BBC Worldwide Digital Entertainment
Creative Director / Head of Editorial
Brand guardian for top tier entertainment properties and creative oversight of concurrent multiple titles on mobile, PC, social, console and cross-media initiatives.
A big part of my job at the BBC was translating brands that had only existed as live action television into compelling, original feeling mobile, social and console game experiences. Understanding not only the visual signifiers of a brand, but the underlying essentials of the storytelling and the deeper hooks that pulled in fans was essential to getting it right.
Doctor Who: Worlds in Time
Top Gear: Stunt School Revolution
Dancing with the Stars: Keep Dancing
Lonely Planet: Globe Tripper
Top Gear: Stunt School
Tongue Tracer
Teletubbies: My First App
Doctor Who: Mazes in Time
Torchwood: Web of Lies
Top Gear: Speed World
Doctor Who Legacy
Antiques Hunter: Portobello Road
SOME BBC GAMING STATS:
- Top Gear Stunt School Revolution: Top 10 Game in 50 countries, Top 5 App over 25 countries (F2P)
- Top Gear Race the Stig: Top 10 App overall in over 30 countries (F2P)
- WWD: Inside Their World: Top 10 Education in 50 countries (Paid)
- Doctor Who Legacy: Top 100 Game in over 50 countries (F2P)
- Top Gear Stunt School, the most profitable commercial app and game franchise in BBC history in its time.
- Casual social games Dancing with the Stars: Keep Dancing, Jane Austen Unbound and Antiques Hunter.
- Top Gear Race the Stig: Top 10 App overall in over 30 countries (F2P)
- WWD: Inside Their World: Top 10 Education in 50 countries (Paid)
- Doctor Who Legacy: Top 100 Game in over 50 countries (F2P)
- Top Gear Stunt School, the most profitable commercial app and game franchise in BBC history in its time.
- Casual social games Dancing with the Stars: Keep Dancing, Jane Austen Unbound and Antiques Hunter.
CARTOON NETWORK DIGITAL
Director of Gaming
Provided creative direction for all free CN.com online games from January 2007 – Summer 2009, leading to record breaking uniques and almost 2 billion gameplays in 2008.
By extending brand into gameplay, Letting players “walk in the shoes” of their favorite characters, DOING what they love to SEE on the screen, we brought kids back to the site day after day, and introduced them through gameplay to some of the greatest animated shows ever made.
SOME OF WHAT I DID AT CARTOON NETWORK:
- Developed initiatives that extended big brands into gaming to launch new shows on Cartoon Network like Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Adventure Time, Ben 10 Alien Force, and Total Drama Island among many others.
- Conceived and directed the award winning Game Creator franchise: tools which allowed kids to easily create simple games based on hit shows and save them to an online gallery on Cartoon Network.com. (Over 7 million games submitted by players, those games played over 1 billion times).
- Design and art direction for Cartoon Network's first virtual world: Mini Match, built around an original IP and storyline that I developed for Cartoon Network. The world, the characters in it, and the story that unfolded over time were all based on the fundamentals of the shows kids loved on Cartoon Network, with events, costumes and character visits that allowed kids to interact with their favorite brands, but in a social world they could "own".
- Developed the “Summer Showdown”, a weekly games face-off on CartoonNetwork.com, which resulted in a record-breaking time spent average of 77 minutes per person on the site in the summer of 2007.
- Designed and wrote documentation for CN’s badge achievement system, increasing retention on the site.
- Designed and wrote documentation for CN’s badge achievement system, increasing retention on the site.
KID AWESOME
Co-founder
In 2013, after almost two decades developing games for large entertainment companies, I returned to my roots in educational gaming. Co-founder Paul Joffe and I assembled a small team of industry veterans and built an award-winning educational brand from the ground up.
SOME KID AWESOME ACCOLADES:
- 150,000+ downloads plus high popularity on partner platforms: Amazon Kids+, Fingerprint, Samsung Kids, Flareplay
- Editor’s Choice Award - Children’s Technology Review
- 5 stars - Best Apps For Kids
- Featured in Parenting Magazine’s “Best iPhone Apps for Kids”
- 150,000+ downloads plus high popularity on partner platforms: Amazon Kids+, Fingerprint, Samsung Kids, Flareplay
- Editor’s Choice Award - Children’s Technology Review
- 5 stars - Best Apps For Kids
- Featured in Parenting Magazine’s “Best iPhone Apps for Kids”
KUNG FU FACTORY - WWE CHAMPIONS
Art Director
Art Director and art team lead for the hugely successful WWE Champions F2P mobile game. - Over 45 million players across the globe.
- Achieved #1 Free Game status in 24 countries and reached #11 Top Grossing on the App Store.
Working with a brand as storied and long-running as the WWE requires a lot of reverence for what made it an American classic. When translating the WWE to a live-services F2P mobile game, it was imperative to ensure the artwork bolstered the brand image, like using bold on-brand colors and hard edges to heighten the aggressive energy of WWE, and giving the characters a slightly stylized design, while maintaining faithfulness to the likenesses of hundreds of beloved wrestlers.
VIVENDI UNIVERSAL GAMES / KNOWLEDGE ADVENTURE
Creative Director
I began my career here: building some of the biggest brands in educational software: Math Blaster, Reading Blaster and Jumpstart. Along the way, I managed a department of 28 artists, delivering 22 published titles across a variety of renowned brands like Barbie and Jurassic Park to create kid-classic games like Barbie Horse adventures.
