Rich Fleider started in the game industry in 1992. After moving to Dallas to work alongside id Software, Rich co-founded Rogue Entertainment, making mission packs, ports, and full PC titles culminating in American McGee’s Alice. After a brief detour as Art Director on several board games, Rich joined the Sony Santa Monica team as Senior Managing Producer of Art in 2017.

 

Bruno Velazquez managed to combine his passion of animation and video games by starting his career working as a computer animator on various Playstation 2 titles in 2002. Bruno is currently the Animation Director at Sony Santa Monica, and has worked on titles such as Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks, God of War 2, God of War 3, God of War: Ascension and God of War (2018)

 

Liz Wood is a character and creature animator specializing in gameplay animation. Starting with an engineering background, Liz made the leap into the entertainment industry and fell in love with animation. During her last term at Gnomon, she interned with Akupara Games as their creature animator, an experience that clarified her style and focus. After graduating, Liz joined Santa Monica Studio as a gameplay animator, where she utilizes all the skills acquired from her time at Gnomon to continue to grow and thrive.

 

Gavin is a Lead Character Artist at Insomniac Games, having recently released Marvel's Spider-Man and previously, Sunset Overdrive. Prior to working at Insomniac, he was the Lead Character Artist on Bioshock Infinite, Character Artist on Dead Rising 2, The Bigs 2, Damnation, and contributed to titles such as FEAR 2, Dragon Age, and many independent projects.

 

Angela Baker is the Senior Human Resources Generalist/Recruiter at Insomniac Games. She joined Insomniac in the fall of 2006 and has been a part of the HR team that helped Insomniac be recognized nationally 20 times as a Great Place to Work. Before coming to Insomniac Games, Angela was at G4TV, Activision, and The William Morris Talent Agency.

 

Crystal joined the Naughty Dog recruiting team in 2016, bringing with her a lifelong passion for art and video games. As a Recruiting Generalist, she works closely with the studio’s art and animation teams to source creative and diverse talent from across the globe. Prior to Naughty Dog, Crystal worked at Gnomon where she assisted with alumni relations and was responsible for coordinating industry events on campus.

 

Candace Walker is the Recruiting Manager at Naughty Dog with 20 years of recruiting experience in the gaming industry. She began her career in 2000 as an agency recruiter, before eventually joining Naughty Dog in 2009. During her tenure at the studio, she has helped source talent for the development of the award-winning Uncharted and The Last of Us franchises, as well as Sony’s ICE team.

 

Over her career, Samantha has worked for industry leading studios including Sony Pictures Imageworks and Digital Domain. She currently supports the Story & Franchise Development group at Blizzard Entertainment, which includes artists from a wide range of disciplines including Rigging, FX, Storyboarding, Surfacing, Toy Design, and Animation.

 

Danny’s career began at Blizzard over twelve years ago. With one of the longest tenure’s in the recruiting team, he’s been able to work across almost every business function at Blizzard and has covered a variety of roles across recruiting including sourcer, recruiter, and university relations specialist. Currently Danny works as an Art and Design recruiter exclusively with the Diablo and Hearthstone game teams.

 

Jo-Jo provides support for the creative disciplines on the World of Warcraft and Overwatch game teams, and Story & Franchise Development team that is responsible for all the Blizzard cinematics. Her work covers real-time and rendered positions across a wide spectrum of roles including animation, FX, writing & story development, and conceptual and previsualization.

 

A founding member of Sony's Santa Monica Studio, Mark successfully created the company’s first technical art department. The combination of that teams’ artist tools as well as his contributions as an art director and FX artist were an integral part of building the God of War franchise. After his time at Santa Monica Studio, Mark continued to help make innovative, new games and build stellar teams as a technical artist, art director, and game director.

Mark continues his work helping to build world class art teams as principal art sourcer-er at Blizzard Entertainment, where he helps find some of best and brightest artists from around the world.