Richard devotes a lot of time to his two “really amazing” Whippet dogs, Ziggy and Zeppelin.
As of January 2020, Richard is Vector Unit’s newest hire, bringing our total company staff count to a whopping … 6!
After two years as a freelance illustrator, a fortuitous call from a friend brought him from Scotland to Rockville, Maryland where he worked for Bethesda Softworks. It doesn’t seem such a far leap from Richard’s illustrating and painting days (favoring small-scale, high-detail gouache), because Richard and another friend used to play all the time and work at creating their own simple 8-bit games when he was younger. If this was an alternate universe with no video games, Richard might have spent his whole life creating book and album covers - either way, getting to make art is what he always wanted to do as a career.
Richard has had a stellar career so far, having held Environmental/Senior/Lead Artist to 3D Modeling Director roles at a number of high-profile companies, including Universal Studios Digital Arts, Konami Digital Entertainment, Crystal Dynamics, and most recently, Zynga, where he spent almost 6 years. He says the biggest change of his career was the advent of mobile games. He’d spent many years creating game art that was becoming more and more realistic in appearance and challenging to produce. Moving onto mobile game development felt like jumping back in time to creating early console game art.
Richard’s advice to aspiring video game artists is this:
Follow your instincts
Keep up-to-date with the latest industry software and techniques (YouTube is your friend!)
Try to create a variety of work that shows versatility while still focusing on traditional art skills -- never forget drawing and painting because they’ll all feed into what you’ll do as a video game artist
Richard is no stranger to helping usher in the new consort of animators - he was an Adjunct Lecturer at the University of Baltimore in 3D Modeling and Animation, an experience he calls rewarding.
His favorite mobile games include FIFA Mobile, Football Manager 2019 (that’s soccer to North Americans), and games from the past including some of the Battlefields and GTA III/V.
Richard is in search of a new favorite chicken curry place in the northeast Bay Area, so please send recommendations (and/or coupons because who doesn’t love a coupon?). Please hurry ... he and his wife are using microwave meals to satisfy the cravings.
If you have chicken curry restaurant or recipe links for Richard, particularly the one from the Zynga cafeteria, please leave them in the comments!