Tinkering Tinkerer: I-Wei Huang
With over a decade of game industry experience, I-Wei Huang is currently the Toy and Character Director at Toys for Bob, the developer for the video game Skylanders Spyro’s Adventure. I-Wei was responsible for creating the concept art for all of the Skylanders Spyro’s Adventure game characters, modeling nearly every character in the game, while also playing a key role in development of the Skylanders toy line.
Outside of his work at Toys for Bob, I-Wei is well known (by the pseudonym, “CrabFu”) for making steam powered robots. His work has appeared numerous times online at Gizmodo, Engadget, Boing Boing, WIRED, and MAKE, as well as many features in print magazines such as Robot, MAKE, Popular Science, voted "Backyard Genius" by Popular Mechanics - one of his steam robots even made the cover of ieee Spectrum Magazine. Additionally, I-Wei has been featured on broadcast TV shows, such as “Modern Marvels” on the History Channel, “Daily Planet” on the Discovery Channel, and “Tech Now!” on NBC. I-Wei is the youngest person inducted into the Craftsmanship Museum, and has also won 5 medals at the biggest robotic event in the world, RoboGames, including gold medals for Kinetic Artbots and Best of Show. Whether it’s on paper, through animation, or with physical objects and machines, I-Wei has spent most of his life making his character designs come to life. And now with Skylanders Spyro’s Adventure, his characters are finally bridging the gap between physical toys and the world of video games. I-Wei participated in our Open MAKE: Toys event, and was interviewed by Dale Dougherty in the McBean Theater.