Lorne Lanning is an American game designer, director, writer, and voice actor. He is also a co-founder and president of the video game company Oddworld Inhabitants. He is best known for creating the Oddworld series, which includes the games Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee, Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus, Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee, Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath, Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty!, and Oddworld: Soulstorm.

His work in designing games and developing ideas for Oddworld Inhabitants has made him well-known around the world. His character designs have appeared on the cover of Wired Magazine, and he has been the subject of several documentaries.

Lanning has said he has always been interested in video games. He mentioned that his father worked as an engineer for Coleco.

Career

Lanning first studied photo-realism and commercial illustration at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He later attended the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California, where he earned a BFA in Character Animation.

He worked as a Technical Director at TRW in Redondo Beach, California. Later, he moved to Rhythm & Hues Studios in Hollywood, where he met producer Sherry McKenna through his work. After McKenna joined Rhythm & Hues because of Lanning, he encouraged her to co-found a video game development company with him.

In 1994, Lanning and McKenna started Oddworld Inhabitants in Los Osos, California. They later moved to San Luis Obispo, California. At Oddworld Inhabitants, Lanning designed, wrote, and provided voices for all four games the studio created. These games brought the company widespread success and recognition.

After disagreements with game developers, including companies like Electronic Arts, Lanning and McKenna closed the game development studio of Oddworld Inhabitants in 2005. They moved to the San Francisco Bay area to reshape Oddworld Inhabitants as a traditional Hollywood-style production company.

After leaving game development, Lanning and McKenna began working on animated movies. Their first project was a film called "Citizen Siege" and a related video game series named "Wage Wars." After facing challenges in movie production, Lanning returned to video games in 2010 when an independent developer, Just Add Water, confirmed it was collaborating with Lanning and Oddworld Inhabitants to create a 2.5D remake of Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee. This remake was later released as Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty.

In 2015, JAW's CEO announced the company would no longer work on full-scale Oddworld projects. In 2016, it was announced that Frima Studio would become the new developer for Oddworld games. Their next game, Oddworld: Soulstorm, was announced at GDC 2016. In 2019, it was confirmed that Soulstorm would release in 2020 and would be developed by larger studios, including Fat Kraken Studios and Sabotage Studio.

Publications

Lanning is included in these books:

• "Reset: Changing the Way We Look at Video Games" by Rusel DeMaria / Berrett-Kohler
• "Opening the Xbox" by Scott Steinberg / iUniverse, Inc.
• "Gamers at Work" by Morgan Ramsey / Apress
• "Opening the Xbox" by Dean Takahashi / Prima
• "The Art of 3D Computer Animation" by Isaac V. Kerlow / Wiley
• "CGI: The Art of the 3D Computer Generated Image" by Peter Weishar / Abrams Inc.
• "High Score – Illustrated History of Video Games" by Rusel DeMaria, Johnny I. Wilson / Osborne
• "1000 Game Heroes" by David Choquet / Taschen
• "Inside Game Design" by Iain Simmons / Lawrence King Publishing
• "Williams Almanac Video Games" by J. F. Williams / IQ Guides
• "Game Design Workshop" by Tracy Fullerton, Christopher Swain, Steven Hoffman / CMPBooks
• "Exposé: Finest Digital Art in the Known Universe" Volumes 2,3,4,5,6,7" by Daniel Wade / Ballistic Publishing
• "Video Game Art" by Nic Kelman / Assouline Publishing

Lanning wrote the foreword for these books:

• "The Art of Massive Black" Ballistic Publishing
• "The Art of Oddworld Inhabitants" Ballistic Publishing
• "Quantumscapes: The Art of Stephan Martiniere" Design Studio Press
• "Derelict Planet: The Art of Pascal Blanche" (released in 2012)
• "Spectrum Fantastic Art Live (re: The Art of Andrew Jones)" Flesk Publications (released in 2012)