Red Fly Studio Developer’s Blog

With 12 years of experience in the industry, Dan maintains a broad range of expertise including modeling, texturing, animation, and sculpture. He has also worked at some of the leading studios in the industry for Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft.

Kris Taylor began working in the game industry in 1996 as a sculptor and cinematic artist, and he has been working on games, film, and commercials ever since. Having worked at leading companies such as Retro Studios, Sony Online Entertainment, and Microsoft (where he was a Lead on a high profile Xbox 360 game title), Kris drives the delivery of the high end work for which Red Fly Studio is well-known.

Although drawing since the age of 2, Frank’s “professional” career began in comic books, illustrating stories freelance for all the mainstream publishers like DC/Vertigo, Marvel, Dark Horse and Image Comics for about 7 years before taking the plunge into the murky abyss of game development. Since then, he’s done conceptual/promotional art for Ion Storm (Thief: Deadly Shadows), Eidos, Breakaway, Obsidian (Neverwinter Nights 2) and Epic Games (Gears of War).

Now he’s here with the rest of these maggots at Red Fly Studio.

Jeff started his career at 7th Level with Dan and Kris, serving as Technical Director for Return to Krondor. Nicknamed “Jeff-3PO” by his peers because of his ability to serve as translator between programmers and artists and his robotic efficiency, Jeff has spent his career as a facilitator among the various disciplines within the development studio structure. Part programmer, part artist, part scripter, his experience gives him valuable insight into the process of developing video games. He spent eight years at Terminal Reality producing Nocturne, Blair Witch: Vol 1, and the BloodRayne series. He brought Terminal Reality’s powerful Infernal Engine with him to serve as the foundation for Red Fly Studio’s games.

Peter has spent over a decade working on top-notch titles for Microsoft Game Studios and Eidos including: Brute Force, Deus Ex: Invisible War, FreeLancer, Conquest: Frontier Wars and the original masterpiece Deus Ex. He performed in front of the camera in Wing Commander 4 and shot Antonio Banderas’ hand in Desperado. He also worked on Dominion: Storm Over Gift 3, but since most of our hands are stained by that, we don’t hold it against him.

Chad Barron has over 12 years of professional game development experience to his credit in various roles across the industry. He has held positions handling internal production projects for various studios to Mar/Comm responsibilities for an industry leader in Middleware to being the External Director for a new handheld platform. In addition to bringing a wealth of PR/Marketing and production knowledge to the Studio, Chad also brings to the team strong connections in the gaming industry, including press, technology vendors and publishers.

James Clarendon started in the games industry at a small arcade repair shop in 1996. After that, he joined Electronic Arts / Tiburon to work on Madden NFL Football 2002 for the PC. From there, he went to Compulsive Development to work on the PC titles Bicycle Cards and Bicycle Casino for Microsoft.

After a short stint at Glass Eye Entertainment, who took over Compulsive, he went to Ion Storm in 2002 to work on Deus Ex 2: Invisible War and Thief: Deadly Shadows for the XBox and PC. Work began on a third title in the Deus Ex universe, but when the company folded he moved on to Fizz Factor (aka the Austin branch of Amaze Entertainment). There he worked on a GameKey game expansion for the JAKKS Pacific TV Game version of The Fantastic Four. When this was completed, he moved on to Breakaway Games to work on serious games as well as forays into next-gen console and handheld work.

He resides in Austin, Texas with an exceedingly gray cat and a gigantic collection of classic (and not-so-classic) game systems, from the Neo Geo to the Atari Lynx.

Bob Frye has spent the last 14 years working for Origin Systems and Digital Anvil in Austin where he contributed textures, models, and animation for games such as: Ultima VII: The Black Gate, Ultima Underworld II, Wing Commander: Privateer, Bioforge, Ultima IX: Ascension, Ultima Online and Freelancer.

Johari started at Origin Systems in 1993 working on Ultima 8 and a WWI flight game called Wings of Glory. For Crusader No Remorse he built props and characters. In 1995 he moved to Simtex/Microprose to work on Agent Of Justice designing and modeling characters. In 1998 he went to Digital Anvil/Microsoft to work on Freelancer modeling characters and props. He also created character concepts and large environments for Enwor and Lonstar.

Brett Harris has 7 years experience in the gaming industry working for Kinesoft and Digital Anvil/ Microsoft on PC and Xbox titles. He has worked as an animator and later as a lead on various projects such as Crimson Order, Freelancer 2, Brute Force, and Enwor.

Will’s career started at Sega back in 1991, making simple games for the Game Gear and Sega Genesis where he helped ship half a dozen titles in as many years. The highlight: working on the overkills, vendettas, and sudden deaths for Eternal Champions: Challenge from the Dark Side, voted most violent game of that year and more recently listed as number one on IGN’s top ten list of best gore effects. Hell yeah!

Will moved to Austin in 1997 to work at Origin Systems on Wing Commander Prophecy and eventually moved to Sony to sculpt environments for Star Wars Galaxies. But after spending seven years working on MMOs Will is ecstatic to once again work on console games, where the games are at their most creative, and there is no such thing as player housing.

Zach cut his teeth in the industry on mobile games with Klear Games, creating sprites for the Catwoman and Batman Begins cell phone games. From there, he went on to modeling, texturing, and rigging in-game assets for Ensemble Studios on Age of Empires III and its subsequent expansion, Age of Empires III: The Warchiefs.

Delvin enthusiastically joins Red Fly Studio as a recent graduate of Rochester Institute of Technology in New York where his studies included Computer Science.Until now, he has worked on many student projects, but now it’s time to step into the big leagues.Delvin joins Red Fly Studio as a Gameplay Programmer.

John brings a wealth of QA and production experience to Red Fly after spending time at Digital Anvil, Ion Storm, and Junction Point Studios.

Andrew has been both an avid gamer and a dedicated artist since his youth. He started creating games early with modifications for the original Unreal Tournament, and his love for creating art for games grew into a career. Red Fly is the first *paying* job he has had creating models and textures for games.

Damien began programming games as a founding member of Kokoromi, a game collective currently based in Montréal. He helped organize GAMMA 01: Audio Feed, an indy game presentation/party at the 2006 Montréal International Game Summit and then co-presented the games from that event at the 2007 GDC Experimental Games Workshop. He is also a contributor to the Cubid+ project of the Hexagram Institute for Research/Creation in Media Arts and Technologies.

Brad comes to the industry by way of many years of academic programming in the fields of both Computer Graphics and Physics. Brad studied Physics up to the Masters level and decided to leave his academic career behind for his long-time dream career in games. Brad started his career working for a Boston based independent developer Mad Doc Software where he worked on several unannounced titles for the XBOX360 and PC.

John has loved games ever since he was young. He has always wanted the opportunity to make games professionally. By joining Red Fly Studio as Gameplay Programmer, he is living that dream. Before joining Red Fly, he graduated from Georgia Tech and has worked as a content tester for Game Tap before performing as an intern for Electronic Arts where worked on the Superman Returns Game.

Matt came to Red Fly after finishing school in Los Angeles. While there he worked on several mod’s with the Game Wizards production team. He entered the industry as a modeling and texture artist at Climax working on PSP titles. From there he went on to Isopod Labs as a vehicle artist for an unannounced Xbox Live game.

In 1996 Bill went to work for 7th Level along with Dan, Kris and Jeff. Since then his career has taken him to Ion Storm, Edge of Reality, Retro Studios, Sony Online Entertainment and Bioware Corp, where he had the opportunity to master his trade. Focusing the past half of his career on character/creature assets and player customization systems for MMORPGs, Bill is excited to direct his skills toward the console game market. Returning to work with his long time industry brethren at Red Fly Studio, he feels right at home.

Thomas A. Szakolczay started his career back in 99. Westwood Studios in Vegas decided to give this kid a break as a concept artist, and it was good! With 3 years and 3 titles under his belt, it was time to move on. Crawling from the dustbowl, T.A.S. decided to explore new opportunities in Los Angeles and landed a job at Gray Matter Studios. T.A.S. was happy in his new home, but all was not as it seemed, a dark cloud descended on the small happy studio and thus began his service for Activision were he pumped out concepts and character models for 3 WW2 games.T.A.S. was at his wit’s end and sought to regain his lost sense of creative expression. Taking pity on poor T.A.S.’s plight, A Red Fly came to visit him, said it would make things better and took him under its creepy translucent wing… and it was great!

At 18 months old Nick climbed a ladder his dad had been using to fix the air conditioner on the roof, when he reached the peak he sat down and started to draw with the paper and markers he had brought along. After surviving many other life endangering adventures he finished art school and started his career as an environment artist at Pandemic studios working on Mercenaries. From there he went on to work on Spy vs Spy, Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter and Darksiders.

Todd made his way into the game industry after spending two years in school for computer animation. In 2005 he was hired at Mad Doc Software where he worked on several unreleased Unreal3 projects. He joined the ranks of Red Fly in hopes of bringing his own individual flavor to the Studio’s already unique artistic vision.

Dustin has been writing bios about himself since 1999 when he first started in the game industry. He must really love them since he’s moved around quite often he’s had to write a lot of them. When not writing bios he strives to do things that would eventually end up in some bio in the future. For example, he recently worked at THQ and shipped Saints Row as a vehicle art coordinator. He’s also worked in the past as a lead artist, technical artist, senior artist, senior texture artist, senior modeler, fx artist, and before that he worked as just an artist. Studios he’s worked at have include Vigil Games, Volition, Vicious Cycle and several others that don’t start with the letter ‘V’.

Hoping to never have to write another bio (after this one) Dustin joined Red Fly Studio in late 2007.

Rudy went to elementary school, he loved it. He played games and drew turtles that were ninjas. He went to art school and then started making video games. First at Vicious Cycle, then time off, then at Vigil, and now at Red Fly. “Austin is nice” he said once. El Paso is the place of his birth, way back in ’82 when you weren’t even born yet. “Making games is fun” he stated once. Just the other day he said he hated the internet, but then changed his mind about it.

Ted’s start in the game industry arrived inevitably after associating over-long with Amiga software developers in various cities, when he was brought in to help with the Fighter Duel project at Jaeger Software back in the early 90’s.

This led not to a lifelong addiction to WW2 air-combat simulators, but instead to a lifelong addiction to the more fun and interesting problem solving found in making games. An addiction that while both his family and wife recognize, they do not understand.

On the journey Ted has taught and been schooled by many excellent people both software- and content- engineers: he helped ship the PC version of Fighter Duel in multiplayer/multilingual form; Moved to console development with Retro Studios in the late 90’s to work on what would become Metroid Prime on the GameCube; through a slight diversion into the Dot Com world making electronic versions of the Australian National newspaper with NewStand, Inc; back into games with Ion Storm where he would help ship both Deus Ex:Invisible War and Thief:Deadly Shadows on both PC and Xbox; a stint doing Serious Games of various types for the eventually-doomed Breakaway Games Austin studio; and completing a short tour with Electronic Arts’ Mythic studio working on Warhammer Online. Ted is now very happy to be finding himself working again on the Nintendo platform which he feels is the most-fun development-wise since the Amiga.

When not working on code, or playing on the rocky landscape of Texas with his bicycle, Ted can be found slightly north of Austin TX where the three resident cats allow him and his wife to put out food and change the litter boxes.

Erik Touve started programming professionally in 1995 and entered the games industry in 2000 at Glass Eye Entertainment and began work on the Microsoft Casino team as a game programmer.

In 2003 he went to Ion Storm Austin to work on Thief: Deadly Shadows. After finishing Thief he assisted on pre-production efforts for a new Deus Ex title before Ion Storm closed its doors.

For a brief stint he worked in the cell-phone space and later he joined BreakAway Games working on serious games for the military and pre-production for a next-gen console title. Erik recently worked for EA/Mythic’s Warhammer Online for the PC.

Erik lives in Austin Texas. He and his wife Julia recently owned and operated the world famous “Macho Taco” in South Austin, serving the best authentic food on planet Earth.

Brett was working as a Biological Scientist for the University Of Florida Department Of Medicine when he began drawing a comic strip for the university’s newspaper. That led to a freelance position with The Gainesville Sun as their first Editorial Cartoonist. Soon he managed to get a comic strip syndicated and strangers began offering him money for his scribbles. When it dawned on him that he might be able to make a living as a full-time artist he put microbiology behind him and matriculated at Ringling School of Art and Design. Upon graduation he was able to add to his unrelated bachelor’s degree collection with a BFA in Computer Animation.

Brett comes to Red Fly from Sony Pictures Imageworks in Los Angeles where he worked as a Character Animator on such films as Narnia, Monster House, Beowulf, and I Am Legend.

Damon is a 14-year veteran in the games industry, and has shipped 9 titles (and of course worked on the inevitable few sad ones that have never seen the light of day). After studying art and music at U.T. Austin, he started his career in games at Origin Systems. There, he helped make Wing Commander Armada, Wing Commander 3 (for the 3DO), Wing Commander 4, Wing Commander Prophecy, and also contributed to Ultima 9 and Ultima Online 2. He eventually went on to Sony Online Entertainment to make Star Wars Galaxies. He is pleased and proud to bring his skills and knowledge to the excellent creative team at Red Fly.

Tre has been a game developer since 1995, and has worked at Acclaim Studios Austin, Wolfpack Studios, Breakaway Games, Junction Point, and now Red Fly. He has been a character artist, environment artist, animator, and lead environment artist over the years, working on several titles, including Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, Turok 2: Seeds of Evil, Turok 3: Oblivion, Turok: Rage Wars, Shadowbane, The Red Star, and others (including some ‘serious games’ and prototypes). He was attracted to Red Fly by the cool projects, the talented team (many of whom he’s worked with previously), and the contagious energy of the studio. In his personal time, Tre enjoys life casting and creating special makeup effects. He can also juggle, which isn’t as useful as one might expect.

Ricky Cambier thinks video games are where it is at. The only thing better than art you can watch is art you can play. He cut his teeth as a professional game designer at Aspyr Media, right here in Austin, working on three titles in the Sims Stories line. Before arriving in Texas he toured the US and Europe, performing and creating theatre pieces with a variety of ensembles. He is proud to join Red Fly Studio and help realize their vision.

Justin Gilbert has been programming professionally for 8 years. He cut his teeth at Leading Edge Media where he created robust database driven web applications and back-end intranets. He then decided to go back to school and obtained a Bachelors Degree in Game Development at Full Sail Real World Education. After graduating he moved his family to Austin so he could work Multimedia Games. After a short stint there he happily moved over to Red Fly doing console development.

A graduate of the Full Sail Bachelor program, former programmer at Webfoot Technologies (which deals largely in licensed hand-held titles for the DS), and fellow gaming enthusiast. After braving the bitter colds of Chicago, Bill is fortunate to find himself a scripter position with Red Fly in the beautiful Austin area. His interests include: Games (both table-top and electronic), waveboarding (think a skateboard, but with 2 wheels), anime, manga, comics, books, long walks on the beach, and making cheesecake (which, by the way, is neither cheese nor a cake).

Herbie has been playing and designing video games since the late 80s, when his older sister unearthed a dusty Atari system in order to spare her Smurf collection from being conscripted into yet another lopsided battle against a fierce squad of Lego men. As he grew up, Herbie continued to work on his own games across a variety of genres and formats, picking up two degrees from Old Dominion University along the way before finally breaking into the industry as a Gameplay Programmer at Red Fly Studio. It is rumored he thinks ferrets are really cool, but information on this is sketchy at best.

Starting his game development career after graduating from the Full Sail Bachelor of Science program, Venezuela-grown Carlos joined Midway Studios Austin as a Game Designer and worked on an unannounced next-gen console game. Now, he’s very excited to continue living the dream at the creative think tank of Red Fly Studio. Aside from playing games non-stop since the NES era, he also loves baseball, comic books, anime, manga, and pursuing random interests when the mood strikes, such as smirking while looking up for no particular reason.

Alex has loved video games ever since coming home from school and trying to wade through his three brothers so he could play Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He took that passion to California where he graduated from The Art Institute of CA at Los Angeles. Out of school he worked as a Motion Capture Artist on a digital short that was aired on the Ellen Degeneres show. He finally escaped L.A. later that year and got hired on at RedFly as a Junior Animator. He couldn’t be happier.

Liz has been interested in video games since the day her parents brought home a Sega Master System. She began working in QA for the game industry upon earning her BFA in Studio Art. After working for such companies as Digital Anvil, Ion Storm, and Midway Studios- Austin, Liz now brings all of that QA knowledge to Red Fly Studio.

Josh started life out wanting to be a storyteller, eventually deciding game design was the best creative medium for him after serving for four and a half years in the Marine Corps infantry.

Josh started work in the game industry in 2006 as a game artist at Frozen Codebase. He worked on several XBOX Live Arcade titles, before moving out here to join the Red Fly Studio team. He’s a proud Daddy of two and married to a “hot Roller Derby girl.”

Mike McShaffry has been in the games industry at Origin Systems in 1990 as a programmer, working on the Ultima series. Since then he’s worked on more than a dozen shipped games on the PC, Xbox, PS2, and the Wii, in FRPG, MMO, kids, casual, military, action/stealth, and platforming genres. Mike somehow found the time and will to write a book, Game Coding Complete, now in its third edition and published by Charles River Media. On his off hours Mike enjoys biting off way more than he can chew on home projects, helping with the local IGDA chapter and a charity haunted house called SCARE for a CURE, shreading singletrack on his mountain bike, and enjoying good times with his wife of 20 years, Robin, and his friends.

This guy is all about anime, motorcycles, UNIX, music and video games. (Proud geek / adventure nerd, nerd of romance!) Graduated from the Art Institute of Houston in 2001, then moved to San Diego for four years and worked for Midway (think Mortal Kombat) as a game tester, initially just looking for a summer job. Six years later and after re-relocating back to Austin, he is now the wiz of everything to do with technical certification and programming guidelines. (That means the nerdiest of nerdy QA.) His first gaming machines were an Atari 2600 and a C=64, and has never stopped playing PC and console games; proudest achievement in the industry so far was to have helped design and implement user interface for a big-budget FPS game released last year.

Rusty moved to Austin Texas with the dream of becoming a video game designer. He worked a stint as a QA tester and QA lead at Aspyr Media before finally breaking into their design department. He worked as designer on three Sims Stories titles, then on the educational title futureU.

He also helped out as a combat and item designer for the MMORPG Secondhand Lands for Callipygian Games.

Now he is a designer at Red Fly and is jazzed to continue designing games!

Chris started programming in 1978 when his parents bought him a TRS-80 with a whopping 4K of memory. In high school he taught the school’s programming class because none of the teachers knew how to program. Later Chris taught assembly language, C, and C++ in college to help pay for his addiction to playing and programming on MUDs. Chris foolishly entered the professional games industry after his brother told him it would be great fun! 16 years and more than a dozen shipped titles later and he’s still having fun. In his time in the games industry Chris has shipped titles for PCs, massively multiplayer online games, Xbox, Playstation 1 & 2, iPhone, and even a couple of award winning “Smart Toys”. For almost a decade Chris has lived with the curse of having his best-selling title being “Barbie’s Riding Club”. Chris moved to Austin in the mid 90’s and after 13 years he is pretty darn sure it is the best place on Earth to live. Away from his day job of programming computer games Chris likes to hike, cook, play poker, make his own beer, program computer games, spend time with his lovely wife, and play with his Italian Greyhound.

Ron found he had a love for drawing at an early age, when he drew his first comic book before the age of ten. His love of comics and art continued, even when his career path seemed to take a left turn into the realm of academia, where he picked up a Master’s degree in Texas History along the way. When he realized he was doodling much more often than taking notes, he decided to return to the world of art, and combine that passion with one for video games. Ron graduated in 2008 with yet another Master’s degree, this time in Interactive Technology from the Guildhall at SMU. Finally set on the right career path, Red Fly Studio is his first professional “art gig” and his first foray into video games.

Grace enjoys casual and hardcore games alike, and can get really competitive when it comes to Real Time Strategy games like Starcraft. She also likes arguing over thick rule books of nerdy board games. After making the amazing discovery that people actually make a living making games, Grace jumped straight into the Guildhall and practiced like mad. Grace loves to paint people in armors, dramatic lighting, and shiny stuff in general. She still hasn’t shaken the unreal sensation of having a foot in the magical door of the game industry.

Chris Frechette graduated Digipen in 2001 with grand visions of pursuing a life in the video game industry. After getting side tracked for several years as a manager with Gold’s Gym, he decided it was time to make a career change and chase his passion. Since leaving Gold’s, he’s cranked out a few homebrew XBOX360 games and an iPhone game. After a couple months in QA at Aspyr, he joined the Red Fly Studio team ready to begin his career.