TobeyART

Born and raised in Michigan, and after a dozen or so years living in Sunny Las Vegas, moved the family back to the good ol' MidWest and am currently living in Chicagoland.  I finished my Foundation Studies at Parsons School of Design in New York City and received my BFA with Honors from the Rhode Island School of Design with an emphasis on Illustration (somewhere in-between there I took a year of fine arts study at Kendal College of Design).  I am proficient in traditional illustration techniques, but work primarily digitally in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.

 

My first job after college was as a designer of graphic tees for Perrin Inc., one of the largest airport apparel suppliers in the USA.  I left Perrin after three years to begin my career in the gaming industry at Bally Technologies where I started as a glass designer before transitioning into video design.  While at Bally I have risen from a Level 2 Artist to the first person to fill the Principal Artist position once it was created.  I am proficient in all aspects of visual game design from conception to completion.  I am the primary creator of all the 2D visual aspects of my projects, working closely with my Producer and Media-Tech to fine-tune the personality, animation and choreography of our games.  

 

I pride myself on mentoring junior level artists, and helping them to grow as professionals, by passing on some of the lessons (good and bad) that I have learned in my dozen years in the gaming industry. Beyond mentoring other artists, I also help Producers throughout the company with their projects through my leadership on our Art Review Comittee, where more times than not, beyond obvious design and choreography flaws, I help them pinpoint that thing about the game which they are struggling with but haven't the design vocabulary to articulate. 

 

My work ethic and professionalism are well respected by my supervisors and peers, and this is reflected in my having been tasked with many high level product roll-outs as the lead artist on several innaugural cabinets and Licensed brand releases.  I am equally adept at art-leading large collaborative projects as I am with designing my own individually created games, and take ownership in all that I do.