Meet the Team
Jessica M. Jacuinde
Artist / Graphic Designer / Video Editor / Social Media Manager
Jessica is an artist and designer who provides a variety of visual assets to whimindie. She has worked on the video game trailers for “ANTics” and “Selatria: Advent of the Dakk’rian Empire”; she is also the artist for “The Dastardly Dairy Debacle” who worked on Concept Art, Character Designs, Backgrounds, Animations, and UI assets. Currently, she is working on animation projects and designs posts for our social media accounts and helps monitor them. Her creative hobbies include streaming on Twitch, cosplaying at conventions, and creating YouTube videos.
Favorite Games: Adventure Quest 3D, Harvest Moon series, Final Fantasy series, Beat Saber, indie horror games.
Social Media
www.creativelifejmj.com
@creativelifejmj
Jonathan Dishaw
Systems Developer
Jon originally signed on as a tester, in the days before whimindie had its name. After telling Grover all the ways his game was bad, Jon switched majors and learned programming to help work on Selatria. When he’s not doing that, Jon works as an advocate and liaison for Las Vegas-area streamers and developers, or simply works on his tabletop RPG campaigns.
Favorite Games: Final Fantasy (except VII and XV), Super Mario World, Borderlands, Armored Core, Pokémon (still protesting Dexit), Super Mario RPG, 7 Days to Die, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
Ashley “Shadoe” Trammell
Sound Engineer
Shadoe is the sound engineer for whimindie. They graduated from CSUSB with a BA in Music Performance and Music Technology. They aspire to be a professional bassoonist, and have worked with several small, local orchestras.
Favorite Games: Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy XV, Magic the Gathering
Favorite Composers: Rachmaninof, Ravel, John Williams, Mendelssohn, Vivaldi
Christopher Nuño
Music Composer and Arrangement
Chris is a lover of anything that makes a sound whether it be accompanying the piano or banging a shoe over someone’s head and recording it. Chris has provided sound editing for Avatar: Legend Of Korra, live keyboard demos for sample libraries at the NAAM Show, sound design for John Carpenter’s AR Comics, & composed music for many mobile games. These are just some of his favorite achievements, and he looks forward to creating more memories to interact with you.
Favorite Games/Inspirations: Gears Of War Franchise, Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island, Legend Of Legaia 1 & 2, Super Smash Bros Franchise, Perfect Dark, 007 Goldeneye, Mario Kart Franchise, Dying Light, Twisted Metal 2, The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time, Donkey Kong Country 1 & 2, WWF Wrestlemania, WWF No Mercy, Star Wars Battlefront, King Of Fighters 99 – 2003, Blaz Blue Series, Starfox 64, DDR, Sea Of Thieves, Starcraft
Donald Alfieri
Lead Game Designer
Born within the golden bosom of the mystic turtle, the being commonly known as “That Guy” emerged and looked upon the universe. And it was pretty OK. Now, with glorious extension of his magnanimous sloth, he chose a mortal form! …But got stuck with this one instead. Nevertheless, this angelic mass of cells and fluid had to admit that funny thing called life has not cheated him. He went to strange places and worked unusual roles. And the grotesqueness within his mind had to agree, that ain’t too bad. He also does cut scenes and stuff for whimindie. Just because.
Favorite Games/Inspirations: Pac-Man, Martian Dreams, Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge, Wing Commander, Day of the Tentacle, Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, The Sims, Final Fantasy XI, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Final Fantasy XI, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dark Souls, Super Mario Maker, Oxygen Not Included
Deborah Groves
Lead Artist
Deb is currently one of the lead artists at Whim Indie. She joined the team back in 2014 when she was still attending CSUSB, and still works with them after graduating with her Bachelor’s of Arts in Studio Arts. She is also a freelance artist who has worked with Gaia Online, Oni Press, and Nix Hydra, and even runs her own online store. She has always loved video games and is happy to help create and develop games for a living. She hopes to continue her artistic endeavors and hopes to create something original to share with the world one day.
Favorite Games/ Inspirations: The Last Guardian, The Ace Attorney series, Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Hustle Cat, Ib, The Arcana
Lucia (Eun Hyeung) Lee
Co-Director of Marketing and Advertising
Lucia is the Co-Director of Marketing and Advertising for whimindie. She first joined the studio in 2019 and now helps oversee various marketing tasks alongside the Marketing Director, Jabari. She also contributes to graphic design and art assets as needed, and is aiming to eventually lead the art for a future game.
Currently, she is focusing on developing more skills relating to programming and animation for web development and games, such as 3D animation with Maya.
In her spare time, she enjoys baking and cooking for her friends and family, playing the piano, and eating as many delicious things as possible.
Favorite Games: Ghost Trick, Ace Attorney, Transistor, Wolf Among Us, Life is Strange, Fire Emblem, Danganronpa
Dianne Tapit
Digital Marketing Specialist
Joining Whim Independent Studios around June 2020, Dianne Tapit works as a Digital Marketing Specialist where she assists in promoting whimindie’s games while also primarily overseeing management of whimindie’s Discord and Twitch channel–doing tasks relative to encouraging and building a safe and welcoming community space for fans of whimindie.
For as long as she could remember, Dianne has invested many years into playing video-games since growing up with two older brothers. It didn’t take her very long to adopt the hobby of gaming; This hobby has lead her to slowly develop an unending desire by making sure to stay up-to-date with the latest game news, becoming an aspiring game collector (widely inspired by one of her older brothers), and even go through many attempts to fully complete games as an achievement hunter.
In her more recent years, her love for gaming has evolved into an ever-growing passion that has branched out to blend with her other interests such as art, music, acting/voice-acting, storytelling, and programming among others. As she continues working with Whimindie, Dianne hopes to discover whether her love for gaming is her true calling in life.
Favorite Games: The Legend of Zelda series (Twilight Princess, Wind Waker, A Link Between Worlds, Breath of the Wild), Skies of Arcadia Legends, Valkyria Chronicles, Star Fox Adventures, The Last of Us (Not Part II…), Super Mario series (World, World 2: Yoshi’s Island, Sunshine, Galaxy), Luigi’s Mansion, Resident Evil (2 Remake, 4), Okami, Spyro the Dragon, The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning, Animal Crossing, Life is Strange, Transistor, Trauma Center (1 & 2), osu!, Rhythm Heaven, Dance Dance Revolution, Harvest Moon (Mineral Town, A Wonderful Life), Kingdom Hearts (1, 2), Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, TimeSplitters 2, Portal (1 & 2), Ty the Tasmanian Tiger, Crash Bandicoot (Crash Bash, CTR, The Wrath of Cortex), Sonic Adventure 2 Battle, Kirby’s Air Ride
Inspirations: Stardew Valley, Pokémon, Fire Emblem, Final Fantasy, NieR:Automata, Grand Theft Auto (San Andreas), Killing Floor, Warframe, Overwatch, Valorant, Tomb Raider, Brothers – A Tale of Two Sons, Taiko Drum Master, Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, The Elder Scrolls, Nintendo, Valve Corporation, Rockstar Games, Sony Computer Entertainment, Square Enix, SEGA, Capcom, Insomniac Games, Naughty Dog, Konami, Bethesda, FromSoftware, Quantic Dream, ConcernedApe, Klei Entertainment, Supergiant Games, Studio Ghibli, Joe Hisaishi, Yoko Kanno, Toby Fox, Hideo Kojima, Grey DeLisle-Griffin, Laura Bailey, everyone behind-the-scenes in artistic-related creation! (So many to name for each, but not enough space!)
Zion Jones
Visual Effect Designer
Joining Whim independent Studios as our new Visual Effect Designer, Zion Jones. After working as an intern, Zion was brought on to the team in August 2020. He is working on making stunning visual effects for whimindie’s games. He is currently a student at CSUSB pursuing his bachelor’s in-game development and minor in Creative writing. He primarily works with the Unity Engine focusing on developing his skills in Visual effects, Graphics Programming, and UI design. Zion loves playing video games of almost any genre while he loves gameplay and music in games; he was always captured by storytelling in video games. He loves participating in storytelling, playing, and discussing aspects of Game Development in his free time. This passion has led Zion to pursue scriptwriting.
Favorite Games/ Inspirations: Megaman Battle Network Series (Megaman Starforce), Tales of series, Disgaea series, Drakengard/Nier Serie, Fire Emblem, Bayonetta, Asura Wrath, Scott Pilgrim V World, Kingdom Hearts, Etrian Odyssey series, Fable 3, Skyrim, Skull Girls, Digimon, Saints Row, The World Ends With You, Persona series. Platinum Games, Vanilla Ware, Altus, Square Enix, Lab Zero Games, Toby Fox, Yoko Taro (Almost anyone apart of the artist side of development)
Nikolai Gilliland
Lead Artist
Niko is one of the lead artists for whimindie and works mostly on sprites and tilesets, but does some other stuff here and there!
Niko grew up in Texas until departure to the west coast in 2006 to attend Digipen Institute of Technology. An open nerd to all who loves to create and just hopes to make people smile and raise their spirits when life is hard.
Growing up, Niko played all sorts of games, but due to an attachment to music, is especially keen on rhythm games and RPGs! Also, (Not so) secretly known to get addicted to MMOs. (Oops!)
Outside of drawing and gaming, Niko spends time self-studying Japanese and hopes to become fluent with another goal of becoming a Polyglot.
Favorite Games/Inspirations: Legend of Zelda series, Persona Series, OZ(Over Zenith), Chrono Cross, Final Fantasy, Silent Hill 1-4, Fatal Frame, Phantasy Star Online, Guild Wars, Osu! Tatakae! Ouedan!, Gitaroo Man, DDR, Idolish7.
Active Team Members
Gerren Willis
Collin Davis
Parker Colon
Reggie Ceballos
Kevin Picotte