My Story
I'm a student at St. Olaf College, a game developer at Outpost Games, and a human being from Egypt.
My story begins with a love of story-telling. I had always wanted to become a writer, and I wrote a lot, but the only person who would read my stories was my English teacher (mostly because he had to).
I then stumbled on Newgrounds back in 2008 and decided to tell my stories through animation. I learned about how to evoke character & personality through motion. I wanted to give life to the worlds inside my head, but I couldn't for the life of me actually draw anything well.
Newgrounds was Everything by Everyone, and flash games were a big part of that. At the same time I was captivated by games as a medium for story-telling, and the sheer ubiquity of flash games. I wanted my stories to reach as many people as possible. As a kid, the idea that I could create a world in my bedroom and it would be seen by millions of people (which wasn't unusual for a flash game) was incredibly empowering. It was also the first time I found something that I really enjoyed doing, was good at, and was actually lucrative!
I say I'm a graphics programmer, despite having run the whole gamut of software, because that was part of why I learned to program. To me, learning how to render a scene is a way of understanding how it was created. It's almost as if recreating the reflections on water in real-time allows me to glimpse the kind of choices God made in creating this world.
I enjoy teaching for the same reasons I enjoy making games: I love thinking about how to make content interesting, how to keep people engaged, and making people feel empowered. Over the years I've taught to everyone and anyone who would stop and listen (my own mother was not spared). I've lead workshops at elementary schools, at international conferences, and at everything in between. I love taking traditionally difficult ideas and making them accessible.
If you can relate to anything I've said above, or just want to talk, I'd love to chat! Feel free to shoot me an email or tweet at me.