Jaime Jasso, an artist that has worked at Industrial Light & Magic on giant movie franchises like Star Wars, has joined independent game studio Bonfire.
Rob Pardo started Bonfire Studios in 2016. Pardo was the lead designer on World of Warcraft at Blizzard Entertainment, where he worked for 17 years before leaving in 2014. His work helped make World of Warcraft a giant hit when it launched in 2004, and the massively multiplayer online role-playing game is still going strong in 2018 with the release of its seventh expansion, Battle for Azeroth. Bonfire is working on an unnamed new IP. We don’t know any specific details about the that game or any other projects.
Past Bonfire hires include Morgan Webb, who used to host the gaming show X-Play;and Joshua Mosqueira, who worked at Relic Entertainment, Ubisoft, and Blizzard.
This is not Jasso’s first gaming-related gig. He worked at special effects company Blur Studios when it was developing cinematics for 2009’s Halo Wars, the first strategy game spinoff in the popular sci-fi series. While at Blur, Jasso also got to work on Avatar. Jasso then joined ILM, where he worked on films like Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Star Trek Into Darkness, and Iron Man 2.
“But now it is time for the next chapter,” Jasso noted in a blog post on Bonfire’s website. “My passion and creativity led me to Bonfire, and I’m looking forward to contributing my film experience to work on the best video games created by the best people. I’m really excited to be part of the next big thing.”