Lorne Lanning

Lorne Lanning (born March 20, 1964) is a North American video game designer. He is the co-founder and president of video game development company Oddworld Inhabitants. Lorne is on the board of directors for The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences and also on the "advisory board to the president" for the San Francisco Academy of Art College. He has a BFA from the California Institute of the Arts and was also awarded an Honorary Doctorate Degree from the San Francisco Academy of Art College.

Lorne's professional training and career began in the early 1980's at the School of Visual Arts in NYC. There he studied photo-realism and commercial illustration but ultimately felt his visions were being constrained by the limitations of the still image. Lorne helped to support himself through school by working as studio manager and assistant painter to international fine artist, Jack Goldstein. The intellectual depth of Goldstein's paintings and philosophy sparked Lorne to further pursue his interests in technology, film, visual effects, storytelling, and traditional and computer animation, by attending the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia CA.

Lorne's fascination with high technology and its implications to future mass media applications led him to pursue work with the TRW Visualization Center in Redondo Beach, California. Here he worked as technical director of computer animation on projects that visualized aerospace concepts and applications such as the SDI (Star Wars) program.

Forever fascinated by the trail of high-end militaristic technology as it trickled into the commercial entertainment sector, Lorne pursued his interest by taking a position with Rhythm & Hues Studios in Hollywood, CA. Lorne chose Rhythm & Hues because of the cutting edge computer animated work they were doing in commercials, films, station ID's, and with aerospace simulators for motion based ride attractions. While at Rhythm & Hues he worked through several career moves, which included roles of technical director, lead technical director, art director, creative director, and visual effects supervisor. Projects included network Station ID's and feature films, as well as award winning commercials and motion based attractions for Euro-Disney, MCA/Universal, the Worlds Fair, Universal-Japan, Mazda, and Reebok.

In 1994 he convinced long time computer graphics veteran Sherry McKenna to be the co-founder of a new video game development company, Oddworld Inhabitants. He subsequently led the development of Oddworld games.