Jeff Himmelman

School of Visual Arts

VP of Creative at Playco

Mountain View, California, United States

Playco

VP of Creative

First art hire at the company. Joined pre-series A, helped raise a $12 million round by creating demos and flying around the world to meet with investors and advisors. 
Was responsible for game art and UI creation, hiring/managing the game art team, hiring/managing the ad creatives team, and a lot more.

-  Illustrated, Art Directed and created UI for EverWing, one of the launch titles for Facebook's Instant Games platform. Peak MAU was 33 million players. 

-  Built, trained and run art studios in Silicon Valley and Tokyo. I lived in Tokyo for several months hiring and training the art team for R Games, a joint venture with our company and Rakuten.

-  Worked with external IP holders on various projects, including but not limited to: Snap inc, AMC (Walking Dead), Bandai Namco, and Taito.

-  Organized major events, including the Cardinal Game Jam in association with Stanford, Machine Zone, Zynga, Tango and others. The event was covered in Forbes, Stanford Daily and others.

-  Directed/worked on launch titles for the Snapchat Games platform (Snake Squad) and Line Messenger's Quick Games platform (Battlecats Galaxy)

Game Closure

Created concepts for Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons and Dragons Online. 

-  Worked closely with the creative team to iterate quickly and effectively on character design, architecture, armor, and a range of other concepts. 

-  Offered a full time position at end of contract.