Senior Profile: Alex Crane – Fighting for Fantasy

Designing video games is becoming more than a virtual reality for senior Alex Crane, the only member of the Class of 2012 headed into the world of interactive game design.

“I think at some point every teenage boy wants to make video games, or something along those lines,” Crane said. “Instead of being the type that just sits down and plays them all weekend – I like creating them.”

Under the rigor of a two-year program at Johnson County Community College, Crane will be deciding between an interactive media and game design major next year, which he hopes to take on to a four-year art college or design college in Vancouver. While his plans are still tentative, his passion is far from it.

“I’ve always liked art and creating specific scenes and moods with paintings and things,” Crane said, “but with animations, you can create a whole world of your own.”

While studying Animation and Interactive Media at Broadmoor for a year, Crane decided that he could move his paintings and sculptures into a more applicable form of creativity. His inventive nature has led him to formulate plans for multiple interactive application designs.

“I’m planning certain things,” Crane said. “Like, an app that can stimulate the minds of kids with Downs Syndrome. There’s also an app where if you held up your phone at a historic landmark, it would show you a 3D image of what it used to look like and what the people used to be like.”

The most important aspect of interactive designs, Crane finds, is the ability to conjure a brand new medium for his inner eye.

“When I was little, my friends and I used to make up these fantasy worlds, make up superheroes and whatnot,” Crane said. “Through [interactive media], I can create 3D things from my imagination.”

Crane admires video games that “take the modern genres and turn them around,” like BioShock, originally developed by 2K Boston, and Shadow of the Colossus, published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation 2.

“There are the normal you see coming out every year, that are always the same,” Crane said. “But then there are some really artistic ones that have great stories — those are the ones I usually like to play.”

If Crane decides to go into game design and applies for a place at the selective Think Tank Training Centre in Vancouver, British Columbia, he’ll be able to study in a “one year intensive Diploma program,” and then be guaranteed with a developing job.

“I like creating art,” Crane said. “I’d like to take that into the new media, the new fields.”