I have always enjoyed art. Between the ages of 8 and 14, I lived in Winter Haven, FL where most of my extended family, on both sides, resides. Thanks to my grandmother, I attended a painting class every week, which I enjoyed immensely.

When I moved to Oviedo in 1999, a new school, Oviedo High, and a new love, music, would take me away from further artistic development. I was "urged" into more scientific endeavors, and my desire to play the Saxophone snuffed out most opportunities to take any art classes. But I continued to draw, and was heavily influenced by the raging pop-culture of Anime.

Throughout high school, I burned through several comic projects. One was particularly promising, and has stayed in my heart long enough to reach the web: I C A R A I is a collaborative effort between me and my best friend Niki Whitehead. (Niki is recently married. Her last name is now Strickland. The project is also on hiatus until more of my time can be devoted to it.)

A little over two and a half years ago, I attended a guest speaker lecture given by Nathan Gilder, and employee at Scuba Monkey, L.L.C. He talked briefly about his work at SM. The next day, I emailed him about a possible internship, and within a few weeks, I became Scuba Monkey's resident tester minion.

It wasn't long before there was a lull in testing, and rather than cutting me, I was allowed to dabble in the 3D side of things. I still tested when needed, but I have contributed a lot of content to the Hrocka Mag title. Many of my contributions can be seen on my Models and Textures pages.

Here in Gainesville, a new upstart developer caught my eye. Artificial Studios was looking for new in house artists. It made me very sad to leave Scuba Monkey, but I really wanted to broaden my experience, so I took the job.

The in house artists at Artificial were originally intended to be grease monkeys that pumped out anything and everything they could to enhance the work of our sister company, Immersion. They were the bulk artists of the project, but eventually, crazy deadlines, and a subtle language barrier, put a lot of pressure on the three in house artists to step up to more prominent roles.

I worked closely with programmers on animations (3DsMax), particle effects, and materials (UE3 and PhotoShop) that could bring the monsters to life. I was responsible for producing what was needed, as fast and as beautifully as possible. I am used to working 80 hour weeks. I am used to pay checks that arrive once a month, and not on time.

Eventually, I became the cinematic machine. Using 3D studio max, models made by myself and by immersion, and Epic's Unreal Editor 3 Matinee program, I was single handedly responsible for probably 80% of the in game cinematics (mostly character introductions) in Monster Madness.

Although the credits do not say it, I was widely accepted as Lead Animator of the project. Of course... I was the only animator for a majority of the time, so that's not saying much.

Feel free to look around. You can contact me at annamvittone (at) gmail (dot) com.