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Meet The TSL Team

Started by writerlove, June 26, 2013, 12:29:18 PM

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writerlove

Want to know more about the fantastic team that is working on The Silver Lining? Various members have been interviewed and  I will post their answers so you can get to know us better.

Today. I will start with the captain of the ship, Andi Elliott (waltzdancing).


Name: Adrienne (Andi) Elliott

Location: United States

Role on the team: Producer/Director of TSL Episode 5

Occupation: Elementary Teacher

What skills do you have?
The skills I feel that I bring to the team are organization and leadership.  I'm also a passionate listener who doesn't let ego get in the way of accomplishing a goal. I am level headed, most of the time, and while pushing the people of TSL I do it in a way that makes it enjoyable.

How long have you been on the team?
I have been on the team for 3 years. I was asked to join the team for the release of Episode 1 in June of 2010. I was the writer of some of the game recaps when I worked in PR. After a successful release, it became apparent that we needed more help so I moved to HR to help build up the team and started interviewing people for openings with the various directors. They must have liked what I was doing with scheduling so they asked if I wanted to make sure everything was completed for the other episodes and I said yes. The rest is history :)

How did you first hear about The Silver Lining?
I first heard about The Silver Lining back in 2007. My sister googled King's Quest and this project popped up. We instantly went to the link and found out that there was an Beta Build in the form of a demo. After we played it we figured it would be very soon until we saw the game since it was a beta. Boy were we in for a ride.

What made you decide to join?
I joined because it was a dream opportunity. I'm sure all of us at one point or another said, I would love to make a King's Quest game. Never in my life did I think I would be actually in charge of the final episode looks and plays.

What's your first King's Quest memory?
My first kings quest memory wasn't actually me playing the game at all. My parents had to play through the games first to see if they were appropriate for our age and I was like 7. It was a school night and I was already in bed with the light out when the door opened and my dad came in to see if my sister and I were awake. I was but my sister was not. My mother was getting ready to go into the ancient cave in King's Quest 7 Chapter 1. I remember being scared to death of the scorpion (it didn't help that we had just moved to the desert and I was scared of everything that moved). Since then I have always gotten the bug killer.

Favorite KQ game and why?
This is a hard question to answer because I love them all but if I had to play one over and over and over again, it would have to be King's Quest 6. I love the story in that game and the multiple ways to play it. I also had a huge crush on Alexander so I'm sure that is also why.

What's it like to work on The Silver Lining?
Working on The Silver Lining had been a joy. The people whom I have worked with over the years I have been here are great and if they have to leave I'm always sorry to see them go. Everyone is very professional and all have become excellent friends. For some of us this project has become our lives and with that we are like a family that is always moving forward, never looking back, growing to become more as each day passes.

How have you grown professionally and personally since joining Phoenix Online?

I feel that I have grown both professionally and personally. Before I joined I was very shy. I would hardly talk to anyone. The first few meetings I plastered myself to the virtual wall and even had trouble telling directors what needed to be said. It took a while but now, if I don't like something I'm not afraid to say it. Cesar Bittar even told me after one meeting I had with him, "Andi, You have grown up since you started." Professionally I learned how to work with other people, I know when it's my turn to talk and when it's my turn to listen. Keeping a schedule as helped me with my teaching career as well as just planning how my own life will be.

What's your favorite piece you've done for POS/Four Winds?

Sadly I can't say which is my favorite piece as it is in the game  Sorry Guys.

Favorite non KQ game?
My favorite non King's Quest game has to be either Day of the Tentacle or Monkey Island. I can play those two games for ever.

What are you currently playing?
I have been playing "The Sims" but not as often anymore. I have dedicated all my free time to making TSL Episode 5 the best it can be.
"Love can't be banished, even from this place. ... still less can it be banished from my heart."
"ENOUGH! Burden me not with thy poetry."-KQ6

snabbott

Quote from: writerlove on June 26, 2013, 12:29:18 PM
They must have liked what I was doing with scheduling
I think it was more like "How did we ever survive without Adrienne?" :D

Also, I don't think it was mentioned here, but Adrienne was a HUGE part of the 2nd "Save TSL" petition campaign (for Activision; the first, for Vivendi, was headed by Cat).

Steve Abbott | Beta Tester | The Silver Lining

stika

it's nice to learn more about the TSL crew! :D

waltzdancing

I'm only a small piece in a very large puzzle  ;]

wilco64256

Quote from: waltzdancing on June 26, 2013, 03:36:59 PM
I'm only a small piece in a very large puzzle  ;]

Don't sell yourself too short there. With many of us being pulled in so many different directions now, without Andi around I'm sure Episode 5 of TSL wouldn't be anywhere near where it currently is. I think some of us really underestimated how difficult it would become to juggle commercial work and finishing the TSL legacy at the same time, Andi is really doing an amazing job of making sure Episode 5 gets the time and attention it needs and it's coming together really nicely.
Weldon Hathaway

Cez

Ditto!

And after playing through the game today, my jaw dropped when I saw the intro. This is the first time that I've seen words I wrote gone from just words to such a beautiful thing -- I normally see all the various stages. And it was a wonderful feeling. TSL is in very capable and talented hands.

Bravo, Andi!


Cesar Bittar
CEO
Phoenix Online
cesar.bittar@postudios.com

snabbott

*updates working copy and plays*
Wow! Very cool! :D

Steve Abbott | Beta Tester | The Silver Lining

GrahamRocks!

Oh COME ON!!! Stop teasing us!!!

KatieHal

Never!  :suffer:

Also, yes, Andi is a rock star. :)

Katie Hallahan
~Designer, PR Director~

"Change is the constant, the signal for rebirth, the egg of the phoenix." Christina Baldwin

I have a blog!

writerlove

#9
It's time for Team Tuesday! Every Tuesday for the next few weeks, I'll be posting interviews with various TSL team members. Today, you'll learn a little more about yours truly.


Name:  Kristen

Location: West Virginia, USA

Role on the team:  Four Winds Team Lead and Producer

Occupation: Phoenix is my job while I look for full time employment. I'm  an aspiring journalist.

What skills do you have? I write, edit, critique art, coordinate Four Winds publishing every month and update Facebook and Twitter when articles are published.

How long have you been on the team? 2 years and 1 month.

How did you first hear about The Silver Lining? I don't remember, really. I started lurking around the forums in December 2008. I didn't fully keep tabs on the project until episode 1 came out. I was amazed the team overcame the odds.

What made you decide to join? I've loved the KQ series since I was 10 or 11 (now almost 25). I asked Katie about the Four Winds, which was a quarterly at the time. She told me to submit a writing sample and I did. My first article was a Tamir update which integrated into later stories. Then, Four Winds was converted into a blog in January 2012 and here we are a year and a half later still going strong.

What's your first King's Quest memory? My family got the anthology in 1999. I used to play KQ 1-4 and Colonel's Bequest with my boyband CDs in the background :P For a long time we kept the original print outs of the walkthroughs we found then but I think they finally got thrown away.

Favorite KQ game and why? 6, hands down. Everything came together in that game: the voice acting, the story, the music, and the writing. It doesn't matter to me that the game is 20+ years old. It's still just as good as the day I first played it.

What's it like to work on The Silver Lining? It's pretty neat to write about one of my favorite things and geek out with my fellow staffers. No one in my real life besides my older brother knows what Kings Quest is. I feel especially proud when a final product comes out after much collaboration and critique. We truly bring out the best in each other and that's what I like most about this gig.

How have you grown professionally and personally since joining Phoenix Online? Two years ago, I'd never seen myself as a leader. But now I feel pretty comfortable in my position. I've learned how to relate to people in a professional yet fun environment and how to build your team's trust. That's a fundamental in a project like this.  Managerial experience is valuable on a resume, too.

What's your favorite piece you've done for POS/Four Winds?  The two part piece explaining how the guard dogs got to the Green Isles. Part 1 Part 2

Favorite non KQ game? Soul Calibur 2. I love the voice acting in that game. But the costume customization in 4 and 5 is really cool.

What are you currently playing? SnoopyCoaster on my iPhone. It's a ridiculously simple game but addictive.

Link to portfolio?
[/url] My Four Winds articles
"Love can't be banished, even from this place. ... still less can it be banished from my heart."
"ENOUGH! Burden me not with thy poetry."-KQ6

waltzdancing

Yay Kristen!!! She does and excellent job and her team has wonderful ideas.

KatieHal

Kristen! Glad to see your interview--we are lucky and so happy to have you here. :)

Katie Hallahan
~Designer, PR Director~

"Change is the constant, the signal for rebirth, the egg of the phoenix." Christina Baldwin

I have a blog!

writerlove

#12
It's Team Tuesday! Today I present Chris J, Adrienne's right hand man (and I believe we share the same birthday).

Name:
Chris Jewsbury

Location:
Carrollton, GA

Role on the team: 
Lead Logic-er, Scene setup-er, Lead Animator, Technical Artist, Storyboarder, and all around good guy.

Occupation:
Unemployed 3D Animator.

What skills do you have?
I can juggle! And various other things as you can guess from my roles listed up there. A love of learning helps keep me flexible.

How long have you been on the team?

Since October 2011. Right before TSL 4 came out and POS started revving up to do Cognition.

How did you first hear about The Silver Lining?
A Kotaku article a while back. Found them again while job hunting.

What made you decide to join? 
I knew my skills (which have since grown) could help finish what was a noble endeavor while I was out of work. Having a game credit on your resume is nothing to sniff at as well.

What's your first King's Quest memory?
KQ 1. Getting crushed by that freaking boulder over and over again because of its stupid directional interaction. Bah!

Favorite KQ game and why?
TSL. 'Cause I'm working it!

What's it like to work on The Silver Lining?
I'll go with a tactful analogy here. Working on TSL is like...being hugged by your favorite pony...over a volcano...on your birthday...in the rain...while wearing a spacesuit...from 1980s Russia. Yeah...

How have you grown professionally and personally since joining Phoenix Online?
No clue. I can't quantify my own personal growth and the view from inside my head is distorted by difference blindness. You'll have to ask Adrienne.

What's your favorite piece you've done for POS/Four Winds?
Probably the big cutscene at the beginning with SPOILERS and SPOILERS. You can't miss it. (Unless you skip the dialog of course, but that would be rude.)

Favorite non KQ game?
Probably Guild Wars....or X-Wing.....or Myst IV...or Batman: Arkham City.

What are you currently playing?
Guild Wars 2, with a spot of TF2 here and there. I'm also working through various Telltale Games' adventure games that I nabbed on a recent Humble Bundle. And before you ask; yes I have The Walking Dead, and no I've not played it yet.

Link to portfolio? 
Well since you asked nicely; http://www.chrury.net/ . No TSL stuff yet. Wouldn't want any SPOILERS, now would we?
"Love can't be banished, even from this place. ... still less can it be banished from my heart."
"ENOUGH! Burden me not with thy poetry."-KQ6

KatieHal

Quote from: writerlove on July 09, 2013, 02:02:37 PM
What's it like to work on The Silver Lining?
I'll go with a tactful analogy here. Working on TSL is like...being hugged by your favorite pony...over a volcano...on your birthday...in the rain...while wearing a spacesuit...from 1980s Russia. Yeah...

LOL, I love this. Yay Chris!

Katie Hallahan
~Designer, PR Director~

"Change is the constant, the signal for rebirth, the egg of the phoenix." Christina Baldwin

I have a blog!

waltzdancing

TSL is extremely luck to have Chris. If I didn't have Chris, I don't think we would have a game.  :)

stika

Oooh nice to see Chris getting his own interview! :D

snabbott

It's nice to learn more about you, Chris! Up until now, I pretty much only knew that most of the commits made to Ep5 were by you. :P

Steve Abbott | Beta Tester | The Silver Lining

writerlove

#17
It's TSL Team Tuesday. Today we feature Bruce Brennesie, a talented illustrator who does work on both Four Winds and Episode 5.


Name: Bruce Brenneise             
                                 
Location: Seattle, Washington, USA

Role on the team:  2-D artist (Four Winds illustrations, The Silver Lining background art, assorted other art concepts/assets for TSL)

Occupation: ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher, for the moment, until I can harness my portfolio and credits from TSL to get a paying job in the game industry!

What skills do you have? Digital painting, scientific illustration, creative writing, photography, teaching.

How long have you been on the team? I've been on the team since April 2012, so a little over a year.

How did you first hear about The Silver Lining? I was living and working in China at the time and happened upon the AGD remakes as well as TSL. Needless to say, I was overjoyed to see that exciting things were continuing to happen for the King's Quest games and ongoing narrative and even more enthusiastic at the thought of possibly joining in the fun.

What made you decide to join?  This was the perfect opportunity at the perfect time! At the time, I was considering my career--after six years of travel and (mostly) teaching work in Asia. I wanted to get back to my illustration roots and develop a career out of making concept art and 2-D assets for the video game industry. And like magic, I found The Silver Lining: a team in need of artists who also happened to be working on a project related to one of my all-time favorite adventure game series.

What's your first King's Quest memory? I spotted King's Quest 6 in a store when I was about 10 years old. My aunt had told me I could choose one game as a reward for helping out at her wedding. That illustration of Alexander and the minotaur really sold me on the game! My cousins, sister, and I then had an amazing time playing the game itself. I recall that my family had to buy our first computer mouse so that I could even play KQ6--getting the coin out of the chest in the very first scene of KQ6 is a huge hassle if you're only using the arrow keys!

Favorite KQ game and why? King's Quest 6: It was my first point-and-click adventure game; it opened up a world of other Sierra adventure games to me; the art and story really made me imagine a whole world out there, waiting to be discovered. You can imagine my excitement to find that The Silver Lining had extended the explorable areas of all the Green Isles. I remember constantly imagining and wondering what Beast's castle, the checkerboard land, or the city of the winged ones were like. Now I know!

What's it like to work on The Silver Lining? It's great fun, mostly due to the awesome teammates. Just imagine lots of oddball humor getting thrown around in the moments when we're not hard at work making TSL. Also important to mention are the critiques that we give each other that have helped us all improve our skills.

How have you grown professionally and personally since joining Phoenix Online? I feel I've come a long way in terms of technique as well as understanding of pipelines and processes used to make a game. While I was living in China I mostly did pencil sketching and didn't have access to a tablet, so I couldn't really do any digital painting. As a result, my college-developed art skills had gotten a little rusty. The rust seems long gone now, though. I've developed a much greater facility with programs such as Photoshop and Painter as well as deepening my overall knowledge of composition, color theory, anatomy, and perspective.

What's your favorite piece you've done for POS/Four Winds? All the illustrations I did for the Andrew Greyson storyline were quite enjoyable. I felt that Brian (the writer) and I had a great rapport, bouncing ideas back and forth as the stories and illustrations took shape. I think my most technically-accomplished work in that narrative, though, would be the one showing the destruction of Tanalore. Here was this city that we had put so much thought and feeling into creating. Now, however, it was to be torn apart and wiped from the face of the world. I put all that woeful energy into the painting, and so the results were quite emotive.
Favorite non KQ game? Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, the Fallout series, the Elder Scrolls series, the Quest for Glory series, Ultima Underworld 1 & 2--it's so hard to choose an actual favorite!

What are you currently playing? As many of the other team members will confirm, you definitely don't have as much time to play games when you're making them! That said, Diablo 3, Mass Effect 2, The Dark Eye: Chains of Satinav have all gotten some play time recently in my off-hours.

Link to portfolio?  http://bbrenneise.wix.com/works

"Love can't be banished, even from this place. ... still less can it be banished from my heart."
"ENOUGH! Burden me not with thy poetry."-KQ6

KatieHal

Great to get to read more about you, Bruce--you've created some truly gorgeous art for us!

Katie Hallahan
~Designer, PR Director~

"Change is the constant, the signal for rebirth, the egg of the phoenix." Christina Baldwin

I have a blog!

writerlove

Clau is the featured member of Team Tuesday today. Clau is a retired professor and veteran team member who enjoys exploring her passions for art and gaming.



Name:  Clau Lundgren (aka BeaSong)

Location: Near Eugene, Oregon, USA

Role on the team: Texture artist and 2D artist. Helped coordinate team efforts for a short while, other minor projects in between to help out.

Occupation: Retired professor of Spanish, computers and art

What skills do you have? Drawing, Computer art, Photography

How long have you been on the team? Since March of 2006. We were still working on Episode 1 then and didn't know if it would ever be published. I was more than thrilled to join the team and have the chance to learn something about things that were and are still fascinating to me.

How did you first hear about The Silver Lining? From the request for volunteers that was posted on the GameBoomers site.

What made you decide to join? There was no way I wouldn't join, given the chance. And when Cez, did give me the chance, I was ecstatic. I have been enchanted by the magic of KQ games from the very beginning. I LOVE KQ games, and I'm passionate about supporting non-violent games, loaded with puzzles, humor and rewarding fun. That enchantment will probably never wear off.

What's your first King's Quest memory? KQ 1 was true adventure at the time and a pioneer to the art.  I was instantly fascinated and wondered what it would be like to create something like that. It gave me lots of ideas for future games. Maybe one day I'll be able to bring them to fruition.

Favorite KQ game and why?  For me,  KQ4 was a refreshing change from the others, but I liked them all for different reasons, and was certainly drawn by the story.

What's it like to work on The Silver Lining? Delightful, rewarding, educational and it is full of great and talented people. It's in my blood and I will mourn its end. I am constantly amazed at the progress we achieve with having so many of us participating in our "free" time from all corners of the planet. I haven't met any of the team face to face, but after all of these years I feel as though we are a strong community.

How have you grown professionally and personally since joining Phoenix Online? The experience has made light years difference for me in terms of art,  and understanding more about animation and the creation of such an exciting product. It has given me more confidence to try things that seemed out of reach for me at the beginning. It put learning into quantum steps, mainly because of so much positive support from the other team members and our common goals.

What's your favorite piece you've done for POS/Four Winds? My favorite for POS was probably creating the texturing for the Banshee and Hagarth. They were challenging and I felt that I learned a lot during their development. There are a few pieces in Four Winds that I would like to have had more time to fully develop, but my pick for best effort would be the Winged Slaves art, although I have enjoyed them all.

Favorite non KQ game? Will probably always be Myst because it was so magical when it first came to the surface of Adventure games.

What are you currently playing? A little of everything, but most of my spare time is given to TSL and Fourwinds for now, and that is an adventure in itself that gives me great pleasure.

Link to portfolio?   http://tinyurl.com/k6pzlpd
and www.tiotucan.com for my bio and iPad app that I created
"Love can't be banished, even from this place. ... still less can it be banished from my heart."
"ENOUGH! Burden me not with thy poetry."-KQ6