I discovered my passion for game development even before I got my first computer. Communists were still ruling the Czech Republic and one of the children magazines focused on science and technology called ABC was publishing one page source codes of small games for ZX Spectrum. I was fascinated that a few lines of text could actually be functional interactive something inside that little box.

I finally got my ZX Spectrum when I was 13 and the first thing I tried was to retype one of the games into the computer. I was totally hooked since. I became obsessed with games, programming, painting pictures in Art Studio, everything computer related. I was really lucky that one of my friends had ZX Spectrum too and he was a very talented programmer. He introduced me to assembler and I became even more addicted.

One of my personal traits is that every time I see something new, I feel like I HAVE to learn it. And ideally be best in it. That was the case when I touched the first PC in my life on high school. I tried to sneak in to computer science room between classes and after classes and before classes, I was there all the time, trying to soak in as much as I could. I became our school’s network administrator before I even graduated.

I also discovered 3D Studio at school and I immediately knew that this is it. This is my future. I learned 3D Studio pretty quickly even though we had no manuals and there was no internet. I added Adobe Photoshop and Corel Draw and after the school I was offered to stay and teach Computer Graphics.

Work Experience

Animator (October 2011 – Present)
Naughty Dog, Inc.
Santa Monica, CA

Lead In-Game Animator (Jan 2011 – Oct 2011)
Vatra Games
Brno, Czech Republic

Lead In-Game Animator / Senior Animator (Jan 2008 – Apr 2011)
2K Czech
Brno, Czech Republic

Animator, 3D Artist (1999 – Dec 2007)
Illusion Softworks
Brno, Czech Republic

Computer Graphics Teacher (Sep 1997 – Jun 1998)
Glass School Novy Bor
Novy Bor, Czech Republic

Education

Animation Mentor (2007 – 2008)
My work was featured in Fall 2007 Student Showcase

Contact

Email: michal (at) michalmach (dot) com
Twitter: @gameplayAnim
Vimeo: vimeo.com/meedja