although he didn't feel he was very good at it. While attending high school
in the late `70s, he found he was better at technical illustration, and really
enjoyed drafting as well. He actually liked technical pens, despite their ten-
dency to clog up.
Filmmaking was another big interest, and Richard made dozens of short
movies with lots of miniatures and special effects work in them. In his sen-
ior year he got a job as a draftsman with a small company and stayed there
for four years while trying to figure out what he wanted to do for a living.
He never took the job title "artist" very seriously, and couldn't imagine
himself as a career artist; but deep down, he knew it was what he really
wanted to do. He eventually attended the prestigious Art Center College of
Design in Pasadena and studied industrial design, which he felt was a good
blend of the artistic and the practical.
After school, he landed a short-term but lucrative design job, then used the
money to move to San Francisco. He struggled for the first couple of years,
and did a little of everything: some industrial design work, building minia-
ture sets for movies, constructing some full-size dioramas for museums,
and lots of 2D graphic design and illustration. Eventually, a colleague from
Art Center hooked him up with a prototype-building job at small, little-
known division of the Lucas Empire that dealt with site-based attractions
and theme parks. When that division shut down, he went to work at an
industrial design firm. Later on, he ended up at LucasArts, where he worked
on Star Wars and other games for several years. After another stint doing
freelance work, he went back to full-time employment at Totally Games.
I met Richard just after he left the industrial design firm and before he
ended up at LucasArts. He came into Mondo Media to show his portfolio
after we let it be known that we were looking for 3D artists. At the time,
I was designing and directing a point-of-sale multimedia demo for
Microsoft's upcoming Windows NT operating system. The demo featured a
number of 3D animations, and I selected Richard to help out on the proj-
ect. He also worked on the tunnel environment for Critical Path later on,
as well as the hydroponics environment for The Daedalus Encounter. My
sincere thanks to Richard for taking the time to share his knowledge and
experiences here.
Q: How did you get into 3D modeling and animation?
A: I attended Art Center between 1985-88, and shortly after I started, they
became one of the first design schools to put together a computer graphics
lab. I spent a lot of time there. They had 2 PIXAR workstations--PIXAR
C
H A P T E R
4 : M
O D E L I N G
: B
E Y O N D
T H E
B
A S I C S
183
04 2433_CH04 8/23/02 8:35 AM Page 183
