PLAY15 » Award Jury

Anne Sauer

Valentina — Thu, 03 Sep 2015 12:37:29 +0000

Anne Sauer is a media pedagogue at outermedia. She is an editor and does conceptional work for spielbar.de. She is responsible for media pedagogical workshops with children, teenagers and adults.

At PLAY15 Anne is a member of the jury for the Creative Gaming award and leads workshops.

Isabelle Arvers

kathrin — Mon, 24 Aug 2015 15:01:02 +0000

Isabelle Avers is a french media artist, critique and author. She gives lectures and workshops about gaming. Besides, she is a performing artist and works within the fields of retro gaming, web animation and machinimas. She is especially interested in the relationship between art and games and how mass media can be a tool for creative expression.

Leif Rumbke

wpadmin — Fri, 10 Jul 2015 12:39:49 +0000

Leif Rumbke works as a freelance software developer. Since he studies at the Media and Art School Cologne he deals with gaming from a practical as well as a theoretical and artistic perspective. His favourite games (amongst others) are: Commando, Elite, Populous, Larry I, Mario Kart WII and Fallout 2 + 3.

Mareike Ottrand

Valentina — Mon, 13 Jul 2015 10:06:47 +0000

Mareike Ottrand was born in 1983, to the surprise of her parents, with a pencil in her hand. Hence her career options were quite narrow. After drawing a lot of bunnies in her childhood she got her B.A. in Media Production in 2007, followed by a diploma in Motion Design in 2011 at the Film Academy Baden-Württemberg. As a freelancer for commercial agencies she gained lots of experience as an illustrator and animator. While working in London at the animation studio “Mainframe” she had the chance to work for numerous international clients like MTV, Nickelodeon, and Disney.

Mareike is responsible for Art Direction and Character Design at Studio Fizbin, which she co-founded in 2011. The Inner World, their first game, won the Award for the Best German Game 2014 (Deutscher Computerspielpreis).

Mareike loves creating visual worlds from the scratch, designing odd characters and giving lectures on finding the “Hunakel”.

The pencil in her right hand luckily never disappeared.

At PLAY15 Mareike is one of the judges for the Creative Gaming award.

Michel Koch

Christiane — Tue, 18 Aug 2015 13:32:58 +0000

Michel Koch started his career in 2003 as a freelance illustrator for various collectible card games, role playing games and book covers. Since then, he has worked on many well-known franchises such as Call of Cthulhu, Game of Thrones and Vampire: the Masquerade. In 2006 he began working in the video game industry as a freelance concept artist for projects such as EVE Online, Sonic Unleashed, R.U.S.E and World of Darkness Online. In 2008 he joined DONTNOD Entertainment as a lead concept artist, then as the co-art director alongside art director Aleksi Briclot. They worked together on building the visual universe of the game Remember Me (published by Capcom). He also worked heavily on the environmental storytelling of the game’s universe, collaborating closely with the lead writer. He is now the co-game director and art director of Life Is Strange, an episodic modern adventure game, developed by DONTNOD Entertainment and published by Square Enix. His favorite video game is Silent Hill 2.

Raoul Barbet

Christiane — Tue, 18 Aug 2015 13:35:12 +0000

Raoul Barbet is the co-Game Director of the game Life is Strange.

After studying engineering, he specialized in project management and production pipeline, particularly in cultural and audiovisual fields. He worked for festivals in Canada and France and as technical coordinator for the Bophana Audiovisual Resources Center in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. His first videogame work was for Quantic Dream’s Heavy Rain, working two years on motion capture and scene game design. He joined then Illumination Mac Guff animation studio (Despicable Me series) as a layout artist for the animated feature film The Lorax and then DONTNOD Entertainment to work on the cinematic and narrative elements of the game Remember Me. He’s now the co-Game Director of Life is Strange, an episodic modern adventure game, developed by DONTNOD Entertainment and published by Square Enix. One of his favorite recent video games was Spec Ops The Line.