My name is Ali Saeed and I am a Senior IMGD BA major from Northborough, Massachusetts. For most of my life I’ve been an avid musician and even took a break from WPI to go to Atlanta for 2 years and pursue a music career while working in entertainment. I came back last year to finish my degree so that later in life I can combine those skills with my musical ones. 

This is the first time in my life that I have really gotten to sharpen my skills in visual art whether that be 2d or 3d. As a kid I used to love drawing and making comic books but art took a backseat when I discovered music in my early teens. Although I really had a chance to hone my musical skills my career was severely lacking in the visual department. After my 2nd year in Atlanta I felt like I needed to bring my artistic expression to a new medium so that I can create more visually dynamic and interactive pieces to go along with the audio. 

My family is from Pakistan, so by nature I express most of my art through my cultural identity. I make music with lyrics in Hindi/Urdu, make digital Arabic calligraphy, and hope to make media and games that center around more culturally diverse narratives. One of my dreams is to make an open world game set in the Mughal Empire before the British came to India.  

I’ve played many video games in my life starting from my first console which was the Playstation 2 on which I played games like Tekken, GTA San Andreas, Kingdom Hearts, and Prince of Persia. I had an Xbox 360 and started gaming on PC in my teens and gravitated to the earlier Assassin’s Creed titles. This series nowadays has truly tanked in quality but back then the historical environments were extremely immersive and always had a diverse group of characters from all backgrounds. These games also introduced me to stealth based games which have become my favorite types of games since. 

I ended up getting a PS5 for my birthday last year for this generation of consoles and have been immersed in games like Red Dead Redemption 2, Ghost Of Tsushima, and am planning to replay Skyrim and Uncharted. Ghost Of Tsushima has proved to be my favorite that I’ve played on the new console. Its reimagining of Feudal Japan is very immersive and it’s story was extremely captivating. 

In terms of making games I’ve usually been on the artistic end of the process. I’ve learned how to model in ZBrush, Maya, and Blender, as well as used game engines such as Unity and Unreal. I’m really excited to learn more about making environments for games in this class!