I review Taralumen Games’ documentation and concept artwork, provide build feedback, and give strategic guidance. My focus is around art and design production, with a prioritization around adapting project goals into features reasonably scoped for the project’s budget and timeline.

I'm an Advisor to Krish Shrikumar on his meditation games Playne and Inward, and his puzzle game Maya's Dream. We meet on a regular cadence to discuss and work through the challenges of indie game development.Playne launched in May 2020 and has become the most popular meditation and mindfulness game on Steam with an Overwhelmingly Positive rating and over a thousand reviews.Vismaya is an Epic MegaGrant recipient for Inward. Inward is in Steam Early Access and was one of five Finalists in the 2023 Steam Awards in the Outstanding Visual Style category.

I created the game industry’s first living map and comprehensive catalog of nearly 9000 game development organizations around the world. gamedevmap started as a passion project to bring game developers from around the world together. I research and validate new entries, maintain the dataset, and respond to email and social media. gamedevmap is sustained with coding support and occasional data entry help from game industry friends.gamedevmap is one of the top Google Search results around the world for keywords related to game development in a geographical location. Game industry professionals, policy makers, journalists, and students use gamedevmap to find game companies. Studios and organizations gain visibility by being listed on gamedevmap. The map has inspired regional mapping projects around the world.I was overjoyed to collaborate with my pixel art heroes eBoy (www.eboy.com) on the gamedevmap logomark and wordmark.

I worked on level layout for an unannounced course in Walkabout Mini Golf using Gravity Sketch collaboratively with the Design team, building placeholder assets in Blender and Modo. I was a part of Design Reviews for several courses. I contributed props and artwork to another unannounced course. In addition, I identified and facilitated opportunities to consider Walkabout Mini Golf in a wellness context.

I represented DeepWell DTx at the Game Developers Conference and laid the organizational groundwork for conversations with select game development studios. I followed up with a post-conference status update for internal distribution to company leadership. Additionally, I provided late-stage build feedback for DeepWell’s debut title Zengence and recommended the team that was brought on board to get the project to its launch-ready state.

I developed a research-based understanding of the Northern Alaska-based Iñupiat and Yup’ik during Preproduction on Never Alone 2 with the goal of creating compelling and authentic level design. This involved studying how Alaska Native landskills and subsistence lifestyle could inform open world gameplay systems and traversal, for example how hunting and fishing were driven by weather and sea ice conditions. I helped shape the concept of the Sacred Landscape in an effort to integrate the spirit world into the play experience.Alaska Native culture was a throughline for my work. I studied settlement patterns, story maps, and photo reference to build early versions of a sod house village and its surroundings. I created a Cultural Artifacts Miro Board from online museum collections to describe the tools villagers would use.I provided context and data to others on the team so that we could make informed decisions across the game that were supported by our Alaska Native partners. This included looking at animal range maps and other scientific data, referencing folklore like the Epic of Qayaq, sourcing descriptions from early European encounters, reviewing documentary footage, and learning from cultural research papers on JSTOR and other online resources.I built cultural artifacts to a Prototype or Alpha state using Modo, Rizom UV, Toolbag, Photoshop, and Painter. I repaired 3D scans of museum artifacts in ZBrush and prepared them for use in-game. I also cleaned up prop models from the original Never Alone game for use in Never Alone 2. I tracked my work using Google Sheets and Trello and documented prop workflows, filenames and directory structure in Miro.I used the Landscape sculpting tools and Dynamic Mesh Actors in Unreal Engine 5 to craft moment-to-moment spatial experiences. In addition to object and resource placement, I enjoyed collaborating with our programmers and VFX Artist on custom-built camera, wind, ice, climbing and weather functionality.

I synthesized clinical input with art and design feedback and direction for External Studio Partners who were building Immersive Healthcare Activities for the REAL Immersive System (www.realsystem.com). My exploration of academic research and the broader therapy landscape as related to art and game design considerations was intended to provoke discussions between our game development teams and the therapists we were working with, leading us to try creative "only in VR" approaches often adjacent to, but recognizable as therapeutically effective methods.I shepherded projects from Concept Proposal to launch-readiness, providing actionable Build Feedback at a regular sprint-based cadence with an understanding of technical, performance, and scheduling constraints. I was respected by many of our External Studio Partners for setting a high quality bar, but also listening to their input and striving to find a reasonable way forward in the spirit of collaboration.I worked with a cross-disciplinary heterarchical Second Party team in a horizontal overlay capacity simultaneously across multiple projects, maintaining a holistic view of our Activity portfolio and each product's place in that portfolio. As the longest working employee on the REAL System across both internal and external projects, I provided a consistent vision for the REAL System from its origins, a through-line across most of our projects, and historical context for why decisions were made.One of my superpowers is how I bring people together: I fostered strong working relationships between our Second Party team and other teams within the larger Penumbra organization including Clinical, Marketing, QA, Platform Engineering, and Data Analytics.

As the first employee at Penumbra to focus exclusively on Second Party projects and relationships, I established business infrastructure and developed best practices for the Second-Party publishing initiative, then onboarded key stakeholders on language and process. I created materials to educate game developers about the REAL System and worked with our Marketing team to develop background documentation describing the health conditions Penumbra wanted to build products for.With the hiring of a Platform Director, Product Managers, and a Project Manager, we became the Partner Development Team.I identified best-in-class External Studio Partners and worked with them to craft Concept Proposals and Production Plans for review by Penumbra Leadership. Once approved for further development, the Platform Director and I worked with our Legal team to put Development Contracts and Statements of Work into place. As External Studio Partners were signed, I guided their teams and the Product Managers assigned to each project through the Immersive Healthcare product development process we had designed.With one of our Product Managers, I built and maintained an extensive network of external Subject Matter Expert therapists to support product development. Our network included Physical Therapists, Occupational Therapists, and Speech Language Pathologists. We leveraged this network at key moments for each project to provide balanced clinical feedback and ensure therapeutic efficacy.Another Product Manager and I collaborated with Marketing and our External Studio Partners on product logos, screenshots, videos, and market research.With my game development experience and unique role on our Partner Development Team, I was in a unique position to advocate for our External Studio Partners while striking a healthy and sustainable balance with Penumbra's requirements as the Publisher. I was affectionately referred to as an "Elder Statesman for the Game Industry" during this time.

As the second hire after the Studio Head, and the Art Director for what would become Penumbra's REAL Studio, I led development of our first Immersive Health project for Stroke Rehabilitation, Happy Valley. Together with our core team, we crafted a unique approach to physical therapy and built a "skunk works" game development studio inside a publicly traded medical technology company known for its surgical catheters.As a People Manager, I held weekly Art Team meetings and quarterly 1:1s with my Direct Reports to discuss their feedback regarding our project. I was responsible for writing their annual performance reviews.I was the Hiring Manager for the Art Department, working with Penumbra recruiters to staff the internal game studio team across all departments. I set up and maintained relationships with leading universities that led to internships transitioning to fulltime roles for Designer, Artist, and Animator positions on our team. With our Studio Head, I evangelized our work in presentations to students and internally to Penumbra employees who were getting their first exposure to Virtual Reality.I created the Art Style Guide for Happy Valley, working closely with our Concept Artists and Art and Design teams to craft an inviting world rich with friendly characters and rewards for patient progression at a scope and quality level not seen at that time in either mobile VR or digital therapeutics.I started and maintained Enterprise relationships with Epic and Oculus and worked with our designers, engineers, and artists to understand technical specifications and best practices before we had our proprietary sensor hardware integrated with HTC's Vive Focus headset and our therapist-controlled tablet. I worked with Penumbra's IT department to set up a New Hire pipeline, creating hardware and software templates for each role, and welcomed all new employees to our REAL Studio team.I designed the REAL Hero logo and art directed the final implementation.

As a Senior Artist, I was the go-to person for thousands of props (interactive objects) on a $3.5 billion USD global franchise that created the Toys-to-Life genre of video games and spawned a Netflix animated television series. I provided art direction and production support to a team of prop artists while also creating game-ready assets and first-pass geometry. Designers gave me prop lists and specifications, which I shepherded through the art production pipeline from concept art to final asset delivery, working with animators, riggers, and our production team. I collaborated with our engineers on proprietary Asset Management tools that helped me maintain filename and pathname conventions and create placeholder assets based on templates.As one of the first people at the studio to onboard with Unreal Engine 4, I delivered level graymesh and props for prototype teams of designers and programmers, and helped artists ramp up with new workflows. I was a member of the order of purple-robed Skylanders Idea Wizards -- we submitted original game pitches for consideration. I co-created new science-fiction IP to inspire our learning and explore the possibilities of an original project after Skylanders. Toys for Bob became known across Activision studios as a home for innovation during this time.I contributed to the S.A.B.R.I.N.A Heroic Challenge level in Skylanders Giants, a collaboration with the Make-a-Wish Foundation. I organized employee-donated toy and game drives to Texas Children's Hospital, Children's Hospital Oakland, and Kaiser Permanente Oakland. A pivotal moment in my career was playing Skylanders Giants with a Leukemia patient at Texas Children's Hospital.

After we shipped Lair, I served as Lead Artist on several prototypes including a Kid Icarus pitch and prototype to Nintendo and a Pilotwings-like Wii title we called Wii Fly. Wii Fly was a small project at Factor 5 that played to our core strengths at a time when two other larger projects were in production. I loved how nimble our talented little team was within the larger organization and how tightly art, design, and engineering were integrated on this project. I was the People Manager and Hiring Manager for art positions on this team.I collaborated with our Concept Artist to create the Wii Fly style guide and generated asset lists and artist schedules while also providing Art Direction to the team. I created terrain for each location and would model assets when possible. One of my favorite moments on this project was pitching a move away from Pilotwings' more grounded approach to a toy-scale implementation where players could fly around a virtual globe front-end menu to populated real-world cities and landmarks, not just in space, but also in time. Future Asia was one of my favorite locations.

There was a Reduction in Force event at Factor 5 as we approached the final third of our development on Lair. The Art Department we had built was cut in half. I worked with our Human Resources team to notify those impacted and set up an external community to help them find their next opportunities. I stayed on in a Human Resources capacity to help with the transition and future needs.Factor 5 switched to a project-centric model of organization going forward, and a new role was found for me creating high resolution 16-bit terrain height maps for Lair using World Machine, Photoshop, and Factor 5's proprietary tools. I would start with a very coarse height map generated by a Senior Level Designer indicating progression through a space, blend it with real-world GIS data, then use World Machine to create a more natural landscape through erosion and other parameters. I used a proprietary rules-based method Factor 5 engineers had developed for texturing these landscapes.

After bringing the last of the acclaimed Rogue Squadron series of games to completion as a Senior Artist, I became the studio’s Art Department Director as we sought to grow the team and take on multiple projects. This was primarily a People Management and Project Management position. We started and stopped development on several projects, including a retro flight action game inspired by the movie The Right Stuff, and what was going to be a different take on the Rogue Squadron series for Microsoft. We eventually started development on two pitches with Sony: the highly anticipated PS3 dragon flight-action game Lair, and a vintage World War I-inspired third-person action title called Animal Wars. Our Art Department grew from five people to over forty across Concept Art, Character Art, Environment Art, and Animation. We pulled together an extremely talented team from the film and game industries and also hired extensively from abroad. I was the Hiring Manager for the Art Department. I onboarded and managed Artists and Animators. With Factor 5's engineering-led culture, there was a parallel structure under the Technical Art Director. I ran an internship program that brought artists and animators on from San Jose State University and the Academy of Art. At our peak, I had two Associate Producer Direct Reports.

I joined Factor 5 as the team was finishing up Star Wars: Rogue Squadron III Rebel Strike. In my Senior Artist role, I contributed random props to get several in-production on-foot levels to a finished state before working with Senior Level Designers on the Rebel Base on Hoth and several locations on Tatooine, including the Sandcrawler, a Landspeeder race level, Tosche Station, and the Homestead. It felt great to return to author medium resolution Nintendo Gamecube art assets I had originally built for the N64!

As a Level Designer on the original Psychonauts, I collaborated with Concept Artists, World Builders, Programmers, and the rest of the team to bring this much-loved award-winning game to life. I took Tim Schafer's high-level story outlines and made them functional levels: I built level and collision geometry in Maya, scripted gameplay in Lua, and created supporting documentation while coordinating and setting up the incoming art and animation. In addition, I prototyped user interface and visual effects, tracked in-game sound effects, and created and maintained the project art bible and company intranet.Some of the levels I developed underwent additional iteration as Double Fine changed publishers from Microsoft to Majesco. The game that shipped remained remarkably true to the spirit of the original concept. I was the Level Designer on the following levels: Ford's Sanctuary, Sasha's Underground Lab, Thorney Towers Home for the Disturbed (Asylum Ground, Lower Floors, Upper Floors, and The Lab of Dr. Loboto), Milla's Dance Party, Waterloo World.I was one of the Double Fine’s first employees and helped grow the studio from its first prototype in a former shoe store to a full game production in our infamous Clara Street underground garage space.

I built low-poly Tiki-themed architecture and props, and designed user interface for one of the first Social Massively Multiplayer Online (Social MMO) worlds called There.There the company was featured in National Geographic’s December 2001 article on Silicon Valley as "a startup still in 'deep stealth' mode" where "most of its offices come with futons for catch-up sleep."

I started at LucasArts on Grim Fandango, one of the classic games of the Adventure Game era. I was on a small team of Background Artists creating pre-rendered environments in Softimage from Peter Chan's stunning concept art. I was responsible for the following:Year One: Part of the Petrified Forest Maze, Beaver Dam Gate, the Beaver DamYear Two: Elevator to the Blue Casket, Blue Casket Exterior, Blue Casket Door, Rubacava Shuttle SecurityYear Four: Snow Machine, BackstageI moved on to what is considered by some to be one of the most fun Star Wars games of all time: Star Wars: Rogue Squadron N64. This was a co-production with German game studio Factor 5. I built architecture, vehicles, first-person cockpits, and recognizable props from the original Star Wars movies. I also built the craft selection hangar. A lot of the texture work on Rogue Squadron was done by Paul Topolos. I would model and UV, and he would texture. I trained artists brought on at the end of development in low-poly modeling workflows. On Star Wars: Starfighter, I modeled and textured vehicles, architecture, and sky domes. As one of the senior members of the Starfighter team, I interviewed artist candidates and was a driver of a team culture which has led to lifelong friendships. This was during production of "Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace", when access to concept art and clips from the film as it was in production was tightly controlled.Some of the unique vehicles and locations I designed for Star Wars: Rogue Squadron and Star Wars: Starfighter become a part of the Star Wars Expanded Universe canon, notably the Pirate Base on Lok.After being told by a Designer that my job was "to make pretty explosions", I wrote a well-received original pitch document that helped me reframe my Game Artist perspective to that of a Game Developer: From Peking to Paris was a narrative rally racing game set along the Silk Road.

While at Illumina Productions, I concepted and built 3D props and backgrounds for Quaternity, an adventure game set in a near-future San Francisco that was cancelled after the completion of our live-action shoot.I also contributed to a children's game called Imagynasium, co-developed with Robert Redford's Sundance Institute and published by SouthPeak Interactive in 1999.

My first project after graduating from college was Daymare, an adventure game written by Neal Stephenson (the author of cyberpunk novel Snow Crash). I worked with our Lead Artist to create photo collages from the live-action shoot and build psychedelic memory sequences from them in Adobe Premiere.