From Payson High to Disney Pixar Animation: Three Local Artists Working on Highly Anticipated Video Game

Pictured with the loveable Mike and Sulley from Monster's, Inc., inside the Avalanche building in Salt Lake City (left-right): Joe Olson, Mira Windley, Gabe Olson, and Kevin Keele.

By Denise Windley

A new video game featuring a host of contemporary Disney Pixar characters is stretching the imagination in leaps and bounds. With a release date set for June 2013, Infinity promises to captivate players as they navigate a multi-dimensional with powers unlike any other.

The game is the creation of a talented team of artists who work at the game development company, Avalanche in downtown Salt Lake City. Among the team are three artists who are natives of the area and graduates of Payson High School, Kevin Keele, Gabe Olson, and Joseph Olson.

Aside from hometowns and high school, the trio also share in creative proclivity and childhoods

steeped in the imagination, attributes that would bring them together to work in animation as adults. A future cloaked in the work of super heroes seems likely, their playtime incorporating the extraordinary. For Kevin, who was raised in Payson, wearing a cape seemed as natural as his talent as a young artist.

Cousins, Joseph and Gabe grew up next door to each other in Santaquin, both engaged in caricature

sketches that drew upon local subjects and surroundings. “I grew up drawing with and getting into trouble next door to my cousin, Gabe,” Joe said. “He has been one of my best friends, as far as I can

recall.

Joe and Kevin spent one year together as students at Payson High. “I only kind of knew who he was through several degrees of separation, but was familiar with his mad drawing skills,” said Joe. “We started working together about ten years ago, making games for a company that no longer exists, and have been friends ever since.”

Joe later graduated from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, with a degree in animation. “I teach at BYU in the Animation Department in the evenings,” he said. “I currently live in Utah with my wife, Mischele, and three beautiful daughters.”

Though Gabe did not know Kevin when the two were growing up in the Payson and Santaquin area, by

some unusual coincidence, he would become familiar with his art. But this came later, during his early college years at Utah Valley University in Orem. “I was in a student ward and I noticed somebody in Elders Quorum drawing in his sketchbook- I thought it was pretty rad,” he recalled. “Years later, I remembered that same sketch after finding it on Kevin’s art blog.”

Gabe eventually left UVU and moved to Oregon with his wife, Catherine, where he earned an

undergraduate degree at the Art Institute of Portland. He is currently working on a graduate degree in

Video Game Art at the University of Utah and resides in downtown Salt Lake City, with his beautiful wife and set of twin children.

He joined Avalanche three years ago. Joe has been working there since 2003. Kevin was hired a

year after Joe, and right before it was to begin operating under the Disney Interactive company. “We

worked together at another game studio before this one,” Kevin said.

Their work on Infinity began in 2010, soon after the team finished the interactive video game, Toy

Story 3. “[W]e wanted to build off the successful ideas of that game. It's changed a lot since we started but I think we've all come up with something really exceptional with Infinity,” Keele said.

“This game is the coolest thing I've ever worked on,” he added. “Gabe and I have been working on the

license-specific playsets, which are all turning out great. The incredible work Joe has been doing in the

Toybox is what sets this game apart: the promise of a big, open playground, where you can do almost anything you can imagine, is not just marketing hyperbole, it's real, it works, and it's awesome! Add to that our physical toys and I think we've got a really wonderful, high quality product. I've never worked on a game where I've been this excited to bring it home and play it with my kids.”

Payson Junior High School seventh grader, Mira Windley, got to test run the game as she participated in a job shadow assignment through her school on February 1. Gabe is her uncle. He welcomed the Payson student into their creative field, facilitating a visit that included a testing session involving the new game. According to Mira, herself a gamer and beginning artist, Infinity exceeds expectations.

“I thought it was really cool,” she added. “I love the detail of the game and the experience was fantastic. People will really like the game.”