers, he lived paycheck to paycheck, often staying only a few dollars ahead of zero. Fortunately, persistence paid off. His skills gradually improved. Studios started to recognize him as a talented modeler. After a couple of years, those double-digit bank balances were finally behind him.

Kris is proud of his Jamaican heritage and even has the Jamaican coat of arms tattooed on his arm.

View some of Kris’s brilliant design work on his website: https://www.kriskelly3d.com/