CCAD Stories: Danielle Tucker

A near-future career in game design

Seeing a near-future career in game design with skills gathered at Columbus College of Art & Design, Danielle Tucker (Animation, 2020) is obsessed with making imaginary things come to life.

“I’ve designed things with four arms and you really have to think about the anatomy—how would this work?” says Tucker, whose specialty is creature modeling. “It’s all about making it as realistic as possible even though there’s no way it could be real.”

Like many students at CCAD, Tucker has a specific interest in game design. That growing interest has inspired CCAD to launch a new major, called Game Art & Design, in fall 2020.

At CCAD, students learning game design will get hands-on help from professors and work in a city with a thriving—and growing—game art community.

Aspiring game designers will learn everything from introductory coding to the latest trends in augmented and virtual realities, equipping them for a career in the growing gaming industry as artists, colorists, animators, game designers or researchers.

Tucker’s dream job would be working for a company like Sony or Bethesda, but her time as a 3D design intern with Vans opened her eyes to the vast real-world job possibilities in 3D modeling.

What are you working on?

I just started my thesis project, working on a team to design a virtual reality horror game.

What inspires your work?

A lot of my inspiration comes from other artists. I like going on ArtStation and seeing 3D modeling work. One of my favorite animators is the French concept artist Arnaud Valette, who does modeling work in the film industry. I love 3D movies in general. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse got me into doing modeling.

What are your favorite things at CCAD?

Teachers here are willing to give hands-on help and able to give you individual time because the classes are small. Everybody here is in that same creative mind space, and it’s great to be constantly pushed by the people around you.

What are you passionate about?

A lot of things are going down in the animation industry right now. Workers aren’t getting work credited to them or they’re being abused workwise. Animators are trying to form unions. I’m passionate about seeing where that goes, and seeing animators get the work environment they deserve.

Why do you like studying game art and design in Columbus?

Our eyes were really opened up to the game art community here in Columbus by Professor Keegan. She introduced us to this whole community of people who are definitely trying to make it a new place for game art.

What do you do for fun?

Other than playing video games and watching movies, I really like going to concerts.