Presently I am in the midst of completing MILLAGUN, one of the latest GAME WIZARDS projects at the Art Institute of California, Santa Monica. In this Project I am the Lead Level Designer, working with the Unreal Tournament 3 Editor. We plan to submit this Mod in the third phase of the "Make Something Unreal Contest" ( http://www.makesomethingunreal.com/ ). We are very proud of our efforts thus far and have much more in store before submission. This game changes the typical first person shooter format into a side-scrolling space ship game reminiscent of the arcade style games like R-Type, Defender, Raiden, Xevious & Zaxxon.

We were recently praised by the Game Wizards group (almost 100 current members strong, working on four individual projects) as the team with the best looking & functioning game. We began conceptualization of this game in early October and expect to have it ready for submission to the MSUC contest by the April 2009 deadline. We use the same base UT2D code (by Joe Bates) as we did on the Killing Time project but added a space ship as the character and decked the level out with enemy and friendly ships, freaky alien creatures and comets & debris as obstacles - all in a cool outer space environment. This game will be available for free download through FilePlanet.com once submitted in April at the contest web site.

I focused on many aspects of this game, everything from conceptualizing the entire game idea alongside Gerardo (the overall project lead) to design layouts, level block outs, alien creature concept drawings, Kismet node based scripting, UT3 editor asset imports and optimization, complex material shaders, particle system creation and the rigging and import of the Millagun ship. With three other level artists and about a 12-15 person art team creating our assets, I have spent most of my efforts as a lead - keeping the project together by keeping the team in line, ensuring a uniform art style and other organizational responsibilities in the absence of a dedicated producer on our team. I enjoy taking this lead position, especially when working with such a laid-back team of talented individuals. I am sure we will do well with this project, so check out the contest site for updates.