GDC 2019 is quickly approaching, and all of our teams have been head down preparing for our biggest show ever. While GDC technically begins on Monday 3/18, and we’ll have meetings and events running Monday and Tuesday, our show takes off on Wednesday 3/20 at 9:30 AM PDT at the State of Unreal opening session with Tim Sweeney, Kim Libreri and many more.
Wednesday also marks the opening of the GDC 2019 expo floor. We’ll once again have a dual booth setup, our traditional booth which will host technical demos, meetings, engine stations, and of course the learning theater - which will hold rotating talks from Unreal Engine experts throughout each day of the show.
Our second booth, which we lovingly refer to as the ‘party’ booth, is where you’ll find a plethora of partners demoing their games, from Kingdom Hearts III and Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden, to Trover Saves the Universe and many more. Our community and evangelism teams will be available there, so be sure to stop by and say hi!
This year, we’re also excited to announce and introduce four members of the community that were selected to be on site with us to share their own unique experience and expertise with those visiting the booth. Below you’ll find more information about these awesome folks who will be with us at GDC 2019.
If you can’t be at the show, be sure to follow our social media channels for updates. We’ll also be streaming State of Unreal and the tech talks that follow. For more information on everything happening check out our GDC blog!
Naveed Iqbal - London Meetup Co-Organizer - Indie Dev
Naveed Iqbal is an indie game developer and Unreal Engine enthusiast based in the U.K. He has a passion for game development that has grown out of being a life long gamer. Prior to using Unreal Engine, he worked on mobile apps as a self-taught solo developer in his spare time, releasing several apps to the app store. Working primarily in 2D, Naveed wanted to transition into 3D to push his learning even further.
In 2015 he started using Unreal Engine 4 to achieve his ambition of making a 3D game. He was amazed at how powerful, accessible and well supported the engine was. Working through tutorials and reading documentation has helped him to expand his knowledge on the game development pipeline to a point where he now frequently helps out fellow developers in the forums and on social media. This passion for game development has also helped him to pick up several digital content creation tools, which he uses to create his own assets for use with the engine.
In January 2016 Naveed became one of the first people to speak at the London is Unreal Meetup group. Since then he has gone on to become co-organizer for the event helping it to grow to over 1400 members! Bringing the Unreal community together every month in London, he works hard to ensure that this forum is open to everyone wanting to learn about the Unreal Engine giving them a chance to ask questions, discuss ideas or even take to the stage and talk about their work. He frequently gives back to the community by talking about many aspects of game dev and how to use the Unreal Engine to do it. He has given talks on many topics including motion captured animation, blueprints, materials, game mechanics, character art, pipeline optimization, game analysis, character rigging, marketplace assets and more.
Naveed is using the knowledge he has gained to develop a third-person horror game for the PC called ‘From Fire’. As a solo developer, he has become adept at building game mechanics, producing rigged 3D assets and bringing them all together within Unreal Engine using a streamlined workflow. He frequently posts his work on social media and can be found on Twitter using the handle @naveedhiq](http://www.twitter.com/naveedhiq)and on Instagram: naveedhiq. 
Clinton Crumpler - Dekogon - Unreal Engine Marketplace Seller
Clinton is the founder of the artist collective and art outsourcing studio, Dekogon. Previously an artist at Microsoft, Bethesda, Kixeye, and at various independent studios, Clinton’s primary focus is environment art, shader development, and art direction. He has authored and released several online video tutorials, educational articles, and web classes, both personally and in collaboration with CG Master Academy (CGMA) and Digital Tutors, all with a focus on using Unreal Engine for game development.
In 2016 he released a textbook with Sam’s Publishing with a focus on game art development for Unreal engine. Currently, Clinton is also a Principal Environment Artist at Midwinter Entertainment and is actively working on their upcoming title Scavengers.
Clinton currently has over 70 high-quality assets available on the Unreal Engine Marketplace which he actively supports. Clinton was also an inaugural member of the Unreal Engine sponsored content program which began in November 2018. Be sure to follow Clinton on Twitter. 
Abey Miranda - Origami Bear - Unreal Engine Marketplace Seller
Abey Miranda began working with Unreal Engine back in 2010 with UDK while in University. His student game, sp.A.I ended up being picked by Epic Games and IndieDB as best UDK game of 2010. After winning, Abey had been working as a freelance animator outside of games but still dabbled in Unreal Engine in his free time. His passion for game tech and real-time graphics led him to convince his team to try Unreal Engine 4 for real-time rendering.
In 2016, after participating in the Epic Mega Jam, he decided to further develop his game “Plamya” a 3D Stealth Platformer. It was during the development of Plamya, when Abey decided to make certain features and assets from the game available to the UE4 Community and started selling them on the Unreal Engine Marketplace. Ever since then, Abey has been working full-time with Unreal Engine. At the moment he is also working with Awacebon project “Caillou” as a Technical Artist where he’s responsible for the character production pipeline, shader development, and custom interaction systems.
As Blender is also getting more popular within the UE4 Community, Abey has been actively helping new developers get their assets and animations from Blender into UE4 smoothly. He is currently working on a tutorial series on using the Pivot Painter tools in Blender.
Jacob Norris - PurePolygon - Unreal Engine Marketplace Seller
Jacob Norris is a 3D Environment Artist working in games since 2009. He has contributed to industry leading titles while working at game companies such as, Naughty Dog, Kojima Productions, and Insomniac Games, as well as having freelanced for Boss Key Productions, Disney Motion Pictures, and Unity. He is currently Lead Environment Artist at Nvidiaand uses the Unreal Engine on a daily basis at the studio. If you’ve seen any of the recent Ray Tracing videos and marketing material coming from Nvidia, Jacob is on the forefront of many of these projects with the other highly talented artists at Nvidia.
His personal company, PurePolygons Inc. has created some of the top assets on the Unreal Marketplace, with one of the only staff picked products available. You can find these assets in multi-million dollar franchises like PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and many have received praise for their extremely high-quality artwork, ease of use, and friendly customer service. The fast learning curve and artist-friendly tools provided in UE4 have offered Jacob a great platform to present his finest work and he recommends it to many people starting out in games. Jacob continues to be a part of the community supporting his UE4 assets on the store, as well as creating online tutorials to help users become more familiar with different software, including UE4.