Hey there, The Internet.  You might remember that back when Scott announced Heritage he made some vague allusions to having another blogger join him in the next several days.  Well, those days came and went, and I was eyeball deep in making sure we had some quality images to show off at GDC next week, and with hardly a blog post in sight.  It’s not that I -wanted- to start things off this way, but you know how it is.

So anyway, in an effort to get this party started right (and set myself up for future posts), I figured it would be worthwhile to give you an idea of where I’m coming from.*

I’m arriving at video games after a roundabout route: I spent two years studying fine arts at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, then four years at the Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts to finish up my undergrad .  It’s important to point out here that I majored in painting at both institutions, and minored in art history at the LACFA; none of which is typically a  good predictor of working in digital media later in life.  After graduation, I studied secondary art education for two years and became certified to teach in both Connecticut and Massachusetts.

I was given the opportunity to work with Scott several months later while I was at the mercy of public school hiring cycles, and I jumped on it.  Scott and I had actually worked together several years earlier when he was the art director for a company making tabletop and board games, so I already knew that we shared a common vocabulary when it came to gaming in general, and fantasy gaming in particular–which is an excellent starting point for a creative process like this.

That’s me in a nutshell–time for me to get back to drawing.

*It’s worth noting, at this point, that I’m an avid reader of blogs. In the past, whenever a guest blogger, or new blogger has stepped up to the plate at the larger blogs I follow, it was necessary for them to make an introductory post just like this one. I would read those posts, nod sagely at my newfound understanding of the person writing them, and move on, not thinking twice about what they’d had to do to get those things down on the page in the first place. Let me assure you that that is no longer the case. This first step is -hard!- It’s a brutal exercise in creating in a vacuum–somewhere between a resume and an online dating profile.