Who can you help, and how? I can help anyone who is willing to learn. To be in the cg industry you are in a constant cycle of study. With new technology needs change and with those needs the way work is presented to your audience. It is important to understand that a reel is a fundamental part of your portfolio to show your work and impress within a few seconds of it being seen. Can you tell us about yourself and your background? I have always been a game enthusiast since I first played Atari games and soon after Nintendo. I have always had the urge to draw since I was young. I did not know I would be making games but i was always fascinated by them. I would draw "Metriod" levels and imagine I was playing them when I was a kid. Now I have had the rare pleasure to be able to ship two games in the same year of 2013 both well received by critics "The Last of Us" and "Tomb Raider". Currently at NaughtyDog I am a Sr. Texture and Shading Artist on the next Uncharted game. How did you get to where you are now? My career in the game industry started as an end user for games creating environments, designs, and low level scripting/coding for games that had the capability to edit and modify like Doom, Quake series, many other games, and later Unreal. While designing levels for Unreal Tournament I came to be part of a game modification team that entered the Make Unreal Contest. The modification Tacops won first place and later became my first real game released. After this event some of the team members were contacted to be part of Epic Games for Unreal Tournament 2004 project. I had the pleasure to start and finish the project at Epic Games as contract Level Designer. After Epic Games I decided to go back to School and choose The School of Visual Arts at NYC in which I completed the Computer Art program for a degree in a Bachelor in Fine Arts. After school I was jumping around studios testing the waters of the VFX industry. I lost interest in the VFX industry and decided to work hard on my game environment portfolio. I was contacted by Crystal Dynamics at SF and was hired to work on "Tomb Raider" I worked for a span of two years till finished. It was an amazing experience with an amazing crew. I had to move on to LA for personal reasons but I was lucky enough to get situated with NaughtyDog. I really love my current job and I would not leave it for the anything. What projects have you worked on? I have worked on commercial, and game projects. Games "GOTY Unreal Tournament" Atari / Epic Games "Tacops : Assault on Terror" Atari / Kamehan Studios "Unreal Tournament 2004" Atari / Epic Games "Def Jam Rapstar" 4mm Games "3 unreleased titles" 4mm Games "Tomb Raider" Crystal Dynamics "The Last of Us" Naughty Dog "Uncharted" Naughty Dog Where do you draw inspiration from? More and more from nature and real life events. Other stuff that helps my imagination going are Film, Music, and Art. Tell us something odd about yourself? I find myself staring at walls, dirt, trash on the floor for long periods of time and people walking around me think I am crazy.