"I just really love skeletons...coffee and skeletons." (_O,,O_)

Hi, I'm Mia and I’m an experienced narrative designer and story artist!

My career so far has taken me all over the world and has allowed me the chance to do everything from theme park design to cinematic direction. I have a very strange set of skills, not unlike Liam Neeson, but a lot less violent. I’ve had the good fortune of getting to interact and work with a diverse and amazing group of people. I’ve worked directly with people like Sakamoto-san, Hiro-san, Risa-san, Nakano-san, and David Wise at Nintendo, and Austin Wintory and several of the voice actors from Funimation while at Playful.

If you’re looking for Professor Layton, I’m your person! I have a sick love of research and a crazy superpower for pattern identification thanks to a wicked case of synesthesia. Whether directing or playing support, I always work towards the goals of the project, and I seriously know way more about demographics than is probably healthy for the average adult. I also love working with other departments: audio and animation are always good friends!

I started working in comics when I was 16, got two degrees in sequential art, taught concept, narrative design and comics at university for seven years (both in the states and in Hong Kong) and then eventually returned to the gaming industry. I’m a double Eisner award nominee, a triple Glyph award winner, and my original comic series, Tomboy, is currently going through contract negotiations for television. I’m extremely familiar with cross-media and IP development.

Interactive Media is my favorite entertainment medium to work in though, because the experience you can create for an audience is truly unique from other forms of media. It’s an active form of audience participation and while a lot of people still disregard games as a meaningful experience, they can have a stronger impact due to the level of engagement than with books or film. Some of my favorite games are Bioshock, Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Path of Exile (Hardcore, baby!), Monster Prom, Fallout New Vegas, Inside, and Detention. My husband and I actually met playing competitive TF2—if you’re also looking for a level designer/architect, he’s also very skilled and cool and will talk your ear off about the intricacies of FPS/competitive design.

I was born too early to be captain of the Enterprise and in the wrong galaxy to attend the Jedi Academy, but I get by in the meantime by drinking lots of coffee, moonlighting in comics, and chaining myself to my Cintiq.  <3

Here’s some more in depth information on some of my work:

-At Playful, I worked as the Narrative Design Director and helped manage story on four titles, storyboarded, did cinematic direction, brand pitches, IP development, character concept art, voice acting and direction, assisted with audio direction, wrote and managed dialogue for localization, designed compelling game narratives that could cross over to other media, and completely retooled all the narrative design and story for New Super Lucky’s Tale under tight constraints and a five week deadline. I took lead on Jinx, the villain of Lucky’s Tale, and fleshed him out from cartoon bad-guy to one of my all time favorite antagonists. I also directly pitched the game to NOA. But that’s not all!

I also worked as an art director, game director, and eventually was made Creative Director of Starchild—a game that went through many changes due to company desires shifting. Initially, I was brought on to fix the narrative for the game. The first version I worked on for them retained and expanded on the original art style for a sci fi horror game in VR. A three level gameplay demo showed at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2018. As creative director on the project afterwards, I was tasked with completely changing it from a horror title to something with a feeling more akin to an Amblin Entertainment film. Our budget and scope were extremely low and I worked closely with a team of seven to develop a new demo, art style and narrative. This occurred over a month and some change. While the demo and changes to art and story were a huge success both in studio and with Sony Entertainment, the project was eventually shelved due to contract issues with the original publisher. Check out the video I made for our project wrap up—my husband’s work is also in there!

While at Playful, I helped develop several platformers, a mobile game, a competitive PVP title, and a 2D cinematic sidescroller.

-At Retro/Nintendo: I held the very odd title of Concept and Narrative Design Artist. I was brought on to develop an IP under the direction of Sakamoto-san and Hiro-san and scored two “perfects” on my first pitch. I worked with every department in the building, directed and retooled a new, more “nintendo-like” art style alongside fellow concept artist Enrique Rivera, did storyboards, animatics, character design, voice acting and direction, and technical concept work for design. Nintendo eventually added requirements to gameplay that required more retooling of the pitch and those occurred very quickly, usually in two week time-frames. Some of the storyboards you’ll see in the animatics are very rough for in game cinematics—this was due to fast iteration and changing goals. The most I delivered to animation was 35 animatics in one week. This sounds insane, but even with very rough/cartooned drawings, the goal was to lessen animation’s load with previz so that we could all meet our deadlines.

Eventually, a handful of us were picked by NCL to work on a port of DKC: Tropical Freeze for the Nintendo Switch while another demo was being developed on the original title. I was one of the first three taken to that team to serve as both their concept artist and as a designer. Funky Kong’s double jump came out of one of my gimmick concept sketches and I also designed Tawks the parrot, who replaces Funky in the shop when he is being played. Tawks was a very unusual character. Usually, character concepts go through many back and forth iterations with Nakano-san and the artists at NCL, but Nintendo was very happy with the initial designs and though he’s not the most outrageous of the concepts, they eventually chose the red version that appears in game.

-For Ocean Park: I worked as the Creative Director in a collaboration between SCAD Hong Kong and Ocean Park Hong Kong to both redesign eight of their mascots, design two new ones, and to create an overall visual and narrative synergy for the theme park with entertainment, conservation and education in mind. My team was comprised of twelve students who had never worked professionally in concept art before and we had 10 weeks to deliver both the designs and the initial synergy pitch.

I cheated a bit and took a week before the project started to analyze the data Ocean Park gave us to put together some initial direction and mood boards for the team and within the first week we had over 3500 concepts for different styles and characters. We were given the goal of creating visually delightful characters with less Western influence that could easily be translated to animation and games. Over the course of the ten weeks, we successfully developed a style Ocean Park was happy with and created flash animation sheets for the characters. We also split into four teams, each with their own unique synergy pitch packet that included visual direction, park activities, conservation and education partnerships and branding.

Ocean Park was extremely pleased with the work and actually had to hold a vote to determine the winning synergy direction. Several of the team members were hired on after the project and continue to work in visual development and animation for the park under our art style and synergy plans.

Our original artwork can be seen now throughout the park. While first debuting in a set of four children’s books that were released in collaboration with McDonald’s, the characters and IP synergy now reach across the entirety of Ocean Park’s “Conservation, Education, and Entertainment” initiatives.