Rahul Artist's Statement

Ever since I was 12 years old, I have known that I wanted to be one of 2 things: A video game designer or a chef. I know that they are career paths that are completely divergent from each
other, but I have found that both give me an immense sense of satisfaction, almost like a catharsis. My choices emerge from that fact that I was an only child and when school was off, I couldn't meet my friends all the time and thus got immensely bored at home. So I used to watch my mother and grandmother cook and eventually I began to take an interest in cooking. Till today a dish that is well prepared and looks good to me is a work of art to my visual senses and my taste buds. However staying on my feet for 12 hours a day in a hot kitchen is not something I could have done day in and day out. So that career choice ended. When I was 10 years old my father gave me a Nintendo gameboy. Seeing little Mario jump around the screen on the press of a button fascinated me no end. I could play that little console for hours on end. But what got my curiousity was HOW did an on screen character react to a button press. I asked my dad and he told me that the answer to that question lay in computer science. So I did my bachelors and masters in informations technology and computer applications. Currently I'm specializing in Video game design in this program. One could say that I have been working towards this goal my whole academic life.

I have influenced by a lot of video game designers and story writers, some of the noteworthy ones being Amy Hennig (Legacy of Kain), Shigeru Miyamoto (Super Mario Brothers), Koji Igarashi (Castlevania), Hideki Kamiya (Okami), David Jaffe (God of War), Fumito Ueda (Shadow of the Collosus) and many others. To me a well executed game becomes a piece of art if it manages to draw you into itself completely. And all of these people have suceeded in chipping away at hours of my life at a single time without me noticing that happening. I am currently working on a game of my own, though I haven't finished it, the above people have definitely played a part in influencing me.