My name is Alexei Shay.
(It used to be Alexei Bochenek, but I changed it when I got married.)
That’s me on the right, posing with a couple of performers at the Bob Baker Marionette Theatre, in my hometown of Los Angeles.
If you need to contact me, you can reach out to me via this form.
I currently work as the Executive Creative Director for the animation studio Titmouse, where I’m in Head of Development of all original animated series and films, as well as commercial projects like ads, games, and more.
In my time at Titmouse, and previously at studio Psyop where I was a director, I’ve written, directed, pitched, and overseen a bunch of stuff. You’ll find some of it below.
Each image is a video you can click to play, with a short summary of my thoughts on the project below.
I Love You, Colonel Sanders!
I Love You, Colonel Sanders! A Finger-Lickin’ Good Dating Simulator is a game I created for KFC. It’s probably my most infamous achievement. I designed and wrote this yes-it’s-actually-real game as part of a marketing stunt where the big joke was how incredibly serious my entire team took the whole thing and how good it actually is. It released exclusively on Steam where it went on to cross over 1,000,000 players and growing, and has gotten over 10,000 positive written reviews from actual players who spent hours in this full-length dating-sim style narrative experience. Yes, you read that correctly—over 10,000 people have taken time out of their day to write (sometimes very thoughtful, often weirdly horny) reviews of this ridiculous game.
It has been seven years since the game originally released, and what was probably only meant to be a tossed off joke by some ironic ad-men has endured. Every day, more people download, play, and stream their experience dating the Colonel.
Apex Legends
Over the course of three years, I directed eight cinematic trailers for the game Apex Legends. It is a very popular game and publisher EA Games invested heavily in their trailers, which meant we got to make some really cool stuff with incredible crews of wildly talented human beings, leveraging a high-end 3d CG pipeline.
With every trailer, we tried to highlight a different aspect of the production, from choreography and character animation (Emergence) to combat (Gridiron), to color story (Defiance), to character performance (Family Business), to comedy (Escape), to emotion (Hunted). Sometimes, we just tried to make it epic (Legacy) or, I dunno, smash a whole goddamn kaiju battle into the middle of the thing (Saviors).
Each frame below is an entire epic trailer to watch—and basically amounts to how I spent my covid era.
Mass Effect
When it comes to game franchises, Mass Effect has to be up there with the all-time greats. So you can imagine how excited I was when the Mass Effect team decided it was time to officially reveal to the world that they were working on a new game, and then hired us to make them a very fancy trailer that would run at that year’s Game Awards, look badass, but not give too much about the story away. So we riffed on the iconic opening to the film Contact, filled it with references to the Mass Effect universe and characters, and then re-introduced a returning character that brought the entire audience to their feet. The game still hasn’t come out, but I’m sure when it does it will be worth the wait.
Overwatch 2
It has been a pleasure to oversee a trio of Overwatch 2 collaboration trailers, featuring incredible team-ups between Overwatch 2 and fighting game franchise Street Fighter, K-pop megagroup LE SSERAFIM, and beloved animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender. In every case, we were able to produce extremely dynamic and rewarding hype films for these collabs, with different tones and styles that best fit each unique crossover.
Credit to the incredible teams we were able to build for each short film, directed by Barry Kelly (Street Fighter), Daniel Cuervo (LE SSERAFILM), and Gabe Lee (Avatar: The Last Airbender).
Pokémon
One of a number of Pokémon collaborations under my tenure at Titmouse, this one has certainly been the most epic in terms of scope and surprise among the fans. Part of a roll-out associated with the Switch 2 release of Pokémon Legends: Z-A, we were asked to create a complete pro wrestling-style match between two fan-favorite Pokémon. Weighing in at four minutes of full CG, this trailer quickly became the most-viewed in a series of different shorts that showed off the Mega Evolutions fans could expect in that game. Shout-out to director David Woo, whose thoughtful direction and incredibly storyboarded and combat action made me a bigger Pokémon fan in the process.
McDonald’s Happy Meal x BT21
Pitching this ad to the McD’s folks on behalf of Titmouse was a lot of fun, and gave me a chance to build an awesome team including director Monica Davila and art director Jesse Moynihan, two true animation pros who combined forces to make this one as charming, cheerful, and weird as any Happy Meal ad could ever be. Expressing your vision as a director is straightforward, but as I’ve transitioned to “executive creative director” for projects like this, I’ve had to learn to enjoy building the boat and watching it leave as much as I’ve enjoyed sailing in the past. Is that a good metaphor? Should’ve probably been a space ship. I think you get it, though.
Drunkards, Druggies, & Delinquents
Drunkards, Druggies, & Delinquents is a game I co-created with Titmouse founder Chris Prynoski. We call it a “fantasy role-drinking game” — a game where you sit around with your friends, take on fantasy personas, battle monsters, and get drunk. It’s a lot like a TTRPG, but instead of your character taking damage when they get attacked, you take sips (or puffs, or push-ups if you’re some sort of freak).
Chris called in art contributions from a huge assortment of extremely awesome artists, and designer Taylor Dow did a truly amazing job pulling it all together. We put it up on Backer Kit and were funded in an hour, going on to raise over $100k.
The game is available to purchase for yourself at the official Titmouse Stuff website.
Hooked On You:
A Dead By Daylight Dating Sim
Having built my reputation as a proven horny weirdo interactive narrative creator with I Love You Colonel Sanders, I was reached out to by the team at Behaviour Interactive to lead a new project for them. Their fans had been begging to date the killers who star in their wildly popular horror action game Dead By Daylight, and I was charged with giving them what they wanted. I designed a concept around “the beach episode” trope and pulled together a team of some incredible writers and artists to support me. We launched this game exclusively to Steam, where it maintains a 92% positive rating. The folks at Behaviour were awesome, they let me do exactly what I wanted, and what I wanted to do was make their fans proud to play a ridiculous game with me. It worked—people still frequently stream the game on Twitch and positive reviews never stop showing up on the Steam page.