With a background both in entertainment and education, Tad Leckman has spent the past twenty years focused on the learning and development of artists, designers, writers and engineers. After a successful career as a digital artist and supervisor at Industrial Light and Magic, Tad changed his focus to teaching full-time, and has taught at University of California, Santa Cruz, Academy of Art University, Escape Studios, NYU’s Center for Advanced Digital Applications, and Savannah College of Art and Design, where he was also Chair of the Visual Effects program.
In 2008, Tad returned to Lucasfilm as Director of Training, overseeing The Jedi Masters Program, artist training, and internships for the company’s combined animation, visual effects and game development studio in Singapore. Tad has held senior learning and development roles at Blizzard Entertainment and Riot Games. Most recently, he has designed and led Activision Blizzard’s award-winning Level Up U program, whose mission is “To create opportunities for individuals from diverse backgrounds to enter the game industry.” He was also responsible for the “craft” learning and development for game developers across all Activision and Blizzard studios. Craft learning includes hard skills and software training, as well as foundation and theory, for a broad spectrum of engineering, art, and game design disciplines.
Tad has lectured at The Game Developers Conference, SIGGRAPH, SIGGRAPH Asia, Kingfo Market, Tribeca Games, Official ZBrush Summit, Activision Studio Summit, The Brooklyn Art Museum, AnimFX/NZ, CG Overdrive, Games Asia, Seoul International Animation and Cartoon Festival, DigiPen, Savannah Film Festival, VES Festival of Visual Effects, National Youth Leadership Forum on Technology, Port Townsend Film Festival, and Apple.
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