Lorraine McLees

Lorraine McLees is one of the artists at Bungie who created and designed the Halo Universe. She was responsible for designing the UNSC Pillar of Autumn. Her official title is artist, but she is also the art director, graphic designer, and illustrator all rolled into one. She is married to fellow Bungie Employee Robert McLees.

Lorraine McLees on when and why she started working for Bungie:


 * I started working for Bungie as a freelance illustrator in October or November of 1998. Around August of that year, Bungie was looking for a concept artist for a game they code-named “Blam”—which was later revealed to be Halo. One of the guys working on the game remembered my work from when we were in school together, and after finding my Web site and showing it to people at the office, he contacted me (I was living in Houston at the time) to see if I would like to come up for an interview. Apparently, people liked what they saw, but at that time, I wasn’t really interested because I already had my dream job as a comic book artist for Elfquest.


 * As it turned out, Bungie had another promotional art freelance position for its anime-styled game Oni. Comics and anime are my hobbies, so that was right up my alley. When the lease to my apartment was up, I moved back to Chicago, finished the book I was working on, and called up Bungie to say I was in town and ready to talk about Oni. I was asked to come in the very next day to talk about it over lunch. After lunch, they cleared off one side of somebody’s desk so I could doodle the stuff I was talking about at the restaurant. An hour later, I had a few drawings that were the subject of a meeting (that I wasn’t in). I got hired when the meeting was over.