Holly Sheppard - Digital Artist

I'm currently Senior Environment Artist at Rainbow Studios - THQ Nordic and work on world building and environment art on the MX vs. ATV franchise and other off-road racing titles. I live in Mesa, Arizona with my husband, George, and my birds, Pico and Olive.  

Originally from Los Alamos, New Mexico, I began my college years as a vocal performance major at the University of New Mexico.  After two years however, I decided to pursue my passion for the visual arts and, in 2003, transferred to the University of Advancing Technology in Tempe Arizona.  There, I quickly grew a love of the digital medium.  While attending UAT, I worked on a mod called COR Project.  It was such a successful mod that the school used our process and pipeline as a guide for student mods at the school thereafter.  During the summers and after graduation in 2005, I worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory as an intern on the VISIT project.  There, we used the Unreal Engine to create government training, real-time simulations, and other government-sponsored work. 

I ended up landing a position as an Environment artist at Rainbow Studios (later known as THQ Digital Phoenix) in 2005.  I was thrilled to move back to Arizona and to work at one of my top choices of studios.  While at Rainbow, I worked on and shipped 5 titles for the 360, PS3 and the Wii.

In 2011, THQ Digital Phoenix closed its doors.  I worked as a freelance artist with several others from THQ on a mobile app called SupaSupa Cross.  In 2012, I was contacted by a company that was making slot machine games.  Not knowing anything about the slot world, I tentatively took the interview and found the studio to be much like console game-development, just with a much smaller team.  I was hired at Firebird Studios which was a remote studio under Bally Gaming.  Bally was later bought by Scientific Games.  I fell in love with the wide variety of art styles I got to create and the different tasks I took on.  I took on roles ranging from graphic design, modeling, 2D and 3D animation, to motion graphics, particle systems, and video editing and rotoscoping.  I worked closely with the engineers to implement art assets, and later moved into Unity as our game engine. In my seven and a half years, I worked on over 18 titles, as well as created content for proprietary attract signage.  

My love for art is not only restricted to the visual arts.  I'm also an active classical singer.  My singer website:  https://hollysheppardsings.com/