Rhaelene Lowther President An Associate Professor of Art: Game, Animation and Simulation Design, Rhaelene brings years of experience, having worked as an environment artist for Microsoft and Sensory Sweep Software and more. |
Kurt Coppersmith Development An Associate Professor of Art and Design, and part of the technology industry for over 20 years, Kurt has worked with the Utah Jazz, Bosch, Dell, mid-size eCommerce companies and several tech startups. |
Bryan Lowther Operations A Game Development Instructor, who also holds an MBA. Along with managing finances and budgets, Bryan has managed numerous databases and software projects within academic environments. |
Sam Wakefield Board Member Samuel Wakefield became interested in strange, imaginative creatures at a young age. As a child, he would often draw them during church services. That same fascination with the otherworldly is the subject of his current work as he pursues a Master of Fine Arts Degree at Louisiana Tech University in Ruston, LA. Born in Huntsville, Alabama in 1990, Samuel continued to create stories and creatures throughout his youth. He dropped out of homeschool and entered the workforce at 18. Finding his job prospects unbearable, he later completed a GED and began attending Arkansas State University-Newport as a non-traditional student. After completing an associate degree, he was awarded the ACC Academic All-Stars scholarship towards Southern Arkansas University where he completed a BFA in Game, Animation, and Simulation Design. Through the skills developed at SAU, he now employs 3d modeling and digital sculpture to bring his creatures to life like never before. |
Erik Rogers Board Member Born and raised in Arkansas, Eric Rogers is a game developer, open-source software advocate, and hobbyist Youtube creator. He uploads to his Youtube devlogs for his current game, Stop The Slime, and tutorials of basic game development concepts. As the Lead Software Engineer for the game team at Asteri, Eric has released multiple mobile games. He is currently pursuing a Master’s in Computer and Information Science at Southern Arkansas University. |
Tomas Abrams Board Member Tomas Abrams is a freelance Technical Artist and Game Developer from Pine Bluff, Arkansas. He gradu ated from Southern Arkansas University in 2020 and since then has worked at five different studios including Asteri Networks and Decoy Games. During his time at SAU, he worked with a team on a game called Return Of Curiosity that was shown at the 2019 Pixel Pop festival and was accepted into the first round of competition for the IGF awards. He is the founder and solo-developer of Bizarre Fog Media, developing titles: Malicious Mages and Light Em Up, both casual multiplayer experiences. He is currently working as a Gameplay Engineer for Aerial Knights on their title Drop Shot. He is a big fan of science fiction with literal shrines dedicated to Star Trek and Halo. He has three cats even though his apartment only allows two, please don’t tell them. |