Alex Ahad

Alex "oh8" Ahad is the lead creative director, and the primary creator of the characters and story of Skullgirls, acting as the main art and story director. He also supervised and approved of related aspects such as dialogue and character movesets, the latter of which would be implemented and tweaked on a technical level by fellow co-directer and lead programmer Mike Zaimont.

He and Mike originally founded Lab Zero Games (once named as Reverge Labs), but Alex quietly left the studio some time into the development of Indivisible.

Studies
Ahad had been drawing since grade school, but became serious about it in high school. He also joined a collective called Bay Area Artists Unite (BAAU) where he met people sharing his artistic aspirations. He later enrolled in the University of California, Los Angeles, where he stayed between 2002 and 2009.

Career
Ahad worked as a freelance artist starting in 2008, most notably for Gaia Interactive and WayForward Technologies, in particular as an illustrator for Shantae: Risky's Revenge. In 2010, he worked as a contract artist and animator for Playdom, and also started his career as a creative director when he began creation of Skullgirls for Reverge Studios, Inc. In 2012, he carried on with this function for the Windows version of Skullgirls at Lab Zero Games.

Influences
Ahad claims he was inspired by the cartoons, games and anime he saw as a child/teenager (such as Roger Rabbit, Batman: The Animated Series, FLCL (Fooly Cooly) and Gurren Lagann), and for Skullgirls specifically by the doujin games he saw, such as EFZ and Melty Blood. Among the artists that he likes are George Kamitani, Hiroki Hayashi (林 宏樹), Hiroyuki Imaishi (今石 洋之), Nishimura Kinu (西村 キヌ), Bruce Timm, Shane Glines, Mike Mignola, Bill Presing, Tim Burton and Foo Swee Chin.

Works
This is a list of projects Alex Ahad was involved in according to Metacritic and Moby Games (unless otherwise indicated).

Direction

 * Skullgirls - creative director (2012)

Design

 * BloodRayne: Betrayal - character designer (2011)
 * Skullgirls - creator (2012)
 * Indivisible - lead concept artist (2019)

Illustration

 * Shantae: Risky's Revenge (2010)
 * Mighty Switch Force! (2011)
 * Skullgirls (2012)
 * Shantae and the Pirate's Curse (2014)
 * Mighty Switch Force! Hose It Down! (2015)
 * Indivisible (2019)
 * Guilty Gear Strive (2021, countdown illustration)

Trivia

 * Of the current cast, Alex's favorite character is Eliza. Of the potential third characters, he also like Mrs. Victoria, D. Violet, or Black Dahlia.
 * According to Alex, if Skullgirls was not a fighting game, the second genre choice would be a tower defense dating sim with collectible hats, or a beat em' up RPG type game. With hats.