Guests

Greg Sewart Director of Game Production - The REDspace - Keynote

---

Tara Audibert - Owner - moXyFoX

Clyde Blakely - Freelance 3D Artist

Curtis Carey - Owner - No Such Thing As Grownups

Lauren Cruikshank - PhD Media Arts & Cultures Program - UNB

Phyllis Grant - Owner - Phyllis Grant Studio and Gallery

Jeff Mundee - Game Design Director - Reframe Games

Joselyn O'Connor - Game Programmer - Scientific Games

Devin Taylor - Freelance Illustrator

Sam Thibodeau - Founder and Software Engineer - Binary Life Solutions Group & MediAR Marketing Labs

Kirsten Tomlinson - Director - Ni'gweg Collective

Passionate about anything and everything games, Greg began his career as an editor at Electronic Gaming Monthly, helping to bring news and coverage of the personalities, events, and big releases of the industry to millions of readers every month.

He made the shift to the game development side of the industry, Greg worked at top companies including Vicious Cycle Software, HB Studios, and Frontier Developments before joining REDspace in Bedford, NS as the Director of Game Production. Throughout his career, Greg has worked on a wide range of games: from HTML5 and mobile games for preschoolers all the way up to AAA franchises including John Madden Football and Elite: Dangerous.

In his spare time, Greg is devoted to focusing his passion for games on raising money for the IWK Children's Hospital through Extra Life for Kids. Over the past seven years, Greg has managed to raise over $33,000.00 for this cause.

Tara Audibert is a renaissance woman and has been creating art since she was old enough to steal the permanent marker she used to draw windows on her pink puppy wallpaper, which much to her parents dismay was the age of 2. Continuing this destructive period, Tara continued to create art in all forms including animating for over a decade on TV shows for WB and Teletoon (Johnny Test, Delilah & Julius, Olliver’s Adventures, Zoom) and written & illustrated the children’s book Matthew Loses His Laugh. She has illustrated several comics concerning Aboriginal Issues (River Run, Lost Innocence, A Pre-Historic Race, Making it Right). Her love of art has led her to continue her education throughout her career, moving from animation, to learning fine art at NSCAD, and continuing on to her Certificate in Adult Education, instructing in Animation and Graphic Design and becoming an Animation Producer/Director and starting her own independent animation and comic studio: Moxy Fox Studio.

In 2016 created an indie short animated film entitled The Importance of Dreaming, which is inspired by the Abanaki legend of the same name and based on actual events from her life concerning forbidden love, children of mixed race and Alzheimer’s. You can find links to Tara’s works via moXyFoX.wordpress.com.

Recently Tara helped to form the Ni'gweg Indiginous Art Collective where she build two animated stories as part of the Ni'Tap game.

Clyde Blakely is a freelance artist in Miramichi who has worked on everything from 2D and 3D web animation to Vive and Oculus VR. Before starting his own freelance business, Clyde spent 16 years creating animation and graphics for various companies across Canada and has now expanded his client base to companies around the world. He enjoys playing games and developing games.

From Animator to director, Curtis has a long history in Television Production Animation. As well as Mobile Game Development doing design, animation, writing, illustration, and running day to day office operations.

Versed in script writing and story concepts for television, music videos and game design. Currently Employed as a Consultant for Streamlabs inc. He makes Videos, illustrations and even gifs for partnered Twitch Streamers, as well as art for the marketing and SuperMegaFan Departments.

In the world of independent media arts: He has written, illustrated and self published books of poetry, comics, art, and sexy dinosaurs. Curtis Twitch-streams his art creation process as well as producing hilarious youtube shorts. These are all is under the umbrella of an audio podcast-cult called, No Such Thing As Grownups.

Lauren Cruikshank is a professor from the Media Arts and Cultures program in the Department of Culture and Language Studies at the University of New Brunswick- Fredericton. She has been doing research in the academic field of game studies for over a decade, with a specific focus on avatars and aspects of virtual embodiment. She has developed courses on games and gameplay, digital culture, social media, gender and media, television and popular culture in the Media Arts and Cultures program at UNB. She is also is in the process of developing a game studies research group and an interactive media laboratory on the UNB campus to further advance the academic study of games here in Atlantic Canada.

Phyllis Grant is a Mi’gmaq artist from Pabineau First Nation. She is a mother, artist, rapper, filmmaker, dreamer and lover of all creation. She runs a tiny art gallery and studio next to her home on reserve, and also works in her home community office of Pabineau First Nation. Phyllis has collaborated with several organizations and groups –from the province of NB to Coca-Cola Canada, the National Film Board of Canada and Honor the Earth. An interdisciplinary artist, her works include animated films, poetry and music, as well as paintings and illustrations. She holds a Bachelor of Integrated Studies with a Certificate in Leadership Studies from UNB. Her artwork has appeared with many organizations and publications, notably, Pearson Canada, Native Women's Almanac, First Nation’s Children’s Futures Fund, UNB and CBU. Phyllis is passionate about community building and transformative learning in terms of leadership through art and technology. Her art focuses on sharing traditions and exploring identity within the process of creation, often retelling the Mi'gmaq legends she grew up with. She enjoys inspiring and facilitating creativity in others, and shares her path with unique expressions of family, community, nature, stories, medicines, passion and love.

Recently Phyllis helped to form the Ni'gweg Indiginous Art Collective where she build two animated stories as part of the Ni'Tap game.

Jeff Mundee has worked in the video game industry for over ten years starting in Vancouver with Factory1 Games, learning the ropes of game design and environment modelling as an intern. He then worked with Electronic Arts for three years as a motion capture specialist, and was involved in the production of animation for many EA games. Most notably, Fight Night Round 3, FIFA, Dragon Age, Skate, Dead Space, and Need For Speed. He then became a mission designer at United Front Games where he worked on Sleeping Dogs for Activision, later published by Square Enix. For five years he taught many game design courses at Art Institute of Vancouver. This involved mentoring of hundreds of students in various disciplines, many of whom are now professionals in the industry themselves. While teaching, he worked on several independent projects including Red Rolling Hood with Holy Mountain Games. He continues to teach several game design courses for UNB's MAAC program and is the Game Design Director at Reframe Games.

Jos started her career in games at Gogii Games where she worked on titles such as Princess 3: Rise of an Heir and Infected: The Twin Vaccine. She was then brought in to Telos Entertainment to help work on a Unity project. Then at Itavio, she developed the iOS and Android Itavio parent app where she was primarily responsible for the Unity and Native implementations of the Itavio SDK. After a couple of years helping to launch and teach the Game Developer program at Eastern College Jos is now working with Scientific Games.

Devin is a graduate from NBCC’s Animation and Graphics program. He spent his first seven years in the industry primarily as an animator and posing artist for television series (Stella and Sam, Jake and the Neverland Pirates, Atomic Puppet and Lion Guard to name a few). He also took the odd character design or storyboarding job along the way.

In the last few years, he’s worked more on the conceptual side of things, providing designs and artwork to develop mobile games, VR games and animated series for various studios. He is currently doing character designs for Disney’s Star vs the Forces of Evil, and illustrating books based on the series. First, he worked on a chapter book called "Star and Marco's Guide to Mastering Every Dimension". He then got to fulfill a lifelong dream of being a pro comic book artist with the release of the first 4 issues of an 8 issue series titled "Star vs the Forces of Evil: Deep Trouble". The next 4 issues are still to come.

Storytelling in comic books was always his first love, so Devin is also working on some creator owned comics for different writers as well as developing some of his own ideas.

Sam Thibodeau is an Entrepreneur with over 20 years experience in Business Development, Marketing Strategy and Operations Control. Thibodeau was a pioneer in the Hair Arts & Beauty Industry, opening, operating, and successfully commercializing the first authentic Day Spa in New Brunswick and has been featured in industry magazines and media.

He later decided to branch out of his family business, going on to obtain his Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Physics, stating that “[…] my understanding of personal achievement evolved, and life needed to be about more than just making money; if you are passionate about what you do, then all the rest will follow.”

During his academic years, he co-authored a paper on Cryptography, which was later published and presented at an International Conference on Information Security in Mysore, India. He opened 2 other successful entrepreneurial ventures during his academic years, and is now venturing to “help enable the social and corporate uptake, awareness, and readiness to usher in the new era of Augmented Reality in New Brunswick and the Atlantic Provinces”. Springer - Slide Attacks against Iterated Hill Ciphers

Kirsten began her media career 18 years ago as a freelance production assistant on hectic live action television and movie sets. Not satisfied with the real world drama of the movie business and craving the sort of creative absurdity one could only find amongst unwashed animators, she made the move to become a production coordinator at Collideascope Digital Productions in Halifax. In the animation world she had the opportunity to work on numerous award winning and critically acclaimed series as she scaled the monkey bars upwards earning more responsibility as an associate producer, and eventually as a producer. Loved by her crew, and integral to the successful planning and execution of tight budgets and schedules, Kirsten learned a lot about the artistic process and how to organize large teams of creative individuals towards a common goal by building stable productions and fostering an atmosphere of respect, teamwork, and productivity.

Always up for a new challenge, Kirsten decided to leave the industry she loved to take on a new role as a video game Producer for HB Studios in Lunenburg. She accepted the challenge of learning an entirely different production model in a new technology sector, quickly rising to the role of Senior Project Manager. During her time with HB Kirsten successfully produced a number of world-class console games with top clients from around the gaming world, and helped the company expand their business while managing numerous productions at two separate facilities. After experiencing work-life in a large gaming facility, Kirsten decided to make a sideways swing into a smaller boutique gaming and e-learning environment. Acting as Senior Production Manager for Raised Media, she has immersed herself in the world of education based games and online branding, all the while learning how to make a smaller company perform like a well oiled multi-national brand. After this the spirit on Entrepreneurship brought her to create Fourth Monkey Studios where for five years she managed a variety of animation and game projects.

Currently Kirsten is the Executive Director of the Ni'gweg Collective, a grouping of aboriginal artists, where she managed the Ni'Tap game project bringing traditional aboriginal storytelling to a modern game.