Dome Video Card

Richard, you graduated with a B.F.A. from UCD, with emphasis in painting. You worked with the animation students creating concept art for their thesis project. Did you take any digital art classes?

I did take one independent study with Bryan Leister for illustration. At that particular time I was pretty knowledgeable with Photoshop so we focused more on formal and technical issues of illustration. Because a lot of illustration work is about painting things that don't exist in real life, a lot of the discussion went into how to effectively use reference and create compelling compositions that sell to the public.

Please describe the contract arrangement between you and Sony, basically, how they commission you with projects, etc.

Well, I actually freelance for Sony Online Entertainment (SOE). As part of their artist pool, whenever they have a new project they will write up a short e-mail offering a commission with a set number of images. After the number of images are confirmed a contract is written up by their legal department with a schedule and work goes from there. I work with the art director who writes up each card's description, detailing the action and mood that he wants us to illustrate. The hard part is getting into their artist pool.