Bio

Over the 24+ years in the industry, Delaney King has worn a considerable amount of hats. From Hairdresser for the Gods themselves on Animal logic’s God of War: Chains of Olympus TVC, Lead Character Artist on Unreal Tournament 2004, Games Development Consultant for Autodesk and VFX Teacher at the Australian School of Film and Television- she had an immense breadth of experience to draw on.

Delaney officially started career as an artist on Microforte’s Enemy Infestation. She would go on to head up their Art Department in Sydney, which focused on their Bigworld MMORPG technology and tools (later this would become World of Warships/Tanks as Microforte became part of the wargame.net company).

Delaney is passionate about teaching, and during her time at Microforte started doing talks and courses, helping 3D students at the Academy of Interactive Entertainment skill up for the rising games industry. Here she scored two firsts. She was the first and only art track for the inaugural Australian Game Developer Conference, as well as drafting the first official government approved 3D artist curriculum when the AIE became an independent. She trained all the new artists for Fallout Tactics, teaching modelling, rigging and animation. She was bitten by the teaching bug- which would see her lecture all around the world, for Claytools, Autodesk, Foundry as well as being the VFX teacher at The Australian Film, Television and Radio School (AFTRS). She has spoken at SIGGRAPH, GDC, AGDC, CHINAJOY! and many, many more.

On Bigworld Delaney mixed her technical and creative mind to push the tools and techniques of the time. She designed systems for modular random generating and self-decorating dungeons, root motion in characters as well as non-barycentric morphs for facial and customization, all of which where unheard of at the time.

It was this mix of creative and technical that caught the eye of Autodesk (Discreet), who hired her as their Game Development Consultant for Asia Pacific.

“I basically spent that time in a blur of jetlag, hotels, conferences and studio visits. One day I was in India working with LG to help them design 3d capable phones that qould hit all the needs of game developers, the next day I would be in Seoul infront of an audience of a thousand people showing the new features of a new version of 3DSMax at a launch- which, by the way, I would have to learn on the plane flight there. It was insane, but the sort of insane that life should be.”

At the same time, her freelance work on Unreal Tournament 2004 hit the shelves, and suddenly she found herself in demand as a character artist. Her work was suddenly on the cover of the game of the year, and appeared in every game magazine.

“I was actually regretting going freelance, scrabbling around for gigs- when one day I got this email from the team making the new Unreal Tournament, asking if I could have a go at redesigning some concept art for them. That turned out to be The Skaarj, and Epic loved my take. So next thing I knew, I was making the majority of the characters for the game. It was an easy transition from what I was doing on Bigworld: Citizen Zero- so I took to it like a duck to water I guess.”

After a lecture on rapid prototyping of games in 3dsmax caught the eye of Ubisoft, Delaney moved to their Montreal studio to take up the role of Lead Character Artist on what was then called ‘Prince of Persia III’.

“I was super excited to be part of a Prince of Persia game as the original was one of my favorite games of all time. I felt so honored to be part of that legacy. This time, we where going for this historical realism look- all parkour and Templar. I went through a grueling interview process, landed the job and started work on concept art for characters.”

However the dream job turned into something quite the opposite.

“When I arrived in Montreal, to my horror they had made a huge number of changes. They had re-branded the game as Assassin’s Creed, cut the female player character I designed with no excuses (a legacy that we all know, would mar the franchise) and, worst of all, they changed my contract. I refused to sign the new contract, which removed my moving costs, medical cover, stripped away my bonuses and… well, screw that. I had a paper trail so they couldn’t strong arm me. I got them to cancel the deal and fly me home. This projects management at that period of time has since become notorious for this kind of inhumane thing. However, I should add that I have actually worked with Ubisoft again since then, and this time their management was great. You have to remember a company is made up of people, and those people move on. I certainly wouldn’t work for the people involved again. I have no issue with Ubisoft these days.”

Delaney then went to Rocksteady in London as art director, to help them gear up their art team for what would become Batman: Arkham Asylum. However her partner had become home sick after 6 months, so returning to Australia was in order.

One of the last things I did in the UK was make a Batman model in Unreal 3 for Rocksteady’s pitch to DC- perched on a gargoil to show that we could really capture the dark knight. Mine isn’t the one in the game though- Christian Bale was Batman in the films at the time. so we modeled his look.

Returning to Australia, Delaney worked in VFX at Animal Logic and Fuel, as well as continuing freelancing on games. Her work during that time includes Dragonage: Origins, Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach, Civilization IV, Lord of The RIngs: Online, Mythos, God of War: Chains of Olympus and many more.

However it wasn’t long before her big personality, technical skill and sense of humor in her stage appearances for Autodesk had her return to the demo scene- this time for The Foundry. She became the software specialist in Australia for Nuke, Modo, Mari and Hiero- and once again she was flying around visiting studios and doing shows.

In recent years Delaney was then Art Director at Tantalus Games where she headed up the art team for the winning Age of Empires III special edition pitch. She moved on to an unannounced project for Ultimerse.

Delaney has also amassed quite a following on Twitter, where her talent for teaching blends with her creative writing, LGBTIQA+ activism and often salty comedy into a “jagged, hilarious stream of consciousness- like having boiling information poured into your skull.” as one person put it. You can follow her at @delaneykingrox- if you are into that sort of thing.

She was listed as ‘one of the Australians pushing the industry forward’ by The Guardian, and was a finalist for the a MCV Women in Games awards for her work in creating Australia’s first official game artist curriculum for The AIE.

She lives in Melbourne, Australia.