Holly Sheppard - Digital Artist

I'm currently a Senior World Builder at 31st Union working on an unannounced AAA title. 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 explore the potential of virtual 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. 

After Firebird, I found myself back at the new version Rainbow Studios - THQ Nordic and the MX vs. ATV franchise where worked on world building and environment art on the MX vs. ATV franchise. In 2022, I switched gears and took a role as Senior World Builder on a new IP at 31st Union under 2K publishing.

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/