Vic Deleon is a Lead Mission Artist with 343.
If you’ve been a fan of the Halo franchise for awhile, then you know who Vic Deleon is. He is a former Bungie employee having worked on Halo starting with Halo 2 on forward. While at Bungie, Vic was also known as “VJ.”
Vic grew up in Culver City, Calif. He wanted to go to art school, while his family wanted him to go to med school. He studied biology at Florida Atlantic University before majoring in Fine Art with a minor in Computer Science, eventually earning a Master of Fine Arts.
During school he worked at a small studio making games. A few years later he would go on to found the studio “Digitalo,” with two of his friends. At the time Vic was working on 3-D simulation stuff with Performer, VRML, Quake and Unreal. He worked on several RPG games as well. After six years, Digitalo went under and Vic was looking for work. Then Bungie happened.
After several rounds of interviews, Bungie hired him. He and his expectant wife moved to Redmond, with Vic starting work on Halo 2 three weeks before it’s launch. He’s said of working for Bungie, “I hate to sound like a fan boy, but it’s even better than I expected. I love it. I could go on and on. It’s like working in a high school locker room without the smells. No, I take that back, there are smells. It’s just crazy, like one big zoo. There are times here when the whole office is just laughing. Just busting-up-rolling-on-the-floor laughing.”
Vic may be most well known as the Artist behind the Halo 3 multiplayer map “Valhalla” and it’s Halo 4 remake “Ragnarok“. He’s also a bit known for not being good at playing Halo…LOL. I have gamed with him a a few occasions and can sadly back up that claim. Though, he is quite a nice guy. Vic DeLeon also spent six months of pre-production time refining the Flood’s fleshy aesthetic and designing the organic interiors of Flood-infested space ships for Halo 3.
Some time after 343 was formed, Vic left Bungie to join the new developer. He enjoys the position of Lead Mission Artist. Vic also is an avid Tweeter where he’s tweeted all things “Weird Fish” and “UnZen.”
-Sal
Some text above is paraphrased from the Halo.wiki page of Vic where you can find more info about him.
