Meet the Team

Charles has been working as a game designer for six years in a number of genres. He's designed outdoor games, casual PC titles, collectible card games, flash games, board games, games for touch screens, and online multiplayer games. No matter the genre, Charles is most passionate about creating gameplay that gives players a story to tell once the game ends. When he's not designing games, Charles is most likely playing one whether it's an old school platformer, turn-based strategy, D&D, or the latest Monster Hunter. In the future, Charles hopes to design augmented reality games that merge physical sports and video games.

Nash has been composing and producing video game music as a freelancer for six years. His goal is to make a great soundtrack for a great game, one that elevates in-game music beyond the background. He draws inspiration from the classics of the 16- and 32-bit era, especially the works of Yasunori Mitsuda and Nobuo Uematsu, as well as more recent composers such as Darren Korb and Jim Guthrie. Nash also helps with game design, Lua scripting, and social networking. Besides composing music, Nash also worked for Starlight Runner Entertainment where he helped to develop AAA video game franchises into epic transmedia storyworlds. When not working on Artizens, Nash plays keyboards and writes songs for his rock band, Chronicles of Sound.

Kai has been passionate about games and programming since elementary school. When not playing games he could often be found writing scripts for games, making bots that play for him, or finding ways to exploit game code. His adventures led him to graduate with a B.S. in Computer Science and a specialization in game programming. Professionally, he was the lead programmer at several small game companies, using a variety of languages such as C++, ActionScript, Python, and Objective C. Working on Artizens has been one of his most challenging and exciting experiences and nothing would be more rewarding to him than seeing others enjoying the game.

Simon was found in 1874 off the coast of Costa Rica clutching a barrel of Guinness with only his beard to keep him company. He is the sole animator for Artizens and enjoys collaborating with this fantastic team. Made entirely from facial hair and animation juices, Simon lives to bring monsters and Artizens to life! When Simon is not animating or brushing his luxurious chin bristles he is dedicating his time to his human clone breeding program, his wife is currently pregnant with identical twin girls. Simon is hopeful that in the future he will be able to feed his horde, grow his beard and use barrels as furniture in his Australian tree top home.

Hailing from the hinterlands of Pennsylvania, Derrick discovered video games at an early age and enjoyed the likes of R.C. Pro-Am, Cobra Triangle and Pro Wrestling. Continuing with his interest, Derrick graduated from DigiPen Institute of Technology in 2009 with a B.S. in Real-time Interactive Simulation. After graduation, Derrick spent the next two years developing his craft professionally as a gameplay programmer at ArenaNet on Guild Wars 2. Seeking a new experience, Derrick branched out on his own and worked on several independent game projects before ultimately taking root at Artizens. Derrick operates as a generalist writing whatever code is necessary, ranging from gameplay and ui to tools.

Howie is an up and coming illustrator/concept artist who has done artwork for movies, video games, trading cards, book covers, and more. He is of course inspired by everything sci-fi and fantasy but is also hugely influenced by nature with it's beautiful landscapes and creatures as well as man made objects like architectural structures and machines. Howie's primary focus is on creating game art that inspires the player to explore and interact with everything that's on screen. He is the lead artist on Artizens creating backgrounds, monsters, characters, and other objects and is extremely excited to see custom Artizens populate his worlds!