The DePaul Game Dev Faculty

Joe has been developing published video games for over 20 years in California, Minnesota, Colorado, and Illinois. He specializes in writing the most fundamental code of game engines and is driven to develop an understanding, at all levels, of what makes games fun.

Joe teaches the Senior Game Dev Capstone Project, Physics for Game Developers, Action Games Programming, Console Game Dev Environments and Intro to Game Design.

Ed Keenan is a former Executive Technology Director at Midway Games, with 16 years experience in the game industry.  At Midway, Ed created and led several technology groups ranging from Graphics, Tools, and Systems to a companywide Advanced Technology Group.  The groups focused on systems and tools development for cross platform game engines.  Ed has extensively designed and refactored many critical game systems such as Audio, Physics, Graphics, Operating Systems, Animations, Cinematics, UI and content creation tools.   Ed has contributed to over 30+ different titles shipped during his tenure at Midway, most notably WarGods, Hyperdrive, the Mortal Kombat Series, NFL Blitz, NBA Ballers, Psi-Ops, Stranglehold, TNA iMPACT and Wheelman.  He’s initiated and started outsourcing development in China and in Eastern Europe.  Ed has been invited to gives talks on all types of software related issues to conventions and universities, including Notre Dame, University of Illinois, Purdue, University of Wisconsin, and DigiPen.   Keenan has been a member on advisory boards and committees for 3Dfx, Renderware, Havok, Audiokinetics, Sony, and Microsoft.  Prior to Midway, Ed worked at Zenith Electronics on HDTV, and Argonne National Laboratory.  He received a BS in Electrical Engineering from University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and an MS in Electrical Engineering from University of Illinois, Chicago, where he specialized in applied mathematical systems such as digital signal / image processing, control theory, and computer graphics.

As a member of DePaul’s Game Development full-time faculty, Ed’s main focus will be on advanced courses in game and computer graphics programming.

William Muehl
Lecturer

Bill Muehl has over twelve years of experience in interactive software production, including six in the video game industry. He was most recently Senior Producer at Midway Games in Chicago, where he drove the production of new game pitches and prototypes and facilitated the development of globally-shared technology, art and design initiatives across six studios and eight development teams. He was also the Development Director for the central animation, cinema, audio, character, environment, concept, and user interface departments for Midway titles including John Woo Presents: Stranglehold, Mortal Kombat: Armageddon and NBA Ballers.

Prior to joining Midway, he was a Producer at High Voltage Software, developing titles for Warner Brothers and Cartoon Network, and an Online Analyst at Sony Computer Entertainment America.

In 2007, Bill co-authored the book Game Simulation Development, a comprehensive resource that explores the impact of game simulation on the worlds of business, education, and training. He received a BA in English from the University of Wisconsin.

Bill teaches Intro to Game Production, and Game Business.

Charley Wilcox
Instructor

Charley Wilcox has been at DePaul since 1987. He worked for 28 years in the Telecommunications Industry working for AT&T, Lucent Technologies, and Avaya Communications.

Charley is the faculty advisor for DeFrag, the DePaul student gaming group, and was one of the leaders in the founding of the Game Dev program at DePaul. Charley is our Game Dev evangelist, and teaches Intro to Game Design and Ethics in Computer Games and Cinema.

Dr. Robin Burke, PhD
Associate Professor

Robin’s research interests are in artificial intelligence (especially case-based reasoning) as applied to electronic commerce and digital libraries. He is the current Chair of the Game Devolopment Program Committee and is active in the IGDA Education SIG.

Robin teaches History of Games, Intro to Game Design, and AI for Computer Games.

Scott Roberts, MFA
Associate Professor

Scott’s sculptures, video installations and animations have been exhibited internationally. He has over ten years of professional experience in television art direction, post-production, animation and 3D game art, and was the production designer for the independent film ‘Making Revolution.’ He is currently working on a game project utilizing a large-scale projection game surface. Scott is the Chair of the Animation Program Committee, and an active member of the IGDA Education SIG.

Scott teaches Animation I, Intro to Visual Design, History of Animation and Motion Graphics.

Dr. Andre Berthiaume, PhD
Associate Professor

Andre earned a B.S. in Math/Computer Science, an M.S. and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Montreal. His research interests include Classical and quantum algorithms, Quantum information theory, Classical and quantum cryptography, distributed systems and information technology education

Andre teaches Game Development I and Survey of Computer Graphics.

Josh Jones, MFA
Assistant Professor

Josh has 8 years of professional experience in film, television, and audio production. Josh’s professional career as an animator launched in 1999 when he began working for Will Vinton Studios on their stop motion TV shows for Fox, “The PJ’s,” and “Gary and Mike.” He has worked as a 3D and stop-motion animator on numerous independent films, music videos, commercials, and feature films with companies including Fox TV, Fox Kids, Warner Brothers, Crystal Sky, Creative Visual EFX, Skyler Animation Studios, and National Geographic.

Josh teaches 3D Character Animation, Advanced 3D Character Animation, 3D Modeling and 3D Animation.

Dr. José Zagal, PHD
Assistant Professor

José’s research interests are in the development of frameworks for describing, analyzing, and understanding games. He is also interested in exploring ways to support games education and games literacy. José currently heads the Game Ontology Project and is coordinator for the Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA). He also regularly blogs about his experience with the games he plays.

Game Ontology Project: http://www.gameontology.org
DiGRA: http://www.digra.org
Blog: http://www.gamelog.cl/gamers/GamerPage.php?idgamer=1

José teaches Ethics in Computer Games and Cinema and Intro to Game Design.

Dr. Amber Settle, PhD
Associate Professor

Dr. Settle’s research interests include distributed algorithms, cellular automata, applications of reasoning about knowledge to distributed systems, information retrieval, and information technology education.

Amber teaches Intro to Game Design.

Dr. Eric Sedgwick, PhD
Associate Professor

Eric Sedgwick specializes in computational topology and computer graphics. He holds a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Texas and a B.A. in Mathematics from the University of Virginia.

Eric teaches 3D Scripting for Animators, Scripting for Interactive Media, 3D Modeling, Advanced Graphics Development, and Advanced Rendering Techniques.

Dr. John McDonald, PhD
Associate Professor

Dr. John McDonald received his Ph.D. in Mathematics from Northwestern University in 1996. He was instrumental in the formation of the degrees in Computer Graphics. In 2007 he was an IPAX fellow at Sony Imageworks. He is currently Chair of the Computer Graphics and Motion Technology Program Committee.

John teaches Production Pipeline Techniques, Principles of Computer Animation, Smooth Surface Modeling, Advanced Rendering Techniques, Real-Time Graphics Techniques, Smooth Surface Modeling, and Computer Graphics Development.

James Gentile
Director of Animation and Motion Capture

I started in the video game industry in 1987 working with a small company Visionware and we did Komani coin-op game conversions to the Amiga computer. I moved to California for a few years and returned to midwest and found employment with Williams\Bally\Midway (now just Midway Amusement Ganes.LLC) I have been working there for 19 years and I am currently the director of animation and motion capture. I starting using Motion Capture technology in 1993 (Motion Analysis) for Midway’s first 3D video game ‘War Gods’ It wasn’t a run-away hit(sigh)but it did get Midway rolling into 3D animation and motion capture ahead of most other companies at the time. I’ve worked on over 25 published game titles. I speak at various colleges around to country and present and lecture at animation festivals such as Animex (UK) and Red Stick as well as Siggraph and GDC.

Jim teaches Motion Capture Studio.

Allen Turner
Game Designer, Wideload Games

Allen’s involvement with the video games industry began at Bungie Software where he started off as Tech Support and eventually grew to help out with the production polish of Myth II. He later went on to Day 1 Studios where he worked as a level designer for MechAssault on the X-Box.
Allen is now at Wideload Games were worked as designer on Stubbs the Zombie: Reble Without a Pulse, and is currently working on Hail to the Chimp. He has hopes to bring his years of interacting, entertaining, and educating people to the table in designing games that are engaging and approachable for a wide variety of users.

Allen teaches Paper Prototyping for Game Design and Intro to Game Design.

Matt Taylor
Art Director

Matt worked on multiple titles at Midway Games for the past eight years, including Stranglehold, and the Mortal Kombat and NBA Ballers franchises. Has filled various roles in the video game industry, primarily in character and environment art creation and cinematics.

Matt teaches 3D Texturing and Lighting, Advanced 3D Modeling and 3D Modeling.

Patrick Curry
Creative Director, Wideload Games

Patrick Curry is creative director at Wideload Games and a fourteen year veteran of the interactive media industry. Patrick has spent the last seven years designing and programming videogames, most recently for home videogame consoles, including 2007’s John Woo Presents Stranglehold (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC) and 2005’s Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse (Xbox, PC, Mac).
Patrick’s research interests include the fundamentals of fun, game control systems, and real-time camera systems.

Patrick teaches Game Mod Workshop, Intro to Level Design and Intro to Game Design

Mary Omelina
Senior Animator, Day 1 Studios

Mary started working in the video game industry in 1994, working for Viacom, FASA, and Microsoft before joining Day 1 Studios in 2004. Mary worked on the MechWarrior and MechAssault series of games, among other titles. Mary earned her BFA from RISD in 1992, and is currently working on her MFA at DePaul.

Mary teaches 3D Animation.

Rick O’Meara
Lead Animator, Midway Games

Rick has worked on such projects as Mortal Kombat Deception, Mortal Kombat Shaolin Monks, Stranglehold, Blitz, and many other titles. Prior to teaching at DePaul he taught animation for 3yrs at Columbia College.

Rick teaches Advanced Motion Capture (Motion Builder) and 3D Animation.

Tony Lewellen
Technical Animator

Tony teaches 3D Character Rigging and 3D Texturing and Lighting.