iAnimate | Instructors

Game Animation Instructors Bios

Richard Arroyo
Richard, most people call him Ric, is the type of guy that when you meet him, you don't forget him. Ric is so passionate about his work that it transpires in his attitude. Being very animated himself, he's the guy that will do handstands, show up at your desk dancing and do pretty much anything to get his team motivated. Since he can remember, Ric has been obsessed with cartoons, games, SyFy and Kung Fu movies. He started his animation career more then ten years ago after he graduated from Montreal's Interdec College in 2000 with a degree in Computer Animation for Television and Film. Ric has worked anywhere from television to award winning cinematic. He's been part of multiple projects with the responsability of taking on some fierce deadlines. He has worked on titles such as Splinter Cell, Prince of Persia, Aliens and Thor. It has been four years since Ric has left Montreal where he was working at Ubisoft to now enjoying sunny California with wife and son working as Lead Animator at a gaming studio in Pasadena.
Kien Tran
With over 10 years experience in animation, Kien graduated from Montreal's Interdec College back in 2000. Starting off as an animator on Fred the Caveman TV series and then moved into Films to work on Spy kids 2 and Pinocchio 3000. Kien then made a bold move into cinematic at Ubisoft Montreal where he worked on Splinter Cell, Prince of Persia and Rainbow Six and after working In-game at A2M better known today as Behavior just to name a few. With Obsidian Entertainment looking for animators in 2008, Kien finally found himself in southern California having completed Dungeon Siege 3 and is currently working on an unannounced project.
David Lam
David grew up as an active kid, full of energy who often ran into things, sometimes even trees. He quickly channeled this energy into sports and martial arts. Little did he know this paved the way for his career in animation where he became obsessed with action and combat scenes. His career now has spans over 8 years in games, film and commercials as a character animator. He has worked on numerous AAA titles for game studios such as Activision, Lucas Arts, Bungie and Naughty Dog. He has contributed on films for VFX studios, WETA Digital, Sony Pictures Imageworks and Digital Domain. More recently he completed work on “Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception” and “Uncharted 2: Among Thieves.” Currently, he is a Lead Cinematic Animator at Naughty Dog on a new exclusive PS3 title called “The Last of Us”.
Kevin Rucker
Kevin is currently Lead Cinematic Animator at Ready At Dawn Studios working on a next-generation home console game. After graduating from the Academy of Art University, he landed his first job at Sony Computer Entertainment in Foster City working on a PlayStation 2 title. He then moved to Southern California to work for The Collective on a Dirty Harry game where he learned, the importance of workflow to speed up production. From there, he went to Ready At Dawn to work on his dream project, a God of War game for the PlayStation Portable. During that time he participated at SIGGRAPH's 2008 FJORG! animation competition with two other friends and won first place for the animated short, The Red Truck. After shipping God of War: Chains of Olympus, he went to work for Blue Sky Studios on Ice Age 3. He then returned to R.A.D to work on another God of War game, Ghost of Sparta. Kevin believes design and animation can work together to make a great looking and great playing game. When he's not working, Kevin enjoys spending time with his wife and two daughters. He also enjoys motorcycle riding, cookies and girly pop music.
Michael Carr
Michael has been working in the game industry for 14 years. His first introduction to game development was as a quality insurance tester learning the ins and outs of problem solving, game language, and general game design. Having spent several years studying life drawing he was intrigued by animation while working as a concept artist at a small company called Paradox. After three months, staying a few extra hours a day and learning animation on his own, he became an animator. Soon after that he was animating X-Men: Next Dimensions characters and then became the lead character animator on a project that later turned into what would become Midway's Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks. After that he moved on to working for Neversoft on the titles Gun and Tony Hawk's Project 8. Following that position Michael found himself at SCEA Studios Santa Monica working with many former colleages from the original Paradox team on the God of War Series. On God of war III Michael worked on many important characters, including Hades, Cyclops, Cerberus, Hercules, Hermes, and Helios. Michael currently works at SCEA Studios Santa Monica on their next project.
Richard Lico
Richard, or better known simply as Lico (lee-ko) by his friends, is currently Senior Art Lead with Bungie studios. Lico is responsible for the overall character animation technology and working with the art director to set the animation vision on Bungie's newest unannounced project. He has a passion for animation and game design, so the days when he can be hands-on, creating content or iterating on gameplay, he couldn't be happier. Lico has an uncanny understanding of motion, and how it can add to the game play experience. He's been in the gaming industry since graduating the Savannah College of Art and Design back in 1999, and has been animating, designing, or leading over 10 shipped games, including Halo: Reach, the Condemned series, X-Men: Legend, Jedi Knight, etc... Lico spends his free time tormenting his wife and 10-year-old son by injecting everything inanimate with a personality and voice for maximum embarrassment effect. The more public the better.
Tristan Sacramento
Tristan began his animation career in the games industry in 2001. His first job was at Secret Weapon where he worked on various game projects doing concept, 3d art, and animation. He then went on to work at SCEA (Sony) to focus on animation for Rise to Honor starring Jet Li. After leaving Sony he joined Nihilistic Software where he lead the animation team to develop Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the imperfects. Lucas Arts was the next company he joined where he worked on Star Wars The Force Unleashed. Then came EA where he animated Dante for Dante's Inferno and had the chance to work on Dead Space 3. As you can tell by now, he loves action games. Tristan is currently the animation director at nWay inc., a start up company filled with industry veterans ready to take gaming to the next level. I would suspect there's some action involved. When he's not working you can find him... well, working on something else. It's a good thing he loves what he does, making games for people to enjoy!
Brett Pascal
Brett has been working in the animation industry since 1999, but there's no question that his journey to animation was unconventional. As a kid Brett was always drawing (usually hockey.. usually goalies or cartoons) and watching cartoons. Fast forward through a short spell in college, a career carousel doing everything from forklift operator, to rental car agent, to car salesman. Brett was 22 and ready to persue that old passion. Fast forward again through rejection letters from animation schools, 10 months at an "animation school" in Calgary, unemployment insurance, a move to Vancouver and the better part of 2 years looking for work, Brett landed a spot doing scene cleanup on a CG TV pilot. In a few months he was officially animating AND getting paid. The pilot was ill fated, but the experience got Brett a foot in the door at EA Canada. He's been in the games industry ever since, with the exception of a few freelance previz contracts, and mentoring at Vancouver Film School and Think Tank Training Center. Brett has worked on nearly every genre from sports, fighting, action, FPS, and now RTS. He's animated on 12 projects, shipped 8 and lead 3. Most recently you'll find his work in Turok, Tron and Sleeping Dogs. Nowadays you can find him at Relic Entertainment in Vancouver where he is directing animation on the upcoming Company of Heroes 2.
Darryl Purdy
Darryl, also known as RDP on the production floor, has been working in the animation industry for 13+ years. He has most recently joined Warner Bros. Games Montreal as Animation Director on a yet unannounced next gen AAA title. Darryl started his career as a character animator in the TV industry for the CBC Saturday morning animated series The Hippo Tub Co. and the SciFi Channel series Lexx: The Dark Zone. Shortly after this he made his jump into video games. His first role in video games was with the independent developer Artificial Mind and Movement (Behavior Interactive). In his time as senior animator at A2M he was lucky to be part of their internal prototyping team and was able to help flesh out core game mechanics that later became key features of A2M's AAA title Wet. He was also fortunate to work in partnership with Lucas Arts on the Indiana Jones series and Marvel Studios on the Iron Man game. As lead animator on Monster House for Sony Entertainment his project was lucky to be nominated for "Best Animated Video Game" in the 2007 Annie Awards. Since then Darryl has had the pleasure to work with National Geographic on a 3D stereoscopic IMAX feature, with Bungie Studios as a cinematic animator on Halo 3 and with Pandemic Studios (EA) and THQ Studio Oz as a lead animator. Most recently Darryl was the Animation Director and Cinematic Director on Far Cry 3 at Ubisoft Montreal.
Patrick Przybyla
Patrick is currently a Senior Animator II at High Moon Studios, Activision Blizzard. He recently finished work on TRANSFORMERS: The Fall of Cybertron, where his responsibilities ranged from animating Grimlock to creating story driven cinematics. He has over 10 years experience in the games industry working for various companies such as Midway Games, TellTale and LucasArts. Besides chillaxin at the Skywalker Ranch, his most notable LucasArts highlight was animating the hero character, Secret Apprentice for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. Patrick is a graduate from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco where he earned his BFA degree in Animation. He loves games and when he's not playing split screen multiplayer with his dog, he enjoys spending time with his family and the great work life balance of sunny San Diego.