About

   
 

 

Sylvan Dieckmann is an artist, engineer and storyteller, and the founder of Ælfheim, where he creates the world, game system and stories of Aten7.

He began in video games as an artist and technical director, then spent twenty years in visual effects for film and VR. His work there ranged across lighting and look development, writing shading and rendering software, and supervising departments and productions. He wrote MPC’s first physically based shading pipeline, led Houdini lighting and rendering development at DNEG, and supervised visual effects at Milk and Anibrain. His credits include the Oscar-winning Gravity and Interstellar and the award-winning VR experience Tree. SideFX selected him as their expert user representative for the Academy’s Scientific and Technical Awards.

Aten7 brings all of it together. Eight years in the making, it is a science-fiction world built as both a tabletop RPG and a video game, grounded in hard science, with the writing, world-building and design by Sylvan himself.

I’m a creative at heart. I love making things, and most of all I love making worlds. I started out writing stories and running games, and pretty much everything since, the art, the code, the film work, has been me learning the tools to do that better. Aten7 is the stories I’ve always wanted to tell. Now I get to find out if anyone wants to hear them.


Find me

Contact

For anything at all, including press and Aten7 enquiries: contact@alfhe.im. I read everything, even if replies sometimes take a little while.