- Like, this stuff here would all be done with two hands. I can't use it everywhere, but I can do something, you know, I could go... I could even cross hatch. [ethereal 8-bit music] By seven, eight, I knew I wanted to be a cartoonist. There was nothin' else I really wanted to do. Then I got into illustration and I got outta school. I was an illustrator in Manhattan. Here would be, like this is what I would send out. I must have done ten different dinosaurs of them. Well, your first jobs are kinda basic. I did a game board and a game cover for Parker Brothers. I did a science fiction piece that won the contest for Omni Magazine. That was the competition. What's the Olympics gonna look like in a hundred years? Oh, it's gonna be in space. An agent saw it, and so I then got an agent with that piece. That really took off my career. I got to work with ILM, creating some characters for M&M Mars. After that, I started getting more and more work. I did all the invitations and everything for Exxon's Clam Bakes, which were huge. They'd rent out the Houston Astrodome. I did bags, somethin' from HBO. This is for a pipe company. This is in all airbrush. So I was doing quite a bit of business at one point, I had five people working for me. I get this job to do a Game Boy cover. And I had done a couple of small video games, but this was Nintendo and it was bigger. So I did this cover of Tasmania Story. I looked on the back, and I'm like, oh, I can do that. Little did I know, all the restrictions and how hard it was, but I naively went to a couple friends who have worked in the video game industry. Very, very, small industry at that point. I got an offer to go work at a place called Absolute Entertainment, I think I was, like, the twelfth person hired. I'm the new guy, and there's about six other artists. And they're like, "Give him Barbie. "Let him do Barbie." And they're laughin' about it. I didn't care, I'm drawin'. I go and I study everything about Barbie and make this Barbie game, and it comes out, and it's our biggest hit of the year. They made me art director after that. [laughs softly] So, I had the last laugh on all the artists. During that time, I worked on Ren & Stimpy, Bart Simpson, Swamp Thing, Home Alone, Home Improvement, Rocky and Bullwinkle, Goofy Game. I was actually making cartoons that I grew up with. I was like, this is what a full time job as an artist is. This is what I want. This is early stuff from Penn & Teller. These are all the animations, well, many of the animations for Penn & Teller walking in the video game. Here's their jump, here's their walks. This is how you animate a character. You know, growin' up as an artist, I think that after a while you start to see things differently. And I only know that because of, you know, I'll say something to somebody, like, "Look at the shadows on that tree." And they're like, "What shadows?" You see things through a lens of wanting to capture it, so I'm looking at angles, I'm looking at water reflections, I'm looking at colors and things. It makes me much more observant. Even though I'll draw things slightly cartoon-y here and there, I'm still studying when I'm drawing. I'm drawing faces, and faces, and faces, and hands, and things that are difficult. So that when something's a little out of alignment, I can pick it up right away. It makes me much more observant, I think. It helps me with color. It helps me with light. Being an artist is all about having a really good sense of color, sense of balance. It really helps me, like when I wanna frame something in a video game, you know, because I know compositions and I know what looks right and what should look right. These are sketches that I did for, while I was making World War II, Call of Duty: WWII. I would research and I'd find out about some of the sharpshooters so then I'd do a drawing. I'd find out about tanks and probably do a drawing. And then this was D-Day. Between a game, while I'm workin' on a game, I'll do anywhere from 100 to 150 drawings. And it really gets me into the creative mood. And I just keep going more and more, and when you're working on a painting, people just think, oh, you're just kinda painting. But you're doing thousands of minute calculations of colors that you have to do, and you're studying stuff, but I also have enough time in there to think of ideas. So if I know I have a problem at work, like, oh, I gotta come up with one more mechanic, when I'm sitting and I'm painting, I got the music going, it's an atmosphere that just kinda lets my mind float. The ideas will come to me, and they come to me quickly when I'm painting. When I'm goin' in and finding pictures of things to do of, let's say, Churchill. I'll go and I'll study everything about him. What he said, and what he did. And I'll find out so much more than what I knew, and it's important in the game, 'cause I'll end up putting some lines from him in the game, or just understanding how the war went a little bit better once you get into their mind. I talk with a lot of students, middle school, high school, and colleges about being in art or coming into the video game industry, and I just tell 'em, what they need to do is just really practice. Practice and show some passion for what they do. We have a lot of jobs in the video game industry, and we want to give them out, but we wanna give them out to people who are really passionate about it, who take it, who take it seriously, right? But the most important thing you can do? Practice. Just keep drawing. You just keep getting better. My house is full of paintings. They're in the garages, we have a storage unit. When I have new ones and I haven't cataloged them, or I haven't photographed them yet, I put them out here. I'm getting into more and more shows. But of course, you know, making games is the first thing for me. That's my first love right now. People used to say as I'm growing up that I had a gift, and I would just say, whatever. When I got older, I started realizing, yeah, it is a gift. And I never took it for granted. So I'm really appreciative of the life that I've had. I think being an artist, to me, is just being really passionate about what you do. Like, I won't do a vide game if I'm not passionate about it. I'm just really honored and humbled to be able to, to be an artist for a living.