Let me tell you about two awesome humans I've met in my life, that just so happen to be members of Fadupinator Studios
| Sean Andrew Choate |
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| That's me, unusually clean-shaven, in the background. |
Also known as Branewalker, Sean Choate is my former room-mate and best friend. I met him way back in 2002, when I was a Freshman at Texas A&M University. We became good friends and went on to become the first two members of Fadupinator Studios, back before it was anything more than "Sean & Lars."
Sean is also the reason I am a Christian today. As a Norwegian-American, I grew up attending a Norwegian-Language Lutheran service down in Houston, but I was not very active and did not have much belief other than the traditional lip-service required of members of the Republican party. (I already had my god - a big, Red Elephant). What impressed me about Sean was that he was the first overtly religious Christian I'd met who didn't come across as smarmy, annoying, pushy, downright dumb. or having some kind of secret agenda. He was just a good friend.
He also liked Video Games. I wasn't aware that religious Christians were allowed to do that.
My entire life I'd spent wanting to do cool and awesome things, the sort of which we now host on this web site. Back in high school, all the kids would talk about doing cool things like making a movie, or animating a cartoon, or programming a video game, but would never really do much about it. Or if they did, I usually wasn't allowed to be a part of it. All that changed in high school when I met Sean.
Sean taught me more about design than any other person. Coincidentally, I was studying architecture, and in those classes I learned the formal terminology of design that I was then able to use to put Sean's insights into a formalized structure. When he would talk about doing something that just "made sense" I understood he was actually talking about the concept of First Principles, and when he would pick apart the latest video game because of something as minor as a control scheme, I understood that he was talking about Craftsmanship as it applied to the work as a whole, and how even the tiniest thing can be a problem if the user has direct control over it.
At any rate, Sean is basically a genius and I'm going to milk him for all he's worth. He's given me more ideas than anyone I know and you would be wise to learn from him.
| Megan Bednarz |
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| She works too much. |
Also known as Meganite, Megan Bednarz used to live in my Dorm, Clements Hall, when I was living on-campus at Texas A&M as an undergraduate. She was a year below me, and we were in the same major, Environmental Design (that's fancy talk for "Architecture.") We had a color theory class together, and that's where we really got to know one another. She's an amazing artist, and I knew right from the start that I would have to find a way to get her onto the team. I introduced Sean to Megan over the internet, until they finally got the chance to meet in person. Sean and Megan are really good friends now, and work together on everything. This only serves to benefit my selfish plans as now I have twice the creative output!
We had been searching for a WebDude to help us with our old website, www.4thpartystudios.com (now redirected here). We knew we would have to have a web presence, but neither Sean nor I had the know-how to cobble it together. My experience is mostly just in art, language, and programming in Flash. So we were delightfully surprised when Megan suddenly started taking an interest in the idea of web design (mostly because of her job at the Energy Systems Lab and in no time at all went from knowing nearly nothing about webdesign to making css and html fly like nothing I've ever seen. We found our WebDude after all, only she turned out to be a WebChick!
Megan really is an amazing person. Unlike most girls I know, when she gets in a disagreemtn she tries and solve the problem instead of insisting on being hurt.