Firstly, we want to thank everyone for sending in your applications. You are all amazing with talents of your own right, and with so many applicants. Every year, it’s an extremely difficult task to chose among all the wonderful applications. We have tried to pick a group of participants that is varied and balanced, with many different talents, values, experiences, and backgrounds.
Thank you all so much for sharing your wonderful stories with us and we hope to meet you in the Follow-Along
Without further ado, meet our participants in this year’s Pixelles Game Incubator VIII.
In just eight weeks, this new cohort will have designed, created the art, and coded their very first video games!
ASHLEY LANNIAshley Lanni is a children’s book author who moonlights as a corporate trainer at Pole to Win, a video game quality assurance company in Montreal. Coming from an academic background in history, she is interested in how video games can be used to share the stories of marginalized people, particularly through environmental storytelling. Her favourite kinds of games are RPGs and what many would call interactive exploration games, where the world reflects the rich stories of the people that exist there. |
ASHLEY PAPINEAUI’m a fashion design grad from Toronto, starting my career in games as a user research moderator for Ubisoft Montreal. I’m passionate about diversity and inclusion in gaming. My aspiration is to design user experiences for games, because I admire how they can tell us riveting stories, influence our decisions, and teach us new things. Likes: cosplay, 3D printing, electronic music, and all you can eat sushi. |
CAROLINE GRÉGOIREWho am I? A child from the nineties and graphic designer searching for a new horizon. Always loved video games and wanted to work in the field, my dream. Siren at heart with my blue hair. I like everything geeky, travels, books/comic books, photography, animals and many other things. I love to escape the reality from the day to day life and I hope to help people escape by making games. |
FRANNY GRANGERVideo game lover who is following her dream to make her first game! She hopes to continue in this profession if she doesn’t KO her computer first. She just resurrected her dying mint plant and is feeling motivated! |
JULIA DIONNEI’m Julia! While I already work in the gaming industry as a community manager, I can’t wait to finally build a game of my own. You can usually find me spending time outdoors, making good and/or bad jokes, celebrating unusual national holidays, or concocting recipes for food, drink, or otherwise. |
KAYO TOMURAI’m a graphic designer who aspires to go more on the UI/UX side. Recently I got into front-end coding. I’m curious about many things. —Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back. |
LYLILyLi is a young Black woman of African descent and a complete nerd. She is doing a Bachelor in Software Engineering and is working to use her degree to become a game developer. She wants to work in the video game industry to both be able to have a job in a domain that mixes her passion for the arts and sciences and to bring more voices of minorities into this ever-growing industry. |
NEHA BHUTANII am a post-doc in Neuroscience at McGill University. I am very excited to tackle the challenge of creating my own game. |
NEHANeha is a freelance video game composer, sound designer and classical pianist from Montreal. Outside of her musical interest, she is an avid video game plushie collector, self-proclaimed Crash Team Racing child prodigy and pun enthusiast. |
NIRVAIRI am an adaptable, innovative, compassionate and detail-oriented individual who is able to work in confidential settings. I have experience in ✔health care management, ✔customer relationship management as well as ✔social advocacy and ✔research. My interest in health care management and technology has deepened with the influx in Telehealth as a means of delivering optimal patient care and services. I’m currently learning to code HTML, CSS, JavaScript etc as well as build games in order to optimize my opportunities in the industry and further my social advocacy goals! |
ROSE FULFORDRose Fulford is a professional illustrator and concept artist based in Montreal. Although she was born in San Francisco, CA, she grew up in Canada. Rose studied at Dawson College Montreal in the Illustration program. |
STÉPHANIE JOLICOEURStephanie is a physicist-turned-actress-turned-science communicator who dreams of exploring every possible way of reaching people with her love for science. Scientific poems, illustrations of great scientists, animation, scientific theatre, radio, kids experiments, tinkering, she is all around and science is all around her. |
VJOSANA (VYOSANA) SHKURTIVjosana is a filmmaker and photographer, with a background in design. Through her art, she likes to explore elements of memory, time and human-tech connections. |
♥ Our Gracious Partner!
We would like to thank Unity Technologies Montréal to be our program partner again this year! Without their help, this program wouldn’t be as amazing! We’re thrilled to count them as allies who believe in the importance of diversity in video game development!