Bill Tiller

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William Tiller was the lead background artist on The Curse of Monkey Island. After leaving LucasArts, he started his own company, Autumn Moon Entertainment. He is currently working on a point-and-click adventure game in the style of CMI, called A Vampyre Story. Throughout his career, he has also worked on many other big games.

Contents

Personal Life

Bill Tiller with his wife Amy, and Chewbacca
Bill Tiller with his wife Amy, and Chewbacca
Bill Tiller was born on the night of Halloween, and he thinks that's why he likes "adventure, ghosts, horror, monsters and other stuff like that."[1] He started drawing when he was three years old.[2] In 1977, Bill's family moved to a rural house surrounded by trees, which is why there are a lot of trees in his art. In 1980, Bill was introduced to gaming by his friend Geoff, and he's been gaming ever since.

Bill Tiller graduated from the Character Animation Program at the California Institute of the Arts, and now lives in southern California with his wife Amy, and their kids Zoë, Logan, and Lily.[3]

Influences

Most of Tiller's inspiration came from the artwork of Greg and Tim Hildebrandt, his art heroes, as he calls them.[4] He places himself in a tradition that starts with the pre Raphaelites in the 1800s, who then inspired the Brandy Wine school of illustrators, who then inspired Disney Artists and then the Hildebrandt artists, who then inspired him.[5] Bill Tiller encourages copying other artists as a way to further one's own drawing abilities.[6]

LucasArts

In 1992, Collette Michaud came to Bill Tiller's college to look for an animator on Brian Moriarty's version of The Dig.[7] Later, he finished working on The Dig (Sean Clark's version), and he got to work on The Curse of Monkey Island, doing backgrounds. He got this job after receiving a bonus, which he used to go to Disney World and the Bahamas, where he took a lot of photographs for reference. Afterwards, he created Monkey Island drawings and Photoshop paintings, convincing Larry Ahern and Jonathan Ackley that he was the right man for the job.[8]

Over the nine years he spent at LucasArts, Bill worked on such games as Steven Spielberg's The Dig, Rebel Assault, The Curse of Monkey Island, and Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine.[9] In 2001, Bill left LucasArts to start a new job at Arena.net.[10]

Autumn Moon Entertainment

After ten years working for other game companies, working on games such as Guild Wars and Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers[11], Bill decided to be his own boss. So, in 2004, he founded his own company, Autumn Moon Entertainment, devoted to traditional adventure games. He also began working on A Vampyre Story which follows Mona, a newly turned Vampyre, as she learns and develops her abilities in a quest to travel to Paris and become an Opera star. The game should hit shelves sometime in early 2008 (distributed in Europe by the German company Crimson Cow) and will have two sequels (at least).

Footnotes

  1. ↑ http://www.worldofmi.com/features/interview/tiller.php
  2. ↑ http://web.archive.org/web/20010620025659/http://thescummbar.com/html/tiller.html
  3. ↑ http://www.amegames.com/about_us.htm
  4. ↑ http://web.archive.org/web/20010828160828/http://scummbar.mixnmojo.com/news/tiller.html
  5. ↑ http://www.milegend.com/articles/articles.php?id=21
  6. ↑ http://web.archive.org/web/20010620025659/http://thescummbar.com/html/tiller.html
  7. ↑ http://www.scummbar.com/resources/articles/index.php?newssniffer=readarticle&article=1013
  8. ↑ http://www.milegend.com/articles/articles.php?id=21
  9. ↑ http://web.archive.org/web/20041209233515/http://www.xequted.com/interviews.php?subaction=showfull&id=1099096604&ucat=10&
  10. ↑ http://web.archive.org/web/20010129083100/http://www.mixnmojo.com/scramm/cgi-bin/board/view.pl?thread=73&entry=1&msg=372
  11. ↑ http://www.cubed3.com/news/6275/1/A_Vampyre_Story_on_Wii_&_DS?__AME_Games_Tells_All

External links

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