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Meeting Report: Outsourcing Panel Discussion

by Tracie Cook

On Monday September 24th IGDA-Austin members were welcomed at Retro Studios as it opened its doors to host this month’s professional development panel on Outsourcing Art Development. A full house turned out for the evening of great food, a great panel, and some fun surprises from our sponsor Dell.

Members enjoyed excellent tacos and tamales from Julia’s Catering Service, formerly Macho Taco and fine spirits and drink.

While eating, attendees met and listened to representatives from Dell. Susan Kittleson aka “Skittles”, the Director of Gaming and Consumer Marketing at Dell brought fun toys to showcase and demo. There was a room full of XPS 720 gaming desktops running beta versions of Tabula Rasa that always had a group of adventurers testing both the system and the game out. Prizes were even handed out by Dell reps to panel attendees who guessed correctly during Skittles’ Dell quiz.

Then the panel started at 7:30pm and everyone moved to the theatre. The subject of the panel this time was Outsourcing Art Development, a very hot topic in the industry right now. The panel moderator was Gordon Walton, Co-Studio Director of Bioware, and the panelists included:

  • Whitney Ayres
    • Art Director at BioWare
    • Formerly worked at Sony Online Entertainment as Studio Art Director
  • Victor Meinert
    • Art Director for Tabula Rasa at NCsoft
    • Formerly worked at Origin
  • Matt Scibilia
    • President of Critical Mass Interactive
    • Has worked in the games industry for nearly 15 years
  • Damon Trim
    • Art Director of outsourcing at Midway
    • Previously worked at Microsoft as project manager of the Xbox and Zune

After nearly an hour of Q & A, we had to call an end to the magical night on Outsourcing Art Development.

Posted by KainShin on September 27, 2007 08:50 PM