Welcome
This is the personal website of Steve Theodore. I've been in computer graphics for 15 years, doing everything from writing Hypercard stacks to working on some of the world's most successful action games. These days I do art direction, pipeline design, and animation for games, with a special focus on technically challenging areas like character rigging and shaders; I'm also a columnist for Game Developer magazine.
Using the links at right to get around the site.
About points you to a C.V. in both online and downloadable versions, and a longer bio. (still being written)
Portfolio lets you check out samples of my work (very much under construction at the moment).
Talks points to slides from past GDC conferences and other (right now a straight dump of two old slide sets; to be cleaned up soon)
Articles is a
collection of some of my favorite Game Developer magazine
columns from the last 5 years.
Contacts has my addresses. I'm always happy to field technical questions or help with portfolio reviews. If you're inquiring about a speaking engagement or consulting work please remember to note that in your subject line.
NEWS
SIGGRAPH (8/10/08)
I'll be on a
panel discussing the future of technical art and game pipelines at this
year's SIGGRAPH. L.A. in August. Sigh. I wonder what the
weather for Tokyo
in September iis like?
Bumper Bros! (8/10/08)
| Al just finished a week long course in game design at a
summer camp called idTech, and I have to say I'm very impressed. He worked
like a demon and produced a little platformer in just 5 days. The
results are pretty amazing for an eight year old -- man, I could never have
done the same at his age. Of course, at his age I was still worrying about
being drafted to go to Vietnam. But still, these kids today....
Right-click here and 'Save As...' to download his opus, "Bumper
Bros." 100% Al -- I didn't get a word in edgewise on the development.
Should work on most Windows machine |
 |
Plug Time (8/09/08)
A shout out to the crew at
tech-artists.org -- a new website that's hopefully going to be a go-to
destination for all the struggling tech artists out there. Get
in on the ground floor!
Incipit Novus Ordo Seclorum (8/01/08)
Been very heads down at work, secretively plotting the rise
of the New World Order... as we affectionately call the upcoming overhaul of
the ungie content pipeline. Let's just say that I, for one, welcome our new
robot overlords.
Update: Well into the N.W.O. now. Releasing a tools
project of this size is pretty hairy... but fun... However my past
sins come back to haunt me. I used to make fun of engineers. Now I
pat myself on the back for how efficiently I triage my buglists.
Have I really joined the dark side? |
 |
One nice thing that I noticed is the video from the
spring's GDCSE talk (the cruise ship one) is now
up on the Microsoft research site. A full hour of ramblings on the
future of game content for your amusement-- with (if I say so myself) some
truly kickin' slides courtesy of
Konradus Lycosthenes.
And... it looks like I'll be doing a talk at the
CEDEC in Tokyo
this September.
Long Hiatus
Like all the entries, "It's been a long time since..."
Notable events since the last update:
-
This year's GDC presentation was
an on-stage interview with Isamu Kamikokuryou, the art director for Final Fantasy XIII
-- an amazing artist and a really cool looking product.
-
I delivered a talk at the
Microsoft Academic Days on
Game Development -- a very interesting conference that brings together
industry folks and academics who either use games in education, or prepare
students to work in games, or use games to get kids working in computer
science. Lots of interesting goings on, including great talks by
Ken Perlin and
Zoran Popovic. Plus,
it was on a cruise ship in the Caribbean. But it was a serious conference. I
swear. Really. Somebody apparently
took
photos of me doing my talk, slides from which I should be posting soon.
-
The Articles section is
working!
-
Al has finished his first ever film. Man, these kids
today. I used to dream about doing stuff like this when I was his age,
but there was just no way for a civilian to pull it off. Picture below
links to a WMV.
Happy Holidays!
It's been quite a while since the last update. Obviously most of the summer was taken up getting
Halo 3 out the door.
And since then trying to whip everything to shape for the Unnamed Products
To Come has been a busy time as well. Not to mention
Bungie's
secession from the mothership. However it's important not to ignore
the seasonal niceties, so here's an early Christmas card for all our friends
and family.... Click the pictures below for the treat ;)
Testing out "Expressions" (Apr 4 2007)
Among the other benefits of working at Bungie is access to
deep discounts at the Microsoft company store. I'm experimenting with
Expressions,
the very slick new web editor from MS. So far it looks pretty cool.
About those files... (Apr 4 2007)
Got a nice ping from the webmaster of
www.teamfortress2.de, who was
inquiring about a couple of very old tf2 concepts that I had inadvertently
left lying around. He was very understanding about not publishing those
images, but I've also removed them from the directory just to be safe. As I
stressed in the intro to the portfolio section, the images here are
copyrighted to a number of my former employers, so they can't be reproduced
without the permission of the owners -- I can't give that permission even if
I'd like to. And of course let me repeat again that nothing here is
"unreleased" art that will ever show up in a future game... no scoops here,
alas.
Long.... hiatus.... (Apr 4 2007)
Many, many things since last update... In particular, getting
adjusted to life at the big B in the middle of the Halo 3 crunch. Whew.
Still, it's good to be back in the swing of things, even if it means some
breakneck learning and a lot of late nights. Biggest area of future
concern is dealing with the insane amount of data in nextGen games (although
by the time we get to another Halo product "NextGen" is going to be as
quaintly antiquated as using the "e-" prefix. We're way past
Max's comfort zone already. Something's gotta give.
Test article up (Jan 31, 2007)
I posted an old article about age discrimation in the articles section as a test.
EMPLOYED! (Jan 30, 2007)
This morning I signed on the dotted line and once I hop the various bureaucratic hurdles (background check, blood work, neural implants) I'll be starting a new job as Technical Director at Bungie, working on Halo 3. That's "Technical Director"
in more or less the Pixar sense -- tools wrangling, pipeline development, and advanced graphics research. I'll get to work with some awesome people on one of the great projects.
Breaking News (Jan 26 2007)
Al's birthday is coming up
Models portfolio working (Jan 25 2007)
The Models section of the portfolio is now open for business
Illustration portfolio working (Jan 15 2007)
The Illustrations section of the portfolio is now open for business
Under construction (Jan 14 2007)
As you can probably tell, my wide and varied skill set does not really extend very far into the realm of web design. This site is very literally under construction, because I need to get a working portfolio on line as soon as possible. It'll be updating a lot during January, right up until my evaluation copy of Macromedia Dreamweaver expires (I'll say in passing that so far it's pretty good, but my experience with HTML editors is, as I said, pretty limited).
In any case, don't be suprised by dead links or pages of Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.(Which, incidentally, comes from passage from The Great Bore, Cicero, denouncing ascetic Stoicism. I'm sure this has a deep irony in it somewhere, but I'm not sure where, and Cicero's tangled diction outstrips my rusty Latin).
