Hello! I’m Taylor Garcia. I recently graduated with a bachelors in Software and Game Development from the software engineering school Neumont University. Now I am an Associate Front End Engineer at Blizzard Entertainment.

As a programmer, I strive to break the stereotype of “programmer art” with my passion for aesthetics. I love to create and work with user interfaces, both from the back-end side to the front facing layout and feel. There’s often a stigma that UI is purely art, but I have learned though experience that strong behind-the-scenes code is a major driving force for great UI. A few examples of this, all of which I have worked with creating in the past, are systems for managing transitions, updates to changes in information or input, and dynamic re-usability.

Growing up I loved to work with different programs to create graphic and website designs. Eventually, though, I found myself dissatisfied with just using interfaces and applications, and wanted to learn how to create something like them myself. In the field of games, there are many varied interfaces that a player will interact with throughout their experience. Main menus, inventories, statistic screens, all of these have subtle but critical user experience elements that can make or break a game in ways sometimes overlooked, and are the kinds of systems I enjoy creating most.

In the past I have worked with many different UI systems, including Unity OnGUI and Unity’s new 4.6 UI, .NET’s WPF, Java Swing, Javascript with CreateJS, and Qt with OpenGL in my own C++ game engine.

When I’m not coding, my passion to create extends to my other hobbies. I enjoy wood working, as well as general arts and crafts projects. Growing up in Colorado I’ve always loved the outdoors, and camping has been a major tradition for years. One of my most recent hobbies started with the discovery of crayons and colored pencils that work on dry erase boards. It sounds weird, and almost risky, but seriously, they work surprisingly well.