Digital Hazard Studio

Happy Thursday all! Just wow. We are at 120 applications for our junior concept art position. This is really bitter sweet for me. First, the amount of support and excitement gets the entire team buzzing! But also it shows how much hungry talent is put there and how so few opportunities and that truly hurts to see. I'll be devoting the next 3 days to reviewing every single application and I am truly honored to do so. It is a privilege to have this much interest and I will never take it for granted. Back to Digital Hazard Studio HQ Thursday is my “prototype play n crash” where I put an hour or so into the latest build and write up my thoughts. The whole team is invited to attend and play as well. Its fun! Its why we do what we do. The beauty of game development is its incremental and a trial by fire. Its coming up with an idea getting it in 3D and seeing if it works as intended. Sometimes it's just not fun and other times it fits perfectly! The key is to try and never assume. My favorite moments are when we come up with something and it doesn't work well at all but it leads to an amazing idea that elevates the entire game. We have a key piece of gameplay that was born out of two huge conflicting problems and in collaboration to solve each problem we found a single solution that just made everything work! We are building something special. I can feel it in my bones. If you like comic book art, rogue like game play that you can play with friends and a cast of heroes that are dynamic to build through our adventure then please give us a follow! ⚠️🧡⚠️ We are excited to speak to investors about our game and also about our larger studio structure that we feel will solve a lot of issues that have been bare to see over the last 2 years of industry layoffs and closures. DM me!! Here is Brussels being a good boy 🐶

⚠️🧡 BIG NEWS JUNIORS! 🧡⚠️ Digital Hazard Studio is looking to add a Junior 2D concept artist who loves COMIC BOOK style art influences! The right artist will be able to draw out several iterations of concept artwork quickly, and have a good grasp of comic book eye-gaze and perception for published work. We would like to see a portfolio submission with the following: ⚠️ At least two character concept sheets--showing a character (any character!) from multiple views, in multiple poses, and multiple facial expressions. ⚠️ No less than three fully drawn comic book panel pages. These should have, at the very least, finished pencils and complete, full backgrounds--we would like to see your eye for composition and dynamics. ⚠️ Two or more examples of digital coloring. We are excited to see your work! Please send your portfolio to: [email protected]

Don’t worry, LA and OC aren’t the only ones having fun. Let’s see what we can do on our stomping grounds 💪🏼 As the co-founder and lead for the San Francisco, Bay Area chapter of Gametalk Unlocked — I gotta ask — ARE YOU READY? 😎 ✨ Save the Date for 9.14.2024 ✨ because a Gametalk Unlocked event is coming. Who and what is Gametalk Unlocked? 🎮🔓 Gametalk Unlocked was founded on the idea that anyone, regardless of background, title, company they work for, level of interest in gaming, can meet, talk, and mingle with people who work inside and outside of the video game industry - in person! The mission is simple – we wanted to create spaces where people can talk about the thing they love (video games) in a fun and low-cost way. Lower the bar of entry, but have high-impact takeaways. Come hang out with me, my co-founder Jalyssa Eliasen, our SF team Michele Catano 🔜 PAX West and Heidi Livengood, and more! More info soon!

I've helped hundreds of founders with fundraising over the last 5 years, recently people have been asking me what funds are looking for now vs before. Here are some noticable differences in seed / early stage rounds I've seen recently compared to in 20-22. Today: 1. early growth metrics / signs of PMF 2. team that is scrappy, multi time founders, people that know how to operate on a low budget and work nights and weekends  3. thesis driven - follow some existing fund thesis, ie agentic games, ai tools to decrease cost of dev, games distributing on unique platforms like web/discord, etc. in 21/22: 1. experienced team (worked at riot, epic, blizz, google, etc.) 2. big TAM Overall, the 21/22 experiment has not fared so well so I think the reversion to the mean is warranted.

I have an incredible surprise for everyone! I constantly analyze our community's data to understand which activities have the most impact. Events always top the list, and at the top of that list is GDC. Last year, thanks to 26 generous donors, we sent 220 people to GDC 2024. These tickets led to numerous jobs, interviews, and connections for our community. I promised then that we would do even more in 2025. I am thrilled to announce that the team at OtherSide Entertainment came to me a few weeks ago, having raised $10,000 to help gamers in the most impactful way possible. Based on extensive data, I told them that the biggest impact we could make with this money was to purchase 50 tickets to GDC for job seekers. This will be the largest single ticket donation in our community's history. OtherSide enthusiastically agreed. Amazing! For context, I did not choose Gamescom, even though it is more proximate, because passes are split between trade passes for those in the industry and general passes, which would not provide job seekers with the same experience. I also did not choose other events because they don't have the same job seeking impact. Encouraged by OtherSide's donation, we want to do even more. If you are ready to help us too, OtherSide and I challenge all companies, organizations, and individuals to pledge now to donate tickets to GDC 2025. You won’t have to pay anything now; you can buy or allocate tickets for folks next year when we start the process. However, I am holding you to your word in front of our community that you are good for your pledge and won’t back out for any reason. Additionally, I am already in talks with GDC to potentially get a superior rate, so all the commitments we receive from you will buy even more tickets, and, I hope, more tickets. Today, I challenge the community: will you step up alongside OtherSide's $10,000 donation (50 tickets at minimum at retail price), this early in the process, to help us achieve a target of 440 GDC tickets in 2025, doubling what we achieved in 2024? I know we can count on you! If you want to make a pledge like OtherSide has done in cash or in-kind community passes, please go here. For cash donations, nothing comes to me; all purchasing goes directly through GDC: https://lnkd.in/eQGxgqGT For those looking for tickets, we will open our raffle for GDC passes early in 2025, so please sit tight until then - there will be MANY reminders. I am so grateful to OtherSide, and I hope this is just the beginning of surpassing our number of GDC passes from last year. Thank you once more, OtherSide team! Amir /// Tagging GDC's 2024 Diamond Partners and our top donors from last year's drive (10+ Passes). We especially appreciate any assistance you can provide in allocating as many community passes as possible. #Epic #Google #Meta #Microsoft #Xbox #Pico #Unity #Wemade #Xsolla #Amazon #AWS #LimitedRun #Style3D #Inworld #JALIResearch #CharacterBank #BrandsInGames #CoherentLabs #Faceware

Happy Pappy Monday all! Digital Hazard Studio is looking for the following: ⚠️ Senior Animator 🕺 ⚠️ Senior VFX 💥 ⚠️ Senior Unreal Engine Programmer 🕹 We are currently unfunded. We offer rev share at this time. We are roughly 3 months into prototyping! Please send your resume + portfolio to [email protected] Sharing is caring ⚠️🧡⚠️ thank you to all that support us!

It is with incredible sadness that I write this. Our colleague and dear friend Bo Mosley passed away on June 10th. If you knew or worked with him please support the family with a kind word. I connected with Bo through a mutual connection here on LinkedIn and he was part of the Digital Hazard Studio team taking lead of our 3D environments. His talent, humor and deep knowledge was amplified 10 fold by his love and passion for the art he made over his 30 year career. These last couple of years has been so hard on so many amazing and passionate artists and I know first hand the darkness that not having a job can be. Please reach out to your loved ones and to your friends, we truly need to stay together and support each other. I send my love and strength to his family and the friends who knew him best. A truly heart breaking time. https://lnkd.in/gxwpX-bB

Happy Friday! Fun things we talked about at Digital Hazard Studio’s weekly round up meeting; - building our first level! - getting the first round of hero abilities designed for our prototype and beyond! - working on that “game feel” And finally more texture 3D character art for our main protagonist! We are moving fast and driving forward. So much great work from every member of the team and it’s all starting to take shape! To end the week here is Brussels (12 weeks old) now the largest dog in the house and being just as goofy as any 12 week old pup pup! Have a great weekend all!