Elana, painted in rainbow colors

Hi, I'm Elana Bell Bogdan! I'm a game designer and UI engineer with
 nearly a decade of experience. My passion is for crafting accessible,
 immersive experiences to help make the world a better place.

Resume


Resume also available for download here.

Video games

Live-action games

Other projects

MazeMaker  is an algorithm for procedurally generating mazes, which I collaborated on with Rye Welz Geselowitz. Starting with pencil and paper, we sketched out a solution from scratch, then coded an efficient, object-oriented implementation, which included breadth-first search for analyzing distances. Finally, I designed a way to render the maze, and make it interactive, using pure CSS. To learn more, you can check out our slide deck here!
TreeClimber  is an interactive platform for exploring decision trees in logic puzzles and games. Originally inspired by "The Bishops Puzzle" (a notoriously tricky challenge featured in The Seventh Guest ), this project provides an annotated visualization of the branching possibilities that unfold every time the user makes a move. Rather than solving the puzzle in linear order, the user is invited to backtrack, try alternative moves, and learn about the possibility space as a whole. AI assistance can provide hints and automation as needed.
Mx. Pac-Man  is a port of the classic Pac-Man & Ms. Pac-Man game environments, built entirely in vanilla JS and rendered with canvas methods. The level layout is full customizable, using a simple markdown language. I felt inspired by GMTK's retrospective on Pac-Man as a "design icon," originally created to bring more female gamers into arcades. Currently, this project is nothing more than a screensaver with randomized character movement, created over a short time period. But, in the future, I may develop it into a playable, gender-themed game, featuring a nonbinary version of this popular, hungry protagonist.

Hobbies

Elana holding a flute

Music

Growing up, I took classical piano lessons for nearly 10 years. In college, I studied and performed Japanese taiko drumming. I also had the privilege of organizing & hosting a concert celebrating sci-fi & fantasy scores, featuring live performances by nine different student groups! Nowadays, I try to teach myself flute whenever I have spare time.
Elana juggling three clubs, with one leg raised to throw a club under it

Juggling

I've always loved the controlled chaos of juggling. As a kid, I had the rare opportunity to meet & learn from two professional jugglers in The Flying Karamazov Brothers. More recently, I've found Taylor Tries to be a fantastic educational resource & connection to inclusive juggling community. I'm currently learning to juggle 5 balls, but I also enjoy working with 4 balls, and sometimes even things on fire!
Elana looking through the lens of a DSLR camera, held sideways in portrait orientation

Photo & Video

In college, I often served as the photographer & videographer for campus events, using a Panasonic DSLR and GlideCam stabilizer to capture smooth and expressive imagery. I offered free portraits to many of my friends, and took candid portraits of many others! I mainly use Final Cut Pro to edit video and Photoshop to edit photos, but have also worked in Shake, GIMP, and other software.