Zachary Schläppi

In 1995, Zach Schläppi received his BFA from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and moved to New York City to pursue a career in advertising. He spent the first couple of years working in direct marketing, pharmaceutical advertising and sales before he applied tot he MFA Computer Arts program at the School of Visual Arts, graduated in 2000 with a focus in Lighting and Compositing. his award-winning short-titled film, "Pasta for War" led him to a technical director position for Blue Sky Studios' feature animation "Ice Age."

In 2002, Zach's next feature was with Big Idea Productions in Chicago titled "Jonah: A Veggietale's Movie." He returned to New York that summer to work with Darren Aronofsky's visual F/X team Amoeba Proteus on a pitch project.

Zach's career in the video game industry began in 2003 as a senior lighter at Electronic Arts Los Angeles on the first person shooter franchise "Medal of Honor". While at EA, he worked his way from senior lighter to lighting lead on "MoH: Rising Sun" and "MoH: European Assault" and then to art director for "MoH: Vanguard" and "Gunhero". When "Gunhero" was cancelled in 2008, he moved to Canada to join Ubisoft Montréal to help finish its open world first-person shooter "Far Cry 2" and art direct "Far Cry 3".

In spring of 2011, Zach joined Agni Interactive as a consulting art director working with the Hyderabad office on various pitch projects, game production such as Paradox's MMORPG "Salem", and pre-visualisation for Charlex's F/X team 321Launch.

He returned to New York City in autumn 2011 to build the art team at Avalanche Studios' newly-opened SoHo studio, and is currently art directing an open world game co-developed by Square Enix.