Chris Hayes

Chris Hayes is a native of the Buffalo, New York area “GO BILLS”. Chris has been drawn to all aspects of art from a young age. He attended a local community college in an effort to formalize his traditional art skills. Always an avid gamer, Chris decided to use his artistic training to break into the video game Industry. Upon graduating from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh with a degree in Computer Animation and Multimedia, he received his first job in the animation industry as a cinematic animator with the video game developer, Outrage Entertainment, located in Ann Arbor, Michigan. During which time Chris worked on the PC game title, “Descent 3”. Once that title was complete he continued working on the add-on pack for Descent 3 which was titled, “Descent Mercenary”. Upon completing the add-on pack, Chris had finally grown tired of the cold weather and left Outrage Entertainment to join an Orlando, Florida based video game developer, n-Space. He was hired on as a cinematic animator where he gained credit for work on four different PlayStation titles; “Duke Nukem: Land of the Babes”, “Danger Girl”, “The Olsen Twins: Magical Mystery Mall”, and “The Olsen Twins: Crush Course”.

Chris eventually left n-space to begin a teaching career related to video game development. A privately owned college Full Sail Inc., located in Winter Park, Florida became the starting point to launch this new venture. Chris quickly became adapt to the teaching lifestyle and realized that he had found his calling. Being able to teach others how to succeed in the video game industry became a passion and what Chris refers to as a “dream job”. Seeking growth, and the ability to reach out to a larger student population, Chris joined the team here at the International Academy of Design and Technology ground school located in Tampa, Florida. Chris began teaching as an adjunct faculty and eventually climbed the ranks to become a full time lead faculty in the Animation Department. As time flew by and opportunities presented themselves, Chris accepted a position of department Chair for the Game Production program in the Academy online. This has become the current resting place for Chris as he utilizes his years of industry experience both in video game development and teaching to live out his passion of helping students from all over the world break into and become successful in the video game industry.