Farzad Varahramyan

- Name: Farzad Varahramyan
- Notable creations and work: Abe's Odysee, Abe's Exoddus, Munch's Odysee, Darkwatch, and Zombie Pizza
- Born: Unknown
- Died: Currently Living

Biographical Summary

Farzad Varahramyan attended the University of Alberta, then later attended The Art Center College of Design and received his B.A. in Product Design. Oddly, this led him into a career of coming up with some of the most interesting creatures and characters in gaming, and movies. Varahramyan started his career in concept design with Amalgamated Dynamics, where he designed many of the creatures in the feature film Jumanji. In his early career he worked as a concept artist for Stampede Entertain

ment and Chiodo Brothers. Then, he was hired for his first leading postion as Lead Visual Designer for Kronos Digital Entertainment Inc. At Kronos, he started his career involving games and lead the visual style of Criticom, MeatPuppet, and Wet Corpse.

His career then hit its high point at Oddworld Inhabitants where he worked very closely with Lorne Lanning as the Senior Production Designer to create Oddworld and the characters that live in it. On projects he worked on with Oddworld Inhabitants Farzad was nominated for Excellence in Visual Arts by the GDC, and by the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences for Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction.

Varahramyan left Oddworld before the game Stranger's Wrath to create his own studio. In 2002, Varahramyan co-founded and became Creative Visual Director for High Moon Studios where he worked on the game, Darkwatch. Only 6 years later, on Halloween of 2008, he co-founded another studio, Appy Entertainment. Varahramyan serves as the Creative Visual Director of Appy Entertainment and has worked on the visual development of their games Zombie Pizza and FaceFighter. Appy is created game for the iPhone and Varahramyan is focusing on small screens, which is the direction he believes games are going.

Work

Farzad's style is what has been called quirky, odd, and innovative over the past 15 years he has worked in gaming and concept design. His environments, such as in Oddworld and Zombie Pizza, are often full of strange angles that activate the composition of the game on the screen and creates a cartoonish, but creepy world. His colors are also extremely saturated and often works in monochromatic palettes and uses colored light to create an interesting atmosphere.

Farzad is best known for his character designs, such as Abe from the Oddworld cities, as they have a bizarre, but endearing quality about them. He also designed Munch for Oddworld, the protagonist of Munch's Odysee, in which he draws on characteristics of real life amphibians and put them all together to create a very odd, but cute character. He is known for the asymmetry in his characters as well as environments that make his characters and world's unique.