Bio
I’m Chris, also known as Halordain! I grew up in Dallas, Texas, and attended college at Stanford. I majored in electrical engineering with a specialization in image processing. I started studying Japanese to scout my opponents from Japan at the Pokémon World Championships, where my quarterfinals and semifinals opponents hailed from Yokosuka and Fujisawa, respectively.
My journey led me to Doshisha University to master Japanese under the Critical Language Scholarship. I abandoned my PhD at MIT CSAIL to pursue software development in Japan. Originally hired at Creatures Japan to process images for Pokémon cards, I ended up learning Objective-C to develop my first iPad app, Pokédex for iOS (Creatures, 2012) [https://www.pokemon.co.jp/ex/pokedex/ja/].
After Creatures, I contracted with Bandai-Namco Studios to build the graphics engine behind Super Smash Bros. for 3DS [https://www.smashbros.com/wiiu-3ds/us/3ds/]. I parlayed my rendering knowledge in computer graphics, my image processing background, and my interest in iOS development into developing iOS Photoshop for Adobe, and eventually joined Apple to document their new graphics technologies such as Metal, ARKit, CreateML, and RealityKit.
I returned to Japan to help spearhead Nintendo of Japan’s smartphone game design, starting with Fire Emblem Heroes and Pikmin Bloom [https://pikminbloom.com/ja/]. These development experiences led me to craft my own path creating educational apps and experiences for teaching Japanese kids about AI and Swift.