Chris Becker, as Becker Studio has been creating designs for many clients for over 8 years, before this though he has created work for many company and purposes and facilitated work created by many other professionals.
1990 – EduQuest – an IBM Company – Provo, UT – Art Director
Chris began working at EduQuest through a fellow student. EduQuest was creating software for use in schools (K-12). Graphic Designers and Illustrators were creating pictures on PC’s. The pictures were only 320×240 pixels with 256 colors. Very crude but it was fun and sometimes challenging work – just to make that small amount of pixels to depict the picture you wanted. Working there through several projects and several years, he worked up to be the Senior Artist, and eventually the Art Director (by name only – they really didn’t have a position like that in that very Engineering-centric atmosphere).
1994 – Vipah Interactive – Wellesley, MA – Art Director
While working at EduQuest, Chris worked on a project with Mike Pappas who was working with Papyrus in Boston. Mike got a lead on a job that he wanted to create a venture on. Mike called Chris to come in and create some 3D animations and designs for a prototype to bid for the project. After a week of late nights and a lot of 3D animations, Vipah got the signed job – a home-marketed TV-top game console for young kids – with IBM. Chris moved out to the Boston area and became Art Director at the new company, Vipah Interactive. Though the IBM TV-top game console didn’t come to fruition (week marketing and lots of competition from Sega and others).
Vipah wasn’t done with gaming though. A connection with AT&T was generated and Vipah was enlisted to help create games for a new subscription online service for consumers through AT&T. A hover tank game was designed and created from Designers and Engineers. Chris created intro animations, player sprites (hover tanks), weapons fire, maps and user interfaces. Unfortunately the service never really launched successfully due to budgetary decisions on AT&T’s end.
Vipah found another opportunity with Houghton Mifflin (thanks to Mike Pappas who had a contact within Houghton who was going to head the project). A well known but almost forgotten monkey was about to get a new life, Curious George. Vipah was to create an animation and concept of a CD title featuring Curious George. Chris called his good friend from college, Mike Jensen. Mike Jensen is a prolific animator, never settling on anything less than perfect. Putting their heads together, Vipah created a fun animated intro featuring Curious George riding a bike. The scene was created in 3D and George was animated in 2D (traditionally hand drawn, scanned and then colored on the computer). It was a hit and Vipah got the job. Six CD titles filled the shelves with Vipah’s name on them.
This wasn’t the only thing Vipah accomplished. While working on Curious George CD titles, Vipah was told that Houghton Mifflin Publishing was going to create some more Curious George books. Since H. A. Rey had passed away quite some time ago, an illustrator needed to fill his shoes while writers at Houghton would write the stories. Illustrators and Animators at Vipah had learned how to draw Curious George quite well and were excited about the opportunity. A couple traditional illustrations of Curious George were created using pencil, water color and charcoal. These were delivered to Houghton with a proposal. Vipah got the job! Fifteen books came about including a large format popup book.
Chris is seen drawing George for family and friends from time to time.
1998 – JuniorNet – Boston, MA – Senior Designer
Mike Jensen who found an opportunity at a fairly new startup in Boston convinced Chris to join him at JuniorNet, a kid’s online company. Boasting big names like Sports Illustrated for Kids, Bear in the Big Blue House, Blue’s Clues and many others, JuniorNet hired Chris to head the artistic production of activities for Reading Rainbow. Entering a larger company and some corporate challenges asside, Chris grew into this new position and enjoyed the thrill of creating new content for a well known brand. The end clients were thrilled with the outcomes.
Soon work began on a new interface for the entire service and Chris worked with Creative and Art Directors (John Bonner and Brian Gidry). This didn’t last long for JuniorNet fell victim as one of the 2K company closings.
2000 – Freelance Designer
The situation of the industry at this time did not look good for incoming Senior Designers. Companies were downsizing. Chris was almost compelled to finally make that step of going solo. Since then, Chris has designed, illustrated and animated for many clients and companies. Becker Studio enjoys a long list of repeat customers and clients who bring him on to their new companies.