Tale of Tales is a company founded in Belgium by Auriea Harvey(US) and Michaël Samyn(BE) in 2002 for the purpose of developing computer-based entertainment of high artistic quality. Tale of Tale consists of a core team based in Belgium and close collaborators who work remotely. Cost effective contractors and outsourcing studios are a vital part of production.

Core Team, Collaborators and Studios

Auriea Harvey & Michaël Samyn, project leads, game designers, directors
Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn, collaborators since 1999, have a track record as creators of immersive and emotionally engaging interactive environments. Rewarded multiple times by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, I.D. Magazine, The Webby Awards and the Minneapolis based Walker Art Center, their work has been featured in many exhibitions and publications throughout the world. Their Godlove Museum, Skinonskinonskin and Guernica are considered by and large as classic masterpieces of internet art.
As creators they restlessly continue their quest for awaking the dormant potential of interactive media, realtime 3D technology being the next logical step for them to take. After writing the scenario for “8” they founded Tale of Tales BVBA to initiate its development in 2002. “8” is their first video game title of many more to come and Tale of Tales is already generating a buzz around websites where adventure game enthusiasts meet.
“8” is a game based on an original scenario, initiated, designed and directed by Auriea and Michaël.

Chris Bateman (International Hobo), gameplay design
Founded in 1999, International Hobo Ltd is a team of experts in the fields of game design and game scriptwriting, designed to meet the demands of today's game developers and publishers, providing concept documents, designs, scripts and additional support. Offering a fast, professional service, International Hobo is at the forefront of market-oriented design and design-integrated script services. International Hobo's game design and scriptwriting credits include: Discworld Noir (Adventure, 1999), Ghost Master (Sim, 2003), Kult: Heretic Kingdoms (RPG, 2004).

Ronald Jones, lead programmer
Born in the Australian tropics he already had a life times worth of sunshine and heat in the first 15 years and yearned for cooler climes, preferably with lots of mountains and snow. He is currently living in Switzerland. He found the university lifestyle very satisfying and managed to stay for seven years. For his time he completed degrees in maths, physics, electrical engineering, and most of a computer science course.
Directly after university he had a sudden attack of avarice and went into business, taking a job at a management consultancy. Very quickly he discovered power suits were not his style and left. He chose programming as an appropiate means to makes his fortune.
Ronald has been working with Quest3D for the last three years, creating and maintaining many large 3d simulation projects for eSemble in the Netherlands. He has designed the current game engine of “8”.

Alex Mouton, extra systems programmer
A graduate of California Polytechnic State University in California. Alex has a rich history in programming for real-time systems. At Image Savant, Los Angeles, he was responsible for research and development of high end particle effects. He is a master of DirectX, Java, Visual Studio and MEL. He has also worked with Double Fine Productions in California. One of his main tasks with Tale of Tales is programming the living growing character of the Wicked Fairy Branches for “8”.

Koen Van Mierlo, animation scenario & direction
At first Koen Van Mierlo studied science, but his interests in animation eventually lead him into studying the arts and crafts of animation at Saint Lukas School of Higher Education, Brussels. In his second year he won first prize at the Short Film Festival, Leuven with his animation short Waiting Room Blues. When he graduated he immediately started working at Imagination in Motion. There he worked on several commerials and a trailer for the Kinepolis group. After the company went broke, he started working for Playlogic, a games developer in Breda, the Netherlands, where he worked for two years on cutscenes and in-game animation for the sci-fi shooter Xyanide.

Peter Kempton, senior 3d artist
Graduated from the Norwich School of Art in 1996 with a first class honours degree. From there he went to Etchinghill Studios where he worked on TalkWorld, one of the first 3D chat worlds. After that he joined Elixir Studios where he worked on Republic: The Revolution as a senior artist. He is currently based in Essex, England.

Laura Smith, lead animator
Laura Smith is a graduate of The American Animation Institute and the Pixar Program at The Academy of Art. She has worked for THQ, EA, Acclaim, Mattel and Sega on games such as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and Magic: The Gathering - Battlemage. She has been a teacher of Character Animation for Video Games at The Academy of Art College in San Francisco, California. Currently, she is making character animations of the Little Girl and other characters in “8”.

Evelina Kusaite, character designer
Evelina Kusaite has a strong background in sculpture, graphics, ceramics, drawing and painting. Her interests and experience stretch from 2D drawings to interactive space design and realization, as well as fashion design. In 2000 she finished a European Master of Arts in Fashion and Textile Design in Holland and France. She was nominated for the Prince Bernard Prize in the Netherlands. During her study period, Evelina was awarded for best conceptual fashion collection in Vilnius, Lithuania. She has lead several workshops on fashion/textiles and drawing. In 2001 Evelina was invited as experimental textile designer to join FOAM, a Brussels based art and technology collective. She has worked on the design and realisation of interactive environments (T-Garden, txOom), research and experiments on smart textiles, as well as illustrations for projects and independent works. Those works have been sucssesffuly presented in several international electronic art festivals, such as : SIGGraph, Ars Electronica festival, Las Palmas, and Big Torino festival. Evelina has been character designer and concept artist on “8” since 2003.

Guillaume Bonamy, environment designer
Guillaume was born in 1966. Studied architecture for five years followed by four years in comic book school (Angouleme). His great interest in new technologies pushed him then to study 3D software for a year. He started working in animation in France and soon was asked to work for Amblimation (London) on the feature animation film Balto. Joining the Dreamworks animation crew in 1996, he worked as a Layout Artist on big productions such as Prince Of Egypt, The Road To Eldorado And Spirit. While in Los Angeles, he got the privilege to study life drawing and art with the most talented artists at the American Animation Institute. Back to Europe, he was employed by different companies, designing backgrounds on TV shows and Feature Animation. But it is the Game Industry (Quantic Dream and Edge Digital Europe) which provided him the oportunity to express the best of his work, creating virtual worlds, through characters and backgrounds design. Guillaume found in video games the connection he always looked for between his Artwork and the pleasure of entertaining people.

Claire Bonamy, scene designer
Claire was born in 1967, studied Art and Graghic Design in various Art Schools in Orleans (Angouleme) France. She worked as a designer in an advertising studio called, Version Originale, on posters, mostly for cultural events. Then, following her husband on the road to Los Angeles, for professional purposes, she used this time to take classes with renowned Art Teachers such as Karl Gnass at the American Animation Institute. Back in Europe, she worked as a background designer for TV and feature films in an animation Studio in Germany. Interested in design and communication, video game seems to be a perfect medium to express her talent, and touch a large audience with her poetic and sensitive way to show a dreamed world, especially in a project such as “8”.

Gerry Demol & Eva De Roovere, music
Gerry De Mol has been a welknown composer and writer in the Belgian acoustic music scene. He is well known for establishing, writing and conducting the polycultural worldmusic group Oblomow. Oblomow has become a household name in Belgian Music Circles because of its integrated way of using musical elements from all over the world. Notably projects like Sporen (Traces) which features Iraqi, Turkish, Morocan and Flemish singing, Ya'Waaw featured Russian as well as Portuguese, American, Armenian and Belgian Influences. Oblomow Ladies Night featured singers from Marocco, Belgium, Madagaskar and Haiti. Gerry De Mol writes and arranges all these different music styles into one Oblomow style. He is currently working on a Flemish-Portuguese project featuring Fado music with a Brass quartet, accordeon, violincello, guitarra and two singers. Gerry has also been involved as the guitar player in Kleine Blote Liedjes (Little Naked Songs), an album with plain songs with guitar and voice (Eva De Roovere), which had a 10 week chart stay and was in the Radio charts for over 6 months.
Eva De Roovere was a singer for the folk rock band Kadril when she first joined Oblomow. Through all the projects of Oblomow, she also played with a country and western band. The album Kleine Blote Liedjes was made out of leftovers from the songs Gerry wrote for her.

Ferry Marcelis (Act-3D), software programming
Act-3D has a reputation of delivering the best in technology, software, services and support. The fast development cycles and the close access to 3D technology make Act-3D unique in it's field. The two key roles of Act-3D, a software developer and multimedia company, enrich each other and lift both to the highest standards. The unification of both disciplines results in a close bonding between development and application.
Act-3D develops a product line called Quest3D. These are products that are centered around a revolutionary new method to use real-time 3D technology. Act-3D also serves as a technology provider, providing Quest3D technology for use in separate products. With the powerful capabilities of Quest3D, Act-3D produces real-time 3D applications.
Act-3D is the team that produces the middleware we use to make the game engine (Quest3D).
Ferry Marcelis has designed an advanced character animation blending system for “8”.

Meerkat Studios, characters and props 3D art production
Located in Estonia, Meerkat is an all round 3D assets creation studio with exceptionally talented artisans. They have worked with game developers Lionhead and Kuju. Meerkat Studios are creating character 3D models and textures for “8”.

Dragon-Fly Production Studio, environment 3D art production
Dragon-Fly Production Studio, located in Ukraine, offer fresh, realistic and emotionally rich artistic and technological solutions for game design and development. The company exists for more than 4 years. Started as a post-production studio, it now offers full range of visual solutions in computer-generated graphics industry. The team is able to develop the whole exclusive game design as well as construct single objects (separate characters, objects and levels, following pre-defined design concept). Dragon-Fly are providing their talents to concpting, modeling and texturing environments for “8”.