Meet Factory

In 1999, Ars Electronica winner and friend, Andy Best, asked me to come to Helsinki, Finland to help him launch Iceborg. Iceborg was an early MMO, a social roleplaying game that followed the survivors of crashed space cruise liner on a desolate planet. A planet that once was a garbage dump. To live, the crew and passengers needed to recycle the plentiful waste and grow crops on the not-so-habitable soil.

Our funding was through the Finnish government and partly through KISS FM, the largest radio station in Helsinki. My first task was to build a 3D jukebox for the dance club complete with SMS interaction that allowed users to buy songs. Overall, my role was to act as a widget builder linking the code of the programmers to the 3D VRML models of the artists. Overall, it was a wonderful experience with a great international team. Many of the ideas we explored are re-emerging in today's VR social spaces.

GRA Interactive

Multimillion dollar corporate training packages were the norm at GRA. The company found an early niche with the Compact Disk Interactive (CDi) format and grew from 15 employees when I was hired to 150 three years later. This put myself and other early hires at the forefront of managing our explosive growth. From a production standpoint, we were a tight and highly effective team. Working with SMEs, writers, and programmers, I developed all the visual elements of a training title and oversaw art production on follow-up titles. CSX Rail's AC400 Locomotive (shown here) had 26 training titles with 3 to 15 CDi's per title.

I worked with Georgia Pacific, Weyerhaeuser, and UPS, but CSX Rail was our primary client. Trains and equipment that broke down in far off places required a crew capable of doing repairs quickly and remotely. Our training packages doubled as repair manuals. A merger by CSX Rail  put a hold on their training needs and sadly this occurred as we were adapting to online work and the burst of the dot-com bubble.

Global Graphics

Fresh from the Rochester Institute of Technology with a degree in Package Design, I arrived in Atlanta, GA.  My motorcycle carried me, a few clothes, and my portfolio. Just one job interview was lined up and thankfully, it went well. The transition from student to production artist was quite the shock.

Fast-paced and client-centered, I did exactly what the customer asked. The average day had 5 to 50 jobs cross my workstation. Small jobs might just be some "UP" arrows or barcodes. Larger jobs might start with sketches drawn by our sales force on paper napkins.

One interesting bit was our re-organization to Six Sigma. Consultants came in and shortened the lines of communications between people, both organizationally and physically. It was an amazing change especially as I was the Night Manager at the time.