Jason Castriota – Car Designer

Jason Castriota was born in White Plains New York and raised in Greenwich Connecticut.  He graduated from Emerson College in Boston and dropped out of the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.  He interned at Pininfarina Design Studio, an Italian car design firms notable for names such as the Ferrari, Maserati, Cadillic, et.  At this point in his life, he decided to not return to the US to complete his studies.  He then worked under some other car designers he took part in the productions of cars such as the Ferrari 5999 GTB Fiorano, Maserati GranTurismo, Maserati Birdcage 75^th, and many other concept cars.  As the head designer for special projects, he redesigned some Ferrari cars for many different car collectors, including some American car collectors.  In 2008, Castriota left Pininfarina to become the design director at Stile Bertone, a car design company for cars such as Mercedes Benz, Lamborghini, and Volvo.  In 2010, Jason Castriota was promoted as the new design director for Saab automobile, reporting directly to the CEO.  He is now responsible for interior and exterior designs and design activities as the brand starts to increase its product range and once again renew its name.  He says that he is happy with the new job that was given to him and looks forward to working for a iconic brand such as Sabb Automobiles.  He has also worked and made the car Bertone Mantide (http://www.autoblog.com/2010/03/23/jason-castriota-launching-his-own-design-firm/)

Jason Castriota seems to focus on more of the concept and highly luxury cars during his career, gaining a great position during his internship.  He worked for many car companies such as Ferrari, Masterati, Lamborghini, and Merecedes Benz.  He is highly knowledgeable on meeting the consumers tastes as most of his cars are known and favored among consumers. He was recently interviewed and revealed to the public that he was going to launch his own design firm, thought he has not revealed any hits that it will be an automotive design firm.  He has only revealed that he will design things from furniture to sneakers to water bottles.  His resume includes working with some great known manufacturers, high quality producers, so many were not surprised that they brought it someone from the outside to take control of the design, his first task was to redesign the 9-3, the CEO seems to be impressed with his sketches up to this point.

Ferrari: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrari_P4/5_by_Pininfarina

Bertone Mantide: http://www.autoblog.com/2010/03/23/jason-castriota-launching-his-own-design-firm/

Maserati: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maserati_GranTurismo

Brad Wilkins - Architect

Brad Wilkins was born in 1960 in the USA and is an American Architect.  Though he was born in America his projects are not limited to just the US, he has projects in China and Dubai.  Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture is where he works at.  He has worked in the Chicago Olympic effort, the world’s tallest building (Burj Khalifa, Dubai), and the first Zero Energy building, the Pearl River Tower.  Zero Energy meaning that its net energy consumption is zero. Brad Wilkins was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. He trained with Rocco Yim in Hong Kong and Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. He graduated in 2004 from the University of Pennsylvania's School of Design and in 2001 from the University of Utah's architecture program.  He is the son of Utah’s Supreme Court Justice and a Judge.

He was the Senior Designer of the Clean Technology Tower in Chicago: http://eco-thinker.com/sharp-looking-wind-tower-for-chicago/

He was on the design team for the Burj Khalifa in Dubai: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burj_Khalifa

He was the designer of the Nanjing Greenland Financial Center in China: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_Square_Zifeng_Tower

He has been given awards such as the Found Member of the Taj Heritage Foundation in India.  In education, he was given the Young Alumni of the Year, University of Utah, 2010.  Brad Wilkins works with Skidmore Ownings and Merrill and Rocco Design Architects.  Rocco Designs is a large Hong Kong architectural firm.  The only project he worked on by himself, with the help of one more person instead of a team, was the Pearl River Tower: http://www.som.com/content.cfm/pearl_river_tower

This is the latest green technology and engineering incorporated into it, the tower’s sculpted body directs wind to a pair of openings at its mechanical floors, where traveling winds pushy turbines which generate energy for the building.  It also contains solar panels, chilled ceiling system, under floor ventilation air, and daylight harvesting.  This tower is located in Guangzhou, China.

His designs mainly seem to be large sky scrapers, ones that come out with a sharp peak on top.  His work is heavily influenced by the research he commits with other architects and he has won many awards for his projects, the Pearl River Tower alone is projected to win 5 awards, it’s near it’s completion.  I am fond of Brad Wilkins work because he seems to make buildings with a high tech appearance, silver looking with all glass and metal of which the color matches the glass.  His structures are cleverly designed to appear as sections piling on top of each other; he works with many different companies and does his projects mainly in Chicago, Dubai, and China.  He has been the designers and senior designer for many of his structures, only being on a designing team for only two of the structure he has managed to create.  He was also chosen to be the designer of the Olympic Stadium team for 2016; he will work alongside venue and urban planning team.  Brad Wilkins is a very accomplished architect, though young only at the age of 34, and he seems to be making many influential decisions around the world.

Hideo Kojima

Hideo Kojima was born in August 24, 1963 in Japan.  He is a video game designer at is currently employed as the head director at Kojima Productions, former VP of Konami Computer Entertainment Japan.  He has worked on many famous titles, such as Metal Gear Solid, which is a strategy based game.  He has been consistently named a influential and innovative game designer by experts and fans.  He was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2008 MTV Game Awards and was also honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2009 Game Developers Conference.  As a child, he had to deal with death and gang violence consistently, since he father was a member of a Japanese gang. 

As a child he dreamed to be an artist, but he was discouraged because of the society’s norms, also his father was a artist and he suffered from great finical debt.  When he wanted to write short stories, he is reported having writing stories that were as long as a thousand pages long, but magazines who’ll publish his stories were only looking for 100 page long stories.  In 1998, he became the producer of Metal Gear Solid; only two other Metal Gear games were made before him.  From 1998 to 2010, he has produced 26 Metal Gear games (consoles, computers, and even mobile games).  He produced other games such as Snatchers and Zone in the Enders, though they were not popular enough to make it overseas like Metal Gear Solid was.  He was even asked to work on a Castlevania game.  He even worked on a Super Mario Smash Brothers to add Snake into the game, he has even produced some dramas, giving movies a huge credit of his success, and he was very influenced by them.  He has also done some voice acting and starred in some movies, including producing some movies also.

I like Hideo Kojima’s games because they involve strategy and sneaking around, providing you with a chilly scared feeling when you are playing, especially Metal Gear.  You are a prison escapee and you must sneak around an enemy base trying to find a way out and destroy a machine called Metal Gear.  This is his most popular work and it has been popular enough to go worldwide.  His other works with Castlevania and Snatcher, Snatcher being an investigation game where you go and question people, look up evidence, and acquiring vital information to solve the mystery.  Snatcher was Hideo Kojima’s second video game created; it was also popular enough to get a sequel. 

Storytelling is very difficult. But adding the flavour helps to relay the storytelling, meaning in a cut scene, with a set camera and effects, you can make the users feel sorrow, or make them happy or laugh. This is an easy approach, which we have been doing. That is one point, the second point is that if I make multiple storylines and allow the users to select which story, this might really sacrifice the deep emotion the user might feel.  That quote talks about his mentality as a game designer.

http://unrealitymag.com/index.php/2009/07/10/metal-gear-solid-the-childrens-book/