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Lorne Lanning is an American game designer, director, writer, and voice actor. He is co-founder and creator of Oddworld Inhabitants. He is best known for creating the Oddworld series including the games Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee, Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus, Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee, Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath, and Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty. The next Oddworld game titled Oddworld: Soulstorm will be released on April 6, 2021.

Initially studying photo-realism and commercial illustration at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, Lanning soon attended the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California, where he graduated with a BFA in Character Animation.

Working as a Technical Director at TRW, Lanning later moved to Rhythm & Hues Studios in Hollywood, where he would later meet producer Sherry McKenna, who helped co-found Oddworld Inhabitants.

Topics Discussed In This Episode:

• Lorne’s journey from fine art into developing video games
• The change of perception within art
• Perceiving the value of art
• Art as a form of commerce
• “Fragility of the perishable”
• The dark side of globalization
• Lorne’s passion for environmentalism
• The genesis of emerging technology in the late 80s
• The power of visualization and how to sell big ideas
• Making your own luck
• Lorne working for a military defense company
• Marketing yourself as an artist
• Following an intuitive pursuit
• Staying hungry within your craft
• Understanding “what your audience is eating”
• Being a talent vs. being a creator
• Finding business opportunities
• Video games
• Artists’s unique perception and ability to express that
• The symbiosis of engineering and art 
• Compromising with a team while making a video game
• Understanding various subjects and adjacent industries
• Empathy within video games
• Game speak
• The impact of George Orwell’s “1984” and “Animal Farm” on Lorne’s storytelling process
• “Lo-brow access points to high art.” 
• Emulating the player interacting with real-world objects. 
• Self-publishing
• Oddworld’s latest release, “Soulstorm” 
• The depth of character creation, controls, and tone of the story 
• The new generation of gaming technology 
• Systems of monetization within emerging technologies

www.artistdecoded.com

www.instagram.com/oddworldinc