New World Computing was a turning point in my career with regard to games management. I was hired initially to be the Art Production Manager, in charge of balancing talent that needed to be shared between two games in production simultaneously. I took notice of several artists whose talents were not being put to use and was able to direct them toward their innate skill sets and towards success. They worked faster, more confidently and the quality of the art produced by the department improved exponentially. Heroes III was my first game with New World and I managed the production and scheduling of 26 artists. I was also able to do some hands-on production work for the game, completing among other things 256 terrain icons. For Might and Magic VII I took the reigns as Art Director, followed immediately by Might and Magic VIII. At the end of MM8 I formed a cinematic team at New World to pull in-house many of the high-resolution, rendered assets that previously had been out-sourced. The cinematics we produced were extremely well received also in increasingly in demand as New World began to ship more ambitious projects. As a result, Mark Caldwell, the Director of New World, asked if I would head up this cinematics team on a full-time basis. I had a small 4-person team of exceptional artists, all of which have gone on to be Art Leads for other companies. Within our first year we had enough material to prepare a cinematic reel and enter it into Siggraph's annual animation festival. What happened was beyond expectation. At the Electronic Theater in 2001, out of all the entrants that were shown that year, two companies were isolated for their yearly contribution and their entire yearly reel shown to the audience. One was Industrial Light and Magic and the other was the New World Computing Cinematic Team!
Environments
. . . . . . . .	On all the titles I worked on at New World, I was able to contribute as an artist alongside the other team members in the creation of Characters, Environments, Cinematics, Interfaces and Items. For Might and Magic VII and VIII, I was able to lead the art style and execution as Art Director. All of the games produced by New World Computing prior to Heroes III were 2D and the majority of artists at New World had little training in 3D. So it was both a production environment and a mentoring / learning one. One of the choice elements we created for the Might and Magic games was the “Dungeon Entrance”. These were the gateways into the combat areas of the game. Every Dungeon Entrance was a 40 frame animation loop consisting of a high-poly, polished 3D environment. Engine technology at that time did not support the kind of detail we wanted to show the player in-game, so these looping pre-rendered animations helped to immerse the player with tasty hint of spectacular imagery. A selection of these environments is at left, if you want and an example of the looping effect it is here. Here is a large file that shows most of the Dungeon Entrances created for Might and Magic VIII. Images with a red dot were created solely by me. I was responsible for Art Direction on all.
	It was truly a challenge to develop the many characters and their costumes, then their weapons and all the variations to transform it from your basic run-of-the-camp rusty sword into the "Obsidian Sword of the Seventh Sorcerer". You really had to be creative but also quite detached in case the designer felt that there wasn't enough magic in it. Here are two cool images: one is the complete collection of costumes for an MM8 male and female avatar, and the other a complete line of upgrades for weapons, items, amulents, magic books and jewerlry (160 of them!).
Characters
	A collection of some of the many characters we created. All were animated to some degree. Each one unique.
Cinematic Team	The New World Cinematic Team created dozens of full-motion, rendered cinematics for the internal titles Might and Magic VIII, Legends of Might and Magic, Heroes PS2, Heroes IV and Might and Magic IX. We also created cinematics for 3DO North for the Battle Brats and GoDai titles as well as marketing trailers used at the E3 tradeshow.