Graduate Story: Ellis Tucci '20, Saturn Interactive

"Dickinson equipped me with skills in lateral thinking, which I use every day to resolve development roadblocks."

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        —Ellis Tucci

 

I'm currently the project lead developer at Saturn Interactive, a small indie publishing label that I've created to handle and organize the development of Spectra, a video game of my own creation that is currently entering its fourth year of development. In my role, I'm responsible for planning and executing every aspect of production; from sourcing reference images, to creating textures and 3D models, to rigging, animating, coding gameplay mechanics, creating environments and designing sounds. I'm currently working toward releasing a long-anticipated public demo later this year, and from March 21-25 I'll be traveling up to Boston to present my work at PAX East, which is a very exciting opportunity that I'm happy to be a part of. My position as an independent game developer affords me a great deal of freedom to approach the creative process however I please, allowing me to refresh myself by changing artistic disciplines. One day I may be writing a vertex displacement shader that melts your enemies into piles of goo, the next I may be creating a mechanically accurate astrolabium clock, or an interactive cinema that plays the entirety of the 1963 Audrey Hepburn film Charade.

 

I very much enjoyed my time at Dickinson; I was highly active in a number of clubs and campus groups, from WDCV to the Octals, which helped me build a number of close friendships that still play an important role in my life. Thanks to Dickinson's small size and professor-to-student ratio, in my four years I was not only able to become friendly with a large proportion of the student body, but it was also possible for me to form relationships with my professors that were critical to my intellectual development. 

 

 

I would say Dickinson prepared me for where I am now in two significant ways. I was a major in economics, which admittedly does not bear much relation to what I do now. Rather, Dickinson equipped me with skills in lateral thinking, which I use every day to resolve development roadblocks; the nature of the liberal arts education also allowed me to explore a wide array of topics that were critical to my development as a well-rounded creative professional, as well as helped me understand more about myself. 

 

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