MCV Women In Games Awards: Delaney King

The following biography is from the MCV Women in Games entry by Joel Van Daal.

"A feature of the industry for over 17 years, King has produced some of most iconic characters and creatures in gaming.

An industry main stay, King has produced character and creature art for many AAA titles, such as Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach, Warlords: Battlecry and most recently Lord of The Rings Online. She has also made cinematic characters for Dragonage: Origins, Civilization IV, Fury, and the God of War: Chains of Olympus TVC. Her work bringing 'Skaarj' for Unreal Tournament 2004 garnered her to international attention.

Delaney rose to prominence as art director and lead artist at Bigworld/Microforte, (now Wargaming.net) where she headed up the Sydney team for seven years.

King tells MCV Pacific, “At the time, the state of 3D and games training in Australia was woeful. No one had a clue how to do anything, there wasn't the internet training we have now. We had to keep flying out to GDC in the US, grabbing as much information as possible and bringing it home.” Delaney moved to counter this problem by writing the first curriculum in Australia designed specifically to give students industry standard entry level skills.

“The Academy of Interactive Entertainment was just moving from being a rather shoddy TAFE course to an proper independent training organisation. I jumped at the chance to made sure it would give the students and our industry exactly what they needed first and foremost.”

Over the next decade, Delaney followed this with a constant stream of masterclasses, school visits and conference lectures. She even held the first ever art lecture at the inaugural Australian Games Developers conference, where she caught the eye of Discreet (Autodesk). She became their Game Development Consultant, where she toured the world lecturing, doing live shows and helping new studios set up their art pipelines.

Delaney has also worked as a lecturer at AFTRS (The Australian Film Television and Radio School), has held several papers at SIGGRAPH and GDC, and produced a best selling training DVD for Turbosquid.

The highlight of her career was appearing as special guest on stage at The Californian Max User Group's 3DSMax 7 Launch, where she was challenged to show off her infamous speed modelling skills by creating a cinematic quality creature live during the show.

“I had done it a thousand times before, so was super confident... however once I was on stage I realized my audience was made up of the best of the best... Blizzard, Blur, Ubisoft... yikes! And here I was, some kid from the down under. I have never been so nervous in all my life. Thankfully it went perfectly, I got a huge ovation and walked off stage to lots of job offers!”

Since returning to Australia, Delaney has taken up the torch battling for acceptance for transgender and intersex people in the industry. She provides free LGBTIQA consultation to schools and studios, and acts as a personal mentor for transgender students.

The below is a list of the published title's King has worked on.

  • Lord of The Rings Online - concept design/creatures/characters/props

  • Dragonage: Origins - cinematic characters for trailer

  • God of War: Chains of Olympus - cinematic TVC Animal Logic character team

  • Salvation Prophecy - creatures/terrain/sky

  • Fury - Cinematic Characters

  • Mythos - Creature Artist

  • Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach “Menace of the Underdark” - creatures/characters/props

  • Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach - creatures/characters/props

  • Civilization IV - Cinematic characters

  • Unreal Tournament 2004 - Character Lead

  • Bigworld - Art Director

  • Hotwheels Bash Arena - Cinematic Director

  • Warlords: Battlecry - Sprites

  • Enemy Infestation - artist

King has spoken at numerous conferences around the globe and appeared on many television programs, including the recent Good Games “Women in Games” special for ABC TV. A brief list of highlights for King are as follows;

  • GCAP 15, Women in Games, Modo:Weapon of Choice

  • GCAP 08, Creature modelling in Mudbox

  • CGOverdrive , Speed modelling in 3dsmax

  • SIGGRAPH , Power Modeling in 3dsmax

  • SIGGRAPH, Special guest live on stage at 3dsmax 7 launch- Max Users Group

  • GDC, Rapid visual protyping your game

  • GDC, polymodeling masterclass

  • GDC , Scultping in Haptics Claytools for games

  • AGDC , The Art of Games, Doom Generation, Deformation, Game Prototyping

  • SMPTE, hair and cloth in 3dsmax

  • FRAMES India, Game Development in India Panelist

  • THAILAND GDC, developing games from start to finish

  • CHINAJOY! , 3dsmax for games

  • 3DSMax Launch Korea

  • Eidos developers conference, Developing with Unreal III- first impressions

  • Teaching VFX and Unity3D at Australian Film, Television and Radio School AFTRS

Delaney's vast and stunning portfolio combined with her passion and drive as a voice for women and LGBTIQA makes her an inspiration, and a moral barometer that the industry itself could take many queues from . "

-Joel Van Daal
MCV Pacific