William Tiller is an American
computer game designer, writer, and artist. At
LucasArts
Lucasfilm Games (known as LucasArts between 1990 and 2021) is an American video game brand licensing, licensor, former video game developer and video game publisher, publisher, and a subsidiary of Lucasfilm. It was founded in May 1982 by George ...
, he was the lead artist and art director of ''
The Dig'', the lead background artist on ''
The Curse of Monkey Island'', and the lead artist on ''
Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine''. He created the games ''
A Vampyre Story'' and ''
Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island'' for Autumn Moon Entertainment, a studio he co-founded with Mike Kirchoff in 2002. He worked as a game designer on the iOS title ''
Perils of Man''.
Career
Tiller was hired by
LucasArts adventure games
From the late 1980s to the early 2000s, LucasArts was well known for their point-and-click graphic adventure games, nearly all of which got high scoring reviews at the time of their release. Their style tended towards the humorous, often irrevere ...
by Collette Michaud in 1992 as an animator for
Brian Moriarty's version of ''
The Dig''. He stayed with the project through all of its incarnations, and was ultimately the lead artist and
art director
Art director is a title for a variety of similar job functions in theater, advertising, marketing, publishing, fashion, live-action and animated film and television, the Internet, and video games.
It is the charge of a sole art director to supe ...
on the final version of the game. He was the lead
background artist of ''
The Curse of Monkey Island'', and the lead artist of ''
Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine''. In 2001, he left LucasArts to work at
ArenaNet
ArenaNet, LLC is an American video game developer and subsidiary of NCSoft, founded in 2000 by Mike O'Brien (game developer), Mike O'Brien, Patrick Wyatt and Jeff Strain and located in Bellevue, Washington. They are most notable as developers o ...
.
In 2002, co-founded Autumn Moon Entertainment to develop his own adventure games. Their first release was ''
A Vampyre Story'' in 2008, followed by ''
Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island'' in 2009. Due to financial issues with the publisher of the Autumn Moon games, Crimson Cow, Tiller has maintained a freelance career in the industry. His royalty checks from his work on ''
Snuggle Truck'' has allowed Tiller to keep working on his own adventure games. Before the success of ''Snuggle Truck'', Tiller served as the art director for MunkyFun, which is itself a studio founded by a number of ex-LucasArts developers. In 2013, Tiller started a
crowdfunding
Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and Alternative Finance, alternative finance, to fund projects "withou ...
effort for an episodic, independent prequel to the
A Vampyre Story saga called ''
A Vampyre Story: Year One''. The
Kickstarter
Kickstarter, PBC is an American Benefit corporation, public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York City, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative project ...
campaign was unsuccessful, however, the game remains in development.
In 2013, Tiller collaborated with IF Games in Switzerland as one of the game designers for the 3D adventure ''
Perils of Man'', which saw release in 2014. In August 2014, Bill Tiller began a Kickstarter campaign for a spin-off of ''
Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island'' titled ''
Duke Grabowski: Mighty Swashbuckler!.
Games
*1993: ''
Star Wars: Rebel Assault'', artist (LucasArts)
*1994: ''
Super Star Wars: Return of the Jedi'', artist (LucasArts)
*1994: ''
Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures'', artist (LucasArts)
*1995: ''
Full Throttle'', artist (LucasArts)
*1995: ''
The Dig'', lead artist, art director (LucasArts)
*1997: ''
Outlaws'', artist (LucasArts)
*1997: ''
The Curse of Monkey Island'', lead background artist (LucasArts)
*1999: ''
Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine'', lead artist (LucasArts)
*2002: ''
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers'', concept artist (Stormfront Studios)
*2008: ''
A Vampyre Story'', project leader, artist, writer (Autumn Moon Entertainment)
*2009: ''
Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island'', project leader, artist, writer (Autumn Moon Entertainment)
*2011: ''
Bounty Bots'', art director (Munky Fun)
*2011: ''
Snuggle Truck'', artist (
Owlchemy Labs)
*2013: ''
Jack Lumber'', artist (Owlchemy Labs)
*2014: ''
Perils of Man'', game designer (IF Games)
*2015: ''
Skylanders: Imaginators'', senior concept artist (
Activision
Activision Publishing, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Santa Monica, California. It serves as the publishing business for its parent company, Activision Blizzard, and consists of several subsidiary studios. Activision is one o ...
)
*2016: ''
Duke Grabowski: Mighty Swashbuckler!'', project leader, artist, writer (Venture Moon Industries)
References
Further reading
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External links
Official website!-- confirmation as official site: https://twitter.com/billtiller/status/2627269161 -->
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tiller, Bill
1967 births
Living people
American video game designers
American video game directors
Background artists
People from Petaluma, California
American video game artists