THE ART OF ANTHONY SATO

TEACHING EXPERIENCE

Media Arts Instructor, Media Arts & Animation/ Game Art & Design Program, The Art Institute International Kansas City, Lenexa, KS, March 2012 to Current

• Lead Animation and Game Art Instructor (Full Time)

• Professional Advisory Committee Organizer and Head

• Open House lecturer and workshop instructor

• College Connection workshop instructor

• AI After Dark workshop instructor

• Summer Studio instructor

• Game Club Sponsor

• Game Jam Organizer

 

EDUCATION

M.A. in Design and Media Management, The Art Institute of Dallas, Dallas, TX, March 2015

 

THESIS: Pocket Odyssey and It’s First Steps After a Successful Kickstarter, this paper contains the details of a board game concept, including how it was developed, pitched on Kickstarter, and shown to be valuable through a 25-day, $63,000 campaign.  Figures were gathered through that campaign and an analysis of multiple studies on marketing; they were analyzed and used to create a phase 2 plan for the game.  Research was used to formulate a financial plan and fulfillment plan. The game is called Pocket Odyssey and the paper is a business plan for the future strategy of the brand.

 

B.A. in Game Art and Design, The Art Institute of Phoenix, Phoenix, AZ, September 2007

 

COURSES DEVELOPED AND TAUGHT

• Introduction to Game Development

• Image Manipulation

• Character and Object Design

• Game Design and Gameplay

• 3D Modeling

• Material and Lighting

• Texture Mapping for Games

• Game Modeling

• 3D Animation

• Game Production Pipeline

• Hard Surface and Organic Modeling

• Level Design

• Advanced Level Design

• Lighting and Texture

• 3D Scripting

• Character Modeling

• Game Prototyping

• Advanced Game Prototyping

• 3D Character Rigging

• Team Production Planning

• Team Production 1

• Team Production 2

• Game Animation

• Sound Design for Games

• Advanced 3D Animation

• Motion Capture

• Special Topics in Animation

 

The below software has been taught in one or multiple of the courses listed above.

• 3DS Max

• Photoshop

• Illustrator

• Mudbox

• Quixel Suite

• UDK

• Unreal 4

• Unity 3D

• Motion Builder

• Mixamo

 

TEACHING PHILOSOPHY

My goal is to equip my students with everything they need to get a job in their industry upon graduation. The game and animation field, like other entertainment industries is extremely competitive due to the sought after nature of the day to day work. The primary means to realize this goal is to foster a passion in my students. Their field requires it, without it, failure is likely. Almost every student I have encountered has a spark of passion, honing that love into their work ethic is my aim. My primary method is to find and strengthen a student’s natural ability while fortifying their weaknesses on the side. This is done by finding where they excel and encouraging those skills, then leading them to self-educate themselves and to teach others what they have learned. My picture of an advanced class is that each student has a specialty, and as each one is working on their  final project they can complement each other’s weakness by asking and answering each other’s questions. A high level classroom should be an exciting atmosphere where each student is excelling in their natural gifts, where the students are comfortable and are sharing what they learned on their own in the past week. My teaching philosophy is to teach the competencies they need to know to be successful, but far beyond that is to teach them about themselves, what they are good at and how they can do what they love. Sometimes this means revealing the realities of their goals in a way that reorients their portfolio, other times this means building their passion to a point where they make up for natural weakness, but in all things, the student is the center. Not a single class is the same because the students are each different. There are many entry level positions in a development studio, but each student has only one that is right for them, it is my goal to find that position and get them into it.

 

INDUSTRY EXPERIENCE

Game Designer, Kaiju Kraft LLC, Kansas City, MO, May 2014 to Current.

• Fulfills every aspect needed for tabletop game development from securing funding, product research and development, marketing, production and shipping. In 2014, Kaiju Kraft raised over $63K in 25 days for its first board game Pocket Odyssey.

 

Advanced Visual Concept Designer, Garmin International, Olathe, KS, June 2009 to January 2013.

• Cultivates new product designs in a massive corporate environment, including its concept creation, timeline requirements, rapid prototyping, presentation, production, user experience testing and completion.

   

Game Designer, Papaya Studio, Irvine, CA, February 2009 to May 2009.

• Worked on , created multiple levels focusing on gameplay, grayboxing and scripting.

   

Jr. Game Designer, Supervillain Studios, Santa Ana, CA, March 2008 to January 2009.

• Worked on an (Wii) and (Wii)

• Responsible for all aspects of battlefield design, including layout, scripting, balancing and UI.

• Oversaw and coordinated programming and art to properly implement game elements on a tight schedule.

• Created multiple levels, from concept, story significance and dialogue to 3d layout, camera movement, scripted events, cinematics, interactive object placement, multiplayer support and level transitions.

• Mentored other designers on knowledge and use of proprietary toolset.

• Responsible for voice over editing and the organization of those files.

   

Quality Assurance Tester, THQ, Phoenix, AZ, September 2007 to January 2008.

• Worked on (Wii)., tracked & tested the game, from a user perspective, then documented and communicated the findings.