About the Designer

 

Hi, my name is Paul Siegel.  Here's a little recap about me and my story:

First it was coloring books, then drawing and finally painting in my teens.  Then it was computers and 3D Studio (dos OS).  In High school, (Colegio Metodista de Temuco) I produced a series of art exhibits with the encouragement of my art teacher at the time, Elsa Mora. A series of exhibitions eventually culminated in an invitation by the City's premier gallery to showcase my work along with other emerging talents at the time. Upon graduating high school I moved to Seattle and enrolled in the Art Institute. While in art school, I took a job as an intern at National Color and gleaned from my fellow designers and supervisors Ian Maycock and Brad Thompson. While my responsibilities mostly involved shipping and emptying the garbage, I learned a lot about Photoshop, InDesign and a variety of print related skills from talented designers including Greg Dessart, and others. Simultaneously, at AiS, I drew insights from many of my excellent professors: Bill Cummings, Tom Price, Robby Gilbert, Abbott Smith and Buff Hungerland to name a few.

Upon completion of my Associates degree I was hired by Mary Jo Kovarik (then Art Director at Microsoft Game Studios) and was propelled further into the world of 3D. I began as a coloring/texture artist for backgrounds and environments to be used in what was then a secretive Microsoft's game console called XBOX (xbox1 not “one”). I attribute much of my training in modeling and graphics to coworkers like Jeff DuLong, Kenny Lammers, Brenda Diaz, Taisuke Tanimura, Rod Chang, TJ Holleran, Scott Swan, Nick Sagall and Michael Lyons.

Following Microsoft, I spent a year helping DigiPen with production and marketing tasks and enjoyed working next to (and learning from) Royal Winchester and Monte Michaelis (some of my favorite humans). At the time I reported to (now Vice President of the school) Raymond Yan whom continues to be a great role model and mentor to me. But as need for me diminished, I moved onto another company in the role of Technical Art Director . Working diligently for two years for one of Sony's intellectual properties I dove deeply into character animation, modeling, character rigging and scripting. Soon after, I recruited and hired their Art Director but ironically, he fired me.  Expecting our first child at the time, it was then I decided I needed to be the master of my own fate and founded my own studio: Digital Double.

To support my fledgling venture, I taught part-time at International Academy of Design and Technology and later DigiPen. I gave guest lectures and participated on various panels for over a decade. I was also appointed by then Redmond Mayor (Rosemarie Ives) to serve a full term as an Arts Commissioner for the city. Under the wing of the Arts Administrator Mary Yelanjian (all around awesome and courageous individual), I was able to found the Redmond Digital Art Festival which ran for four consecutive years and attracted thousands of attendees from all around the world to listen to speakers such as Ryan Woodward, Ed Fries, Chris Taylor, Andreas Deja, Tony White, Bay Raitt, Steven Stahlberg and many others. I later founded a non-profit The Guild of Digital Artists and currently sit on the board of directors whom plan on taking charge of the event moving forward.

Throughout all this I continued my education and took classes from great artists and storytellers such as Will Vinton, Greg Manchess and Todd Lockwood. Sadly all of my ventures came crashing down leaving me homeless for nine months. Well not quite. After losing our house, we rented but then couldn't afford rent any more so my partner and two kids lived (in hiding) in my office (shhhh...don't tell the landlord!). It was during this time that I asked myself the question “what do I really want to do.” And the answer that kept coming back was “I love the human figure.” It was during that time that A9 was born. Funds from the first crowdfunding venture allowed me to invest in 3D printers and funds from the second crowdfunding venture allowed me and my family to finally get ourselves our own home to rent and expand the business further.

When I look back at all of my labors of love, the human figure has been the single thread woven throughout all of them. From the colorful muscular robots and aliens I drew as a kid, to founding the motion capture and 3D scanning studio I run today. It was from this love of anatomy and human locomotion that I've derived inspiration for Armature Nine and Armature10 and look forward to continuing to push it further until my final years.

Thanks for visiting :) Feel free to email me at store@armaturenine.com