Mike Hanson Email & Phone Number

United Kingdom

Uk

As an independent one-man operation, I make my own games based on my own tastes and and ideas. This freedom allows me to create for the love of it whilst constantly expanding on my varied game-development based skillets.With a Twitter following of over 10,000, I've been very into social media networking which when actively developing, I utilise to a great extent in raising awareness of my brand and my work, learning and sharing as I go. I singlehandedly ran two successful Kickstarter campaigns while producing all code, art and sound content for my first game, Power-Up, for XBox live and Steam, working with Playing With Giants on the mobile ports, and later, Flix The Flea for Steam.In addition, my indie dev saw me invited to speak and exhibit at industry Expos, my blog featured on Gamasutra and its sister-sites and my work reviewed in print, on the pages of retro Gamer Magazine as well as featured on the front page of Microsoft's XBLIG store.

Church Lawton, England, United Kingdom

Greater Manchester, England, United Kingdom

Keele University

I took teacher training to develop my skills as an educator and specialised in Computer Science despite my predominantly art orientated background. I achieved Qualified Teacher Status and PGCE in 2018 and went on to teach for a couple of years after.

Nantwich, England, United Kingdom

41 Greenland St, Liverpool L1 0Bs

At the Studio school, I utilized my experience as a games industry Artist and independent Game Developer, Designer, Sound Technician, Musician and marketeer to assist in the planning of lessons for optimal development of the students' skill sets.I also worked with the students' game development groups in Project Based Learning sessions, ran enrichment classes tailored toward generalized Games Art/working with Independent Games Press, and coordinated trips, visits and Masterclasses from industry professionals.My pet project at the studio was "The Dungeon" - an ambitious Retro Arcade for the school's students, bringing games history together with the opportunity to introduce a new generation to the key ideas and mechanics at the very roots of the video games they play today, and that they aspire to create in the future. ...This very well may have been the first of its kind ever attempted within an educational context and I believe that it's a great asset to the school to this day.

Stoke-On-Trent, United Kingdom

Lightwood produce a range of popular puzzle, board and card based video games for handheld devices.In my role as a part-time Games Artist with the company, I drew upon my years of experience in the handheld and mobile market to design the overall look and layout of their products, ultimately producing high quality assets for multiple resolution versions of their games.Look out for my Lightwood titles, Stak Bots, Evil Dead The Musical - Splatterzone, Word Party and the Epic Word Search series on iOS.

Keele / Knutton, Stoke-On-Trent

Astraware are a reputable developer/publisher of smartphone games. They produce and port many popular titles. Software I used daily included Photoshop and 3DS Max. I occasionally made use of ProMotion too.Astraware products I've worked on include Pop Cap, Sandlot and Sony titles such as Bejeweled 2, the Tradewinds series and Quantum of Solace.I also designed and produced graphics for the acclaimed Astraware Solitaire, Mahjong and Casino, and created the clay world of OddBloB.Astraware's games are multi-platform so a great deal of resolutions had to be complete on release. This type of production requires mental agility, expertise and discipline to achieve.Unfortunately, Astraware began 2013 in a downsizing which demanded a close of the company's art department. I used this opportunity to explore the worlds of freelancing and independent game development.

I assisted in the founding of this company and for a few months, worked from home, designing original mobile phone game concepts and producing the artwork for ports and revamps of existing classic games. These Included Bombjack, Mighty Bombjack and Striker for Elite, alongside many pitches for other titles.When we leased our offices and moved into next gen games, I was able to work on a number of PS2 and XBox 360 games including Sony's Lemmings for EyeToy and Late Night Poker. Most of this work was modelled in 3DS Max with 2D work in Photoshop.In 2005, I was outsourced with other artists from the company to use Maya for building maps on Project Gotham Racing 3 at Bizarre Creations in Speke. However, I was not enjoying life in my native Liverpool. I eventually resigned my position, opting to move away and explore more suitable work options elsewhere.

This was my first permanent position out of universty. Virtucraft produced GBA games for a number of clients. The majority of my work was for The Cartoon Network, though Bam!! Entertainment.We used Pro Motion for almost all of our work, and I had a great deal of experience in tile mapping and dynamic 2D character animation. Later, when the company made the jump to next-gen, I gained experience of 3DS Max and Maya.Games I worked on at Virtucraft included Samurai Jack And The Amulet Of Time, Dexter's Laboratory, The Powerpuff girls: Relish Rampage, Dexter's Chess, Comix Zone and Rocky.As it headed into liquidation Virtucraft layed off most of its staff in November 2002. I was included in this number, and with colleagues, went on to form Rusty Nutz Ltd...

After the Rage aquisition of Denton Designs, the lead staff from Dentons invited me to work in QA for Rage over the summer. For this 8 week period I worked on the SNES version of Fifa 97.

My first experience of games industry work was for Denton Designs Ltd, based on Rodney street, and later, Roscoe Street in Liverpool. I worked for them periodically when school/college hollidiays would allow me the time. Mainly, my work was in QA. Occasionally I would produce graphics for the games with Deluxe Paint or build backgrounds with their in house software.Projects I worked on included Striker for Gameboy, Krusty's Funhouse for Amiga, Batman Returns for Amiga, and Powerdrive for Amiga.

Pgce

Bachelor Of Science (Bsc)

Education record

Education record