Creator Biography: Alanna Honigman
Art by Shannon Owens-Lewis
I'm currently a Digital Media major at the University of Central Florida with intent to graduate in Spring 2012. After I graduate I plan to attend the Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy for video game design and take classes in the Production track.
When I was seven years old, my Dad (the gamer of the family) brought home Final Fantasy VII. Cliche, I know, but ever since I saw that opening cutscene, I wanted to make video games. Originally I thought I could do just the art, or just the writing -- but in college, I took a production class and realized how much fun I actually had doing 'boring' things like scheduling, team management, and general workflow direction. I also have since then found a passion for writing game design documents.
Although I'm a casual gamer at best (workaholic tendencies lead to little time for gaming), I love video games for their interactive nature. The idea of allowing people to enter a world you created and explore it for themselves has always fascinated me, and really that's what attracted me to gaming. You can't interact with a book or a movie, and even the choose-your-own-adventure media is fairly linear. Video games, although still bound by predetermined rules, have been opening up so much lately that everything is almost like a sandbox for people to play in. And I do believe that playing is a very important aspect of human life that people tend to forget once they hit a certain age.
The Legend of Zelda series is one of my favorite series, with Ocarina of Time being one of my favorite games of all time. I chose it because I knew it had a really in-depth storyline, especially with the timeline split and all of the unique reincarnations of its heroes. Plus, I already had a lot of ideas from the start! This project was a ton of fun and I really, really enjoyed it.
When I was seven years old, my Dad (the gamer of the family) brought home Final Fantasy VII. Cliche, I know, but ever since I saw that opening cutscene, I wanted to make video games. Originally I thought I could do just the art, or just the writing -- but in college, I took a production class and realized how much fun I actually had doing 'boring' things like scheduling, team management, and general workflow direction. I also have since then found a passion for writing game design documents.
Although I'm a casual gamer at best (workaholic tendencies lead to little time for gaming), I love video games for their interactive nature. The idea of allowing people to enter a world you created and explore it for themselves has always fascinated me, and really that's what attracted me to gaming. You can't interact with a book or a movie, and even the choose-your-own-adventure media is fairly linear. Video games, although still bound by predetermined rules, have been opening up so much lately that everything is almost like a sandbox for people to play in. And I do believe that playing is a very important aspect of human life that people tend to forget once they hit a certain age.
The Legend of Zelda series is one of my favorite series, with Ocarina of Time being one of my favorite games of all time. I chose it because I knew it had a really in-depth storyline, especially with the timeline split and all of the unique reincarnations of its heroes. Plus, I already had a lot of ideas from the start! This project was a ton of fun and I really, really enjoyed it.