Dan Paladin (born September 14, 1979), also known as Synj, is an American

video game artist Game art design is a subset of game development involving the process of creating the artistic aspects for video games. Video game art design begins in the pre-production phase of creating a video game. Video game artists are Visual arts, visua ...

designer A designer is a person who plans the form or structure of something before it is made, by preparing drawings or plans. In practice, anyone who creates tangible or intangible objects, products, processes, laws, games, graphics, services, or exp ...

, and co-founder of the video game company The Behemoth. He began collaborating with

Newgrounds Newgrounds is an entertainment website and company founded by Tom Fulp in 1995. It hosts user-generated content such as games, films, audio, and artwork. Fulp produces in-house content at the headquarters and offices in Glenside, Pennsylvania. ...

creator

Tom Fulp Thomas Charles Fulp (born April 30, 1978) is an American programmer known for creating the website Newgrounds and co-founding the video game company The Behemoth. He has been credited with "changing the landscape of the Internet forever" by ki ...

and in the early 2000's designed several Flash-based

browser games A browser game or a "flash game" is a video game that is played via the internet using a web browser. They are mostly free-to-play and can be single-player or multiplayer. Some browser games are also available as mobile apps, PC games, or on co ...

: ''Sack Smash 2001'', ''Chainsaw the Children'', ''Dad n' Me'', and, most notably, '' Alien Hominid''. In 2002, he, Fulp,

John Baez John Carlos Baez (; born June 12, 1961) is an American mathematical physicist and a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Riverside (UCR) in Riverside, California. He has worked on spin foams in loop quantum gravity, appli ...

, and Brandon LaCava founded the video game company The Behemoth. Paladin designed the critically acclaimed remake of '' Alien Hominid'', as well as the

beat 'em up The beat 'em up (also known as brawler and, in some markets, beat 'em all) is a video game genre featuring hand-to-hand combat against a large number of opponents. Traditional beat 'em ups take place in scrolling, two-dimensional (2D) leve ...

game ''

Castle Crashers ''Castle Crashers'' is a 2D side scrolling hack-and-slash video game developed by The Behemoth. It features music created by members of Newgrounds. The Xbox 360 version was released on August 27, 2008, via Xbox Live Arcade as part of the Xbox L ...

'', with his 2D style becoming signature for these games. Aside from working for The Behemoth, Paladin has also worked for Gratuitous Games and

Presto Studios Presto Studios was a computer game development company of the 1990s. The company is notable for its award-winning series '' The Journeyman Project'' as well as '' Myst III: Exile, the'' 2001 sequel to Cyan's Myst series. In August 2002, Presto ...

. He also composed the polka-style closing credits tune for the '' Cyanide & Happiness'' animated shorts.

Personal life

Paladin lives in

San Diego, California San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United Stat ...

, where The Behemoth is located. He was an active member of

Awards

'', a game Paladin is credited as the art director of, won two awards in

Independent Games Festival The Independent Games Festival (IGF) is an annual festival at the Game Developers Conference (GDC), the largest annual gathering of the independent video game industry. Originally founded in 1998 to promote independent video game developers, ...

2007: "Excellence In Visual Art" and "Audience Award".

References

External links

Dan Paladin's profile at NewgroundsPaladin's siteSome of Paladin's sketches on Castle Crashers
{{DEFAULTSORT:Paladin, Dan American video game designers 21st-century American businesspeople 1979 births Living people People from Ohio Indie video game developers The Behemoth Newgrounds people