Deviation Actions
Literature Text
Ted Price – President
Ted founded Insomniac Games in 1994 because it was the only way that he could write off the purchase of video games as “market research”. Prior to starting Insomniac, he worked in the finance side of the medical industry which wasn’t the most logical starting point for a career in video games, but he learned a lot about health insurance. He graduated from Princeton with a degree in English and his ultimate aspiration is to buy a ranch in Guatalahara and become an asparagus farmer.
Position: President
Speciality: Art Direction
Responsibilities: Non game specific tasks: Handling the company’s
business and legal affairs
Game specific tasks: Art Director builds environment
wireframes and creates special
effect animations
Previous Games: Disruptor
Education: BA in English form Princeton University
Alex Hastings – Vice President, Software
Al is the best Mario Kart player in the world. He loses sometimes, but only when he feels sorry for everyone else.
Position: Vice President, Software
Speciality: Designing ultra-fast game engines
Responsibilities: Designs and codes game engines, creates overall programmatic structure of games, special effect programming, creates menu/save systems, cinematic sequence programming.
Previous Games: Disruptor
Education: B.A’s in Computer Science and Cognitive Science from
Princeton University.
Brian Hastings – Vice President, Technology
Brian was born in Moorehead City, NC and attended Claremont McKenna College where he received degrees in mathematics and literature. At Insomniac Games he coded much of the critically acclaimed Disruptor for the PlayStation and authored the graphic and technical tools which are the foundation for the Spyro team. Prior to Insomniac, Brian created software for the medical industry and modelled for the Guess Jeans company. (Well, not really, but his Mom wanted him to.) In his spare time he attempts to find the way of Zen by not looking for it.
Position: Vice President, Technology
Speciality: Creating superior tools for use by the artists. Creator of Karma.
Responsibilities: Designs and codes tools used by artists to create game environments and characters, develops AI system used by characters and writes gameplay code
Previous Games: Disruptor
Education: BA’s in Mathematics and Literature from Clairemont McKenna
College.
Craig Stitt – Artist
After completing Ph.D.’s in Nuclear Physics, Quantum Mechanics and Lunar Oceanography, Dr. Craigario A. Stytte took an extended leave to tour the world in search of the elusive “Drakus Violetus Minor”, or ‘small purple dragon’. Upon his return, Dr. Stytte remained mute concerning any discoveries made during his travels and has in fact disappeared from the academic circles he once presided over. He is now living under the guise of ‘Craig A. Stitt’, a simple artist who supposedly spent several years at Sega helping to develop a mildly successful series of games based on a small blue insectivore, and from there, joined Insomniac Games to contribute to the highly acclaimed but little known Disruptor.
Position : Artist
Speciality: Creating unparalleled backgrounds (i.e. the skies) using
gouraud-shaded polygons
Responsibilities: Designs and builds backgrounds, builds wireframe environments, creates textures and shading to levels and characters, contributes to production design.
Previous Games: Disruptor, Sonic 2, Sonic Spinball, Kid Chameleon
Education: B.A in Art Education from San Jose State
Alain Maindron – Animator
Alain hails originally from France. He lived in England for nine years, working in traditional animation, on commercials and on films such as Fieval. He spent some time at Disney Australia and after a stint of directing films, ran an animation studio in London for two years. He co-directed Ecstatica, a 3D-computer game and then spent a year at Argonaut and at Shiny Entertainment. Now at Insomniac he is responsible for most of the animation in Spyro and contributes heavily to game design.
Position : Animator
Speciality: Creating completely zany characters and animates almost every object in the game. Contributes heavily to level design.
Responsibilities: Wireframe environments, creates textures, applies textures and
shading to levels and characters.
Previous Games: Maui Mallard, Aladdin, Lion King, Hercules
Education: BA’s in Architecture and History from UCLA, BFA from Art Center College of Design in Pasedena
Chris McNulty – Programmer
D.O.B.: 10/20/69
Height: 5’ 10’’
Weight: 165 lbs
Measurements: 54–31–28 (on a good day)
Education: B.S. in Computer Science from Fredonia University in upstate New York
Turn Ons: Romantic candlelight dinners, long walks on the beach, horseback riding, bubble-gum
Turn Offs: Hairy backs (on women of course), simple chronic halitosis, olestra (causes loose stools), Hanson
Aspirations: To be a model citizen, bring joy and love to the world and bring back Cheers and Taxi.
Extra Curricular Activities: Polo matches, skeet shooting, programming Spyro
Position : Programmer
Speciality: Helps create hilarious sounds for the games
Responsibilities: Designs and codes occlusion and sound system, writes AI and gameplay code.
Previous Games: Aladdin, Tonka Construction code.
Education: B.S in Computer Science from SUNY
John Fiorito – Artist
John was born in the San Francisco Bay Area and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, majoring in architecture and architectural history. He attended Art Centre College of Design in Pasadena, CA, earning a degree in illustration. John is also responsible for much of production design and spends most of his days building, shading and texturing Spyro’s levels. Prior to joining Insomniac Games, he worked in retail, food preparation and Disney Interactive.
Position : Artist
Speciality: Creating unique art styles for worlds through detailed production design drawings
Responsibilities: Contributes heavily to production design of levels, builds wireframe environments, creates textures, applies textures and shading to levels and characters.
Previous Games: Maui Mallard, Aladdin, Lion King, Hercules
Education: BA’s in Architecture and History from UCLA, B.F.A from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena
Matt Whiting – Programmer
In 1996, Matthew Whiting earned his Masters Degree in Engineering at NASA Langley Research Centre. Rocket science didn’t really pan out, so he decided to move on to something a little more high-tech. Video games being the obvious choice, Matt joined Insomniac Games in 1997 where he has been working as a programmer on Spyro. His future aspirations include someday beating everybody, including Alex Hastings, at Mario Kart.
Position : Programmer
Speciality: Designing one of the best camera and control systems in a 3D
Character-based game to date.
Responsibilities: Creates camera and control systems, writes AL and gameplay
code.
Previous Games: Black Dawn, treasures of the Deep
Education: B.S in Aerospace Engineering from St Louis University. M.S in
Aerospace Engineering from George Washington University.
Dan Johnson – Artist
Dan stems from Iowa where he started his animation career in 1993 at 19. Due to the lack of animation training facilities in his home state, he decided to educate himself in Alias Wavefront’s Advanced Visualizer, Kinemation, and Dynamation. After accepting a job offer in Santa Monica, CA, Dan continued his “education” as lead animator on his first game title, Treasures of the Deep. While on the same project he taught himself Alias Wavefront’s Poweranimator over the course of three months. In December of 1997 Dan accepted a position at Insomniac Games. Currently he is working as a modeller and assistant animator on Spyro. Dan currently lives in Calabasas, CA and plans to continue his studies. His hobbies include computers, animation, traditional art, photography, and video games.
Position : Artist
Speciality: Fastest wireframer in the West
Responsibilities: Creates wireframe environments, some character animations
and all environment animations.
Previous Games: Treasures of the Deep. Pong.
Education: Various courses at Iowa state….
Chuck Suong – Artist
Chuck is a graduate of the Art Centre College of Design in Pasadena, CA, having earned a B.F.A. in Illustration while on scholarship. He also attended L.A. County High School for the Arts where he was also a scholarship winner. Prior to joining Insomniac, Chuck worked at Kronos Digital Entertainment where he created animation for Cardinal Syn, Dark Rift, and the Saturday morning cartoon series, Spider Man. Chuck also worked at Sierra On-Line where he did background design and illustration for The Realm. At Insomniac, Chuck is responsible for generating marketing images for Spyro and creating soundsync animations.
Position : Artist
Speciality: Creates hi-res images of Spyro
Responsibilities: Creates all PR materials, keeps everyone laughing
Previous Games: Cardinal Syn, Dark rift
Education: BFA from Art Center College of Design in Pasedena
Jared Hardy – Systems Administrator / Bouncer
The new weirdo at Insomniac, Jared Hardy, is somewhere between a little helper and a lifesaver. His schizophrenia helps him serve as a level cleaner, system administrator, network administrator and art critic. In this spare time, his schizophrenia keeps him between inventing, painting, mixed media art, novella writing, 3D modelling, Java and C++ programming and making up useless math games. He is a (very) recent graduate of USC, earning a B.A. in Computer Science and a minor in Fine Arts. He managed to learn the “neaten” system in a few days, but he’s still having trouble memorizing everyone’s names.
Position : Systems Administrator/Level Cleanup
Speciality: Ensuring that the levels have no stitching, poly drop out or poly
flicker
Responsibilities: Sets up occlusion, sets polygon flags, maintains network,
orders and upgrades equipment
Previous Games: None
Education: B.A in Computer Science from USC
Oliver Wade – Animator
Oliver is from St. Louis, Ohio, His first animation can be found at the Hubert Humphrey Middle School Library in the margin of Chapter Twelve of the book “Building Better Citizens Out of Unruly Boys” by Master Sergeant Horace “Horace” Strictman, retired.
Upon graduation from high school, Oliver went into the typewriter repair business on the advice of his career counsellor, but always dreamed of being an animator. His big break came when his boss at AAAAA-1 Type-Right tapped Oliver to handle their 10-second TV spot on public access channel 78. At 3:37 am that next Tuesday, Typo the Typewriter was born and a career was launched. Oliver parlayed those 10 seconds into a weekly kids variety shown which eventually caught the eye of the Hollywood bigshots who flew him out to California and the rest is history. He quit his job at Type-Right, handed the variety show over to Leif Garret and followed his dream west to Studio City where he works at Insomniac Games and continues to make kids smile with his animation.
Position : Animator
Speciality: Creating cinematic sequences with the crystal dragons
Responsibilities: Creates animation for crystal dragons as well as animating
Spyro during those sequences, builds camera paths for sequences.
Previous Games: Cold Shadow, Gargoyles, Hercules, toy Story
Alex Schaefer – Artist
Alex began his art career by posing as a nude model for life drawing classes. He was chosen specifically for his ability to twirl his leg hair into tiny spikes. After seeing everyone doing “purdy drawings”, Alex decided to become an artist himself. He studied at the Art Centre in Pasadena until he was asked to leave, (the charges were eventually dropped). He has done work for several interactive companies including Disney Interactive and has done some automobile design (he designed the Yugo Skrewyorselph). He is currently being kept in a small box at Insomniac where he creates level textures when he is not busy making odd noises.
Position : Artist
Speciality: Painting beautiful textures in Photoshop
Responsibilities: Creates textures, applies textures and shadings to levels
Previous Games: Maui Mallard, Lion King, Hercules
Education: BFA from Art Center College of Design in Pasedena
