Joe Granato

About Joe Granato

Over the past decade, I have lived two lives.By day, I\'ve lived the life of mild mannered Senior Content Creator at Ringling College. In this role, my job was to find the voice of the students. I wrote copy, treatments, scripts, show flows, design documents, and postmortems. I programmed mobile apps, designed AR experiences, and generated gamified content. Almost daily (and as a primary function), I produced video content for marketing the school and to aid in direct instruction across its various majors. I have managed projects and small teams. I have also taught courses as part of the school’s adjunct faculty, held informal workshops on game design, and organized and hosted bi-annual Game Jams.By night, I\'ve transformed into multimedia creative and eccentric retro game enthusiast, bringing new life to classic consoles for The New 8-bit Heroes, LLC. This is a production company that specializes in transmedia projects including comics, video games, independent films, and other creative work. Our flagship project is NESmaker, which is a modern IDE that allows anyone of any skill level to realize the lifelong ambition to develop games for the original 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System. We currently have over users around the world as young as 8 and as old as 80. This project spawned from our Amazon documentary, New 8-bit Heroes, which HGL Magazine reviewed as being “a blueprint for turning childhood dreams into reality”. For The New 8-bit Heroes, LLC, I have managed the brand, media relations, email campaigns, social media, an array of complex projects, and a diverse team of creatives stationed globally in generating a variety of commercial and pro-social deliverables. As a representative for the company, I have given educational talks and workshops on game development at events such as PAX, SXSW and GDC, and at colleges such as UCLA, Towson University, and the University of Baltimore. I have maintained a working relationship with the Strong Museum of Play in Rochester, NY, contributing to and curating a collection of postmarket games for classic systems. I have, of course, developed games, but more importantly, I’ve been devoted to developing the supports to make making games possible. There has been no greater metric for success than seeing our product bring parent and child together, working in tandem to bring a new awesome game experienceinto the world.The success with my company has most recently opened an opportunity as Product Manager for M-Audio, synthesizing my interests to bring new audio products to life.

Experience

1. Chief Executive Officer

   The New 8-Bit Heroes

   Oct 2014 — Present · Sarasota, FL, US

   Since launching this company, it has produced an award winning documentarycurrently on Amazon, several video games, a comic book series, and most notably,a game development software tool, for which I am also lead programmer. The tool iscurrently being used by thousands of active users worldwide, and in two dozeneducational institutions to teach game development. I have managed the team, the project, and the brand from its inception. Some of my duties have included- Transmedia project management- Business Management and Strategy- Programming- Design document creation and implementation- Creation of email marketing campaigns- Team management- Press and media management- Social media campaign management- Creative direction- Technical direction- General branding

Education

• Coppin State University

  Conditional Teaching Certificate, Teaching

  2006 — 2008

• Towson University

  Bachelor's degree, Electronic Media and Film

  1998 — 2004

• Sheffield Institute for the Recording Arts

  Certification, Audio Production

  2001 — 2002

Skills

• Teacher Training
• Microsoft Office
• Creative Direction
• Literacy
• Classroom Management
• Editing
• Multimedia
• Photoshop
• Differentiated Instruction
• Educational Leadership
• Special Education
• Videography
• Indesign
• Curriculum Development
• Web Design
• Classroom
• Film
• Video Production
• Curriculum Design
• Educational Technology
• Graphic Design
• Adobe Creative Suite
• Teaching
• K-12
• Lesson Planning
• Illustrator
• Elementary Education
• Photography
• Tutoring