Kyle Shold, the oldest of four, was raised in Sequim, Washington by Jeff and Linda Shold along with his sister, Kirsten and two brothers, Kristopher and Kent.
With dreams of becoming a professional comic book artist he attended the Art Institute of Seattle directly out of High School where he completed the two year Visual Communications course and earned his Associate of Applied Arts degree in 1995.
The following year had two major events. In April he landed his first professional job at the children’s interactive game company Humongous Entertainment in Woodinville, Washington. Then in October of ’96 Kyle married his high school sweetheart, Matessa.
At Humongous, Kyle started work on Pajama Sam: No Need to Hide When it’s Dark Outside as a “cut-scene background artist” drawing and coloring all the close-up backgrounds that were cut to during the story or dialogue portions of the game. He would go on to work for the company (which became a “studio” after being acquired by GT Interactive and then eventually Atari/Infogrames) for over nine years contributing background and conceptual art for the award winning line of Junior Adventure games starring Pajama Sam, Spy Fox and Putt-Putt. He was the Lead Background Artist on both Spy Fox: Some Assembly Required and Spy Fox: Operation Ozone. He also contributed conceptual art for the critically acclaimed Backyard Sports line of games as well as Moonbase Commander and other assorted Atari properties.
When most of the Humongous Entertainment studio was closed by Atari in the Summer of 2005, Kyle went on to work for a brand new start-up named Big Top Games as a background artist on The Apprentice, a puzzle game based on the popular television show. A short time after starting at Big Top he was made Art Director for a strategy game titled Tiki Boom Boom, which to this day is a great source of pride.
Unfortunately, Big Top Games only lasted into the following Summer of 2006. That’s when Kyle landed a job at Bungie with the cinematics team on Halo 3 creating storyboard and animatic artwork. But it was not meant to be. A few weeks after he started, his contract was cut short due to a lack of script coming in.
Shortly after starting at Bungie, however, Kyle attended a dinner party put together by magazine publisher Michael Key in Bellevue, Washington. During the course of the evening he discovered that Mr. Key was looking for a new Art Director for his magazine Classic Style and also for his long running Make-Up Artist magazine. Kyle thought nothing of it until a couple weeks later he found himself out of work from Bungie. Determined not to be out of work again and looking for something outside of the game industry he contacted Mr. Key on a whim.
In September of 2006 Kyle traded in his video game artist status to become a full time graphic designer as the Art Director for Classic Style magazine and Make-Up Artist magazine. Using his illustration background and skills in composition he was successfully able to transition from making game art to composing text, photos and other design elements on the printed page. Due to advertising difficulties Classic Style ceased publication in the Summer of 2008. But Make-Up Artist magazine is still going strong and continues to improve with every issue.
Today, Kyle Shold resides with his beautiful wife Matessa and three daughters, Tricity, Inara and Liberty, in Vancouver, WA.
Kyle’s free time is spent with his family, plaiting and cracking whips or, most recently, writing and drawing his full length graphic novel titled The Prevailist which he hopes and prays will be completed in 2010.
