Chris Senn

From Sega Retro

ChrisSenn4.jpeg
Christian Graham Senn
Place of birth: United States
Date of birth: 1974 (age 51–52)
Employment history:
Malibu Interactive[1] (1992 – 1993)
Sega of America[1] (1993 – 1999)
Divisions:
Pixologic[1] (1999 – 2001)
Activision[1] (2002 – 2006)
Senntient[1] (2006 – 2011-11)
Bionic Games[1] (2007 – 2007)
Magic Pixel Games[1] (2011-01 – 2011-10)
Big Red Button Entertainment[1] (2011-11 – 2014-06)
Senntient[1] (2014-06 – 2016-01)
Reverge Studios[1] (2015-01 – 2015-10)
Senntertain[1] (2016-01 – 2023-12)
Turbo Button[1] (2016-07 – 2017-05)
Pixelcraft Studios[1] (2021-06 – 2023-09)
Game Gen[1] (2024-06 – )
Role(s): Artist,[1] Designer,[1] Director[1]
Education: California Institute of the Arts (1990-1992; Character Animation)[1][2]
Forum user name: kurisu

Chris Senn is a video game artist, designer, and development director[1] who began his career in the early 1990s working across console, PC, mobile, VR, and tabletop projects.[3] He started as an artist and animator at Malibu Interactive before joining Sega Technical Institute in 1993,[1] where he worked on The Ooze, Comix Zone, and the cancelled Sonic X-treme.[4] He later took on design and production management roles at Sega on early Dreamcast projects including the unreleased Geist Force, before moving to external studios such as Activision and later Big Red Button Entertainment.[4][5][1] His subsequent work has included console and digital games, VR titles, and original tabletop designs published through his Senntertain label.[3][6]

Chris Senn established a personal label, Senntient (later rebranded as Senntertain), in 2002 to represent his game industry experience through production, consulting, and creative services.[3] The label's earlier iteration hosted community forums for developers and artists before shifting in the mid-2010s toward original card and tabletop game design.[6] Senntertain is headquartered in downtown Los Angeles and describes itself as dedicated to "strange and charming entertainment".[3]

Career

Early career

Chris Senn studied at the California Institute of the Arts from 1990 to 1992, enrolling in the school's Character Animation program.[1][2] During this time he also contributed music to Household Help, a student animated short produced at Rhythm & Hues that was screened at the SIGGRAPH 1995 Computer Animation Festival.[7]

Chris Senn's professional career began at Malibu Interactive in 1993 as an artist and animator.[8][1] One of his first projects entailed creating artwork for the Mega Drive adaptation of Battletech: A Game of Armored Combat; fellow artist Chris George recalled watching Senn produce 16-bit pixel graphics for the game and learning techniques from the process.[8] George described Senn's sprite and background work as a benchmark for other artists at the studio.[8]

Sega Technical Institute

Chris Senn joined Sega Technical Institute in late 1993 shortly after the release of Sonic the Hedgehog Spinball.[4] At STI he was part of the American art and design staff working on new Mega Drive projects.[4][9] One of his first assignments was the unreleased Spinny & Spike, an action game conceived by Brenda Ross and developed by Steve Woita and Jason Plumb. After the original three-person team was reassigned to Sonic Spinball, STI brought in new staff to continue the project, including Senn as a newly hired graphic artist tasked with reworking the game's visuals.[9] The project was cancelled after internal disagreements over its direction.[9]

Chris Senn at Sega Technical Institute in 1994

Senn subsequently worked on Comix Zone, contributing background and animation art to the game's comic-book environments.[4] He also contributed art and visual concepts to The Ooze during the studio's push for new original properties late in the Mega Drive era.[9] In later recollections he described Comix Zone as focusing his efforts on 2D art and special effects, while The Ooze and other internal pitches pushed him toward broader concept and production work.[4]

Chris Senn's most prominent work at STI was on Sonic Mars and Sonic X-treme, a 3D Sonic the Hedgehog project for the Sega Saturn in development from approximately 1994 until its cancellation in late 1996. He was one of the key American designers on the project, covering art direction, character design, game design, level design, and coordination of parts of the development team.[4] Working alongside programmer Ofer Alon, Senn contributed to the project's playfield designs and to the tools used to build levels within Alon's engine.[10] He produced concept art, character and enemy designs, and defined the visual direction for Zones including Jade Gully, Crystal Frost, Red Sands, and Galaxy Fortress. Senn also produced conceptual music for the project to establish its tone ahead of Howard Drossin's planned production score.[10]

Development on Sonic X-treme involved shifting hardware targets, engine changes, and internal restructuring across teams.[9] When Roger Hector brought his company Point of View into the development process, Senn and Alon worked in parallel on SonicPC, a proposed computer port of the game; the pitch to SegaSoft was later rejected.[10] Performance problems, management conflicts, and the Christmas 1996 deadline resulted in the project's cancellation.[10][11]

After Sonic X-treme was cancelled, Senn remained with Sega of America and moved on to the company's early Dreamcast projects. He worked as an artist on the internal tech-demo-turned-fighting project Frog Pond and served as art production manager on the space shooter Geist Force, overseeing schedules and coordinating the art staff.[4] He later described the Geist Force role as focused on art production management - "managing the art staff to facilitate the best work on time" - as distinct from the hands-on art and design work of his earlier STI titles.[11]

Later career

After leaving Sega of America, Chris Senn worked at Activision and a number of smaller independent studios in the San Francisco Bay Area and Southern California, taking on level design, systems design, user interface, and production management work.[1][3]

In the early 2010s Senn joined Big Red Button Entertainment in Los Angeles as lead level designer on Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric for the Wii U, returning to the Sonic franchise for the first time since Sonic X-treme.[12][13]

Chris Senn has also operated the personal label Senntient - later rebranded as Senntertain - for freelance development, art, and production work, including hosting 3D art guides and tutorials for tools such as ZBrush.[14] From the mid-2010s onward Senntertain shifted toward original tabletop and card games, with Senn serving as designer and publisher on a line of small-box titles sold directly or through limited channels.[6][3]

Legacy

Chris Senn is primarily associated within Sega history with the late period of Sega Technical Institute and with Sonic X-treme. His work on Comix Zone, The Ooze, Geist Force, and the studio's unreleased projects is cited in retrospectives on STI's output during the mid-to-late 1990s.[9][15]

Senn retained an extensive personal archive from the Sonic X-treme development, including concept art, story treatments, design documents, screenshots, development timelines, and prototype assets, which he organized into the Sonic X-treme Compendium.[16] This material was publicly preserved in part by Sonic Retro and has informed much of the community's documentation of the project. His "Sonic Xtreme FAQ" covers the game's storylines, engine, toolchain, schedule, and cancellation in detail.

Chris Senn has been intermittently active in fan communities since the mid-2000s, participating in formal interviews about STI and Sonic X-treme[4][11] and maintaining a presence on the Sonic Retro forums under the handle "kurisu".[17]

Production history

Interviews

Photographs

Main article: Photos of Chris Senn

External links

References

  1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 1.16 1.17 1.18 1.19 1.20 1.21 1.22 1.23 https://www.linkedin.com/in/senntertain/
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 https://history.siggraph.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/SIGGRAPH-1995-Visual-Proceedings.pdf
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 https://www.senntertain.com/about
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 Interview: Chris Senn (2007-04-03) by Sega-16
  5. ↑ Geist Force
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamedesigner/132013/christian-senn
  7. ↑ https://history.siggraph.org/animation-video-pod/household-help-by-rhythm-hues-studios/
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 https://www.sega-16.com/2007/02/interview-chris-george/
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 https://www.sega-16.com/2007/06/developers-den-sega-technical-institute/
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 https://www.lostlevels.org/200403/timeline.shtml
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 Interview: Chris Senn (2013-09-12) by Sega Addicts
  12. ↑ https://gameranx.com/updates/id/21365/article/sonic-boom-dev-big-red-button-entertainment/
  13. ↑ https://lastminutecontinue.com/news/research-reveals-x-treme-alum-senn-in-brb-boom-exodus/
  14. ↑ https://www.zbrushcentral.com/t/yet-another-newbie/234474
  15. ↑ https://genesistemple.com/sega-technical-institute-the-story-the-games
  16. ↑ http://scp.webulate.com/
  17. ↑ https://forums.sonicretro.org/members/kurisu.4962/
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 File:Battletech MD US Manual.pdf, page 17
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 19.2 19.3 19.4 19.5 File:Comix Zone MD credits.pdf
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 File:Dynamite Deka 2 DC credits.pdf
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