Wednesday is my 37th birthday! It’s been a fun year, and I wanted to share some highlights from year 36…

• I became a game design professor! It still feels surreal, but University of Wisconsin-Stout asked me to teach Intro to Game Design full time. It was super rewarding to share my love of board game design with my students. I’ll be taking next year off to focus on my own board game projects & music, but there’s a good chance I’ll return to Stout in the future.
• I began working as a game developer for Floodgate Games. The games I’ve been developing will be secret for a few more months, but it’s been very fun! Board game nerds know Floodgate from their dice game Sagrada.
• My 18-card game won the Button Shy Contest. Out of over 100 games submitted to the “Numbers on Cards” challenge, my game 18 Thumbs Up took 1st place! Exciting stuff ahead for this little icebreaker party game.
• I started directing videos for the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. They needed someone who could direct live videos and read sheet music. We have 8 cameras and a 9-person video team. Quite the step up from directing at school concerts for public access TV in Stillwater. 🙂
• I got back into songwriting. After my 2020 album, it took a while to write consistently again. But lately I’ve been cranking out songs on acoustic guitar. Now it’s time to trim them down to a reasonable 10-song album. I’ll have more to share this summer.
• I scored an animation for the ALS Association, created by folks from Pixar. “Luka and the Lights” (soon to be rebranded as LUKi & the Lights) is a beautiful short film that teaches kids about ALS through a robot suffering from a robot version of ALS. I worked with orchestrator Marty Brueggemann and Honeytone Studio to record a score with over a dozen live instruments. It’s currently being submitted to film festivals, and I’ll let you know when it’s available.

Thanks for your support of me and my endeavors! If you’re interested in more timely & visual updates (including bearded dragon photos), check my Instagram.