About

Hello there! My name is David Sutherland and I’m an interactive digital multimedia artist. That usually translates to: “I make video games”. Born and raised in Chicago I have a deep appreciation for the midwest and fostering the local community.

The intersection of technology and art is something that always interested me. Early experiences with technology include learning BASIC in an after school grade school course and hacking my way around our Commodore 64 at home. In high school I hopped between art and architecture concentrations looking for a cozy place too settle when I was introduced to CAD which blew my mind. In college I bounced back to art from architecture and again gravitated towards technology finally snagging a BA in “computer multimedia”.

I was hired onto my first job through my senior year internship at Imagination Pilots where I became shrewdly creative in optimizing the art production pipeline for the small team. That company eventually transformed into a web presence for major music media outlets including Rolling Stone and The Source. My expertise in HyperCard, Macromedia Director and FutureSplash led me to be a beta tester for Macromedia Flash where I explored “rich media content” for web deployment. A group of artists there saw the potential for online games and animation and started our own company called iToons. We squeaked by during the dot-com bubble and churned out game after game for popular children IPs for such companies as Nickelodeon, Lego, Sesame Workshop etc. It was a true labor of love that challenged us daily. We eventually decided to call it quits and I moved on to the marketing firm Arc Worldwide concentrating on Flash animation. An opportunity opened up at WMS to work alongside some of my art heroes while doing non-skill-based (which piqued the interest of the behavior science nerd in me) game development. There I double-downed on my code chops with fun ECMA-based Actionscript 3 and created hundreds of game prototypes for some of the sharpest game designers I’ve met. I’m currently looking for my next adventure, does that include you?

Many of the projects I’ve worked on are catalogued in my portfolio. For more information please check out my resume, see what people have said about me, and you can contact me through this form.

Thanks for visiting!