Lorne Lanning

Lorne Lanning is an American game developers.

Lanning founded together with Sherry McKenna development studio Oddworld Inhabitants. His most famous work is the Oddworld series.

Lanning is also part of the Board of Directors of the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences and the advisory board of the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. He holds a BFA from the California Institute of the Arts and an honorary doctorate from the Academy of Art University.

Career

Lanning studied in the 1980s photorealism and commercial illustration at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. During this time he worked as a studio manager and assistant of the painter Jack Goldstein. The collaboration with Goldstein was a reason for Lanning to continue his studies at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia.

From 1988 Lanning worked as a technical director in the TRW Engineering Visualization Lab in Redondo Beach, California. In 1989 he moved to the Rhythm & Hues Studios in Hollywood, where he first worked as a technical and later as artistic director. In the course of his work at the studios, he eventually took over the role of the visual effects supervisor. Among other things, he worked on the visualization of the SDI program.

In 1994 he founded together with Sherry McKenna, the game development studio Oddworld Inhabitants. The stated aim of the studio is to write stories and to combine this with the possibilities of interactive entertainment. To date, over five million games from Oddworld Inhabitants have been sold worldwide and the studio received over 100 industry awards.

2001 Lanning and McKenna were included in the list of " Games Development gods " of Wired magazine.

In early 2006, Lanning announced that Oddworld Inhabitants will initially develop any further games and concentrate on other fields of the entertainment industry. As examples, he mentioned film and television. The studio has moved in the course of this re-orientation from San Luis Obispo to San Francisco.

Since 2010, Lanning and Oddworld Inhabitants co-operate with the British developer Just Add Water in new editions of the old Oddworld games. In this context, Lanning also expressed several times the desire for a continuation of the series.

Games

• Oddworld: Abe 's Oddysee ( 1997: PlayStation, PC)
• Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus ( 1998: PlayStation, PC)
• Oddworld: Munch 's Oddysee (2001: Xbox, Game Boy Advance, PC)
• Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath (2005: Xbox, PC)