My name is Miriam Landsnes Heldal, 22 years old. I’m a 3rd year at Spillskolen taking Digital Art and Motion Design as a part of the Animation and Digital Art Subject.

I have a huge passion for character art and design and wish to work with it in the future as a concept artist for games, movies, and/or television. When I heard about the mascot contest it seemed right up my ally and I wanted to put my own abilities to the test. I wanted to make a character that could both represent the creativity of the artists and the complexity of programming.

I decided on a reptile because I associate geckos with sleekness and agility, which can be compared with modern technology and how we want our games to be sleek and agile is performance and graphically. I also choose the gecco for their goofy faces which always look excited; showing the fun side of coding and art, appealing to people seeing the mascot.

I decided on  a green color to match the colors of Inn and it’s a common color for a reptile. I wanted to give it a unique feature and settled on a back pattern which looked like binary code, which is the cornerstone of the technology we use every day at Spillskolen.

I learned of Spillskolen when I went to Sunnhordland Folkehøgskole and we had a guest teacher in concept art, June Jenssen, which was a graduate from Animation and Digital art and now a full time freelancer. She inspired me a lot so I wanted to look into the school and it seemed like a fit for what I wanted to accomplish which was to become a concept artist. I later that year visited Hamar for the annual Global Game Jam held there and I really liked the atmosphere and the nice people there, which ultimately made me decide on applying for the school.

I believe the best thing that has come out of choosing to go to Inn is the people I’ve met here. I’ve always struggled with forming meaningful relationships due to my autism so finding people with similar interests, which would be equally excited as me about an awful animated movie, and discussing outlandish concepts just because it’s fun has really helped me get out of my shell. I feel the connections I’ve gotten here has become my most valuable asset.

For the future I hope to get a job in a company focusing on digital entertainment for Kids such as Ravn Studio, Qvisten Animation, or something similar as I’d love to make something that kids will love and remember fondly as they grow up, just like I still love Kaptein Sabeltann and Josefine, which to me are childhood icons.