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				Why Scarab?

What can I say about myself that will reveal the vast, artistic knowledge and wisdom of the man behind the artist? Hmmm... let's see. I actually liked the movie Howard the Duck, or maybe it was just the kinky aspect of watching Leah Thompson in her underwear kissing a duck. What?... You're still reading? I grew up watching old monster movies in St. Louis Missouri with my friend Brett. We'd have sleepovers when we were in grade school and check out 8mm movies from the library like The Wolfman, Frankenstein, Godzilla, anything with a monster in it, and stay up all night watching the projector eat them. I wanted to go into special effects back then, but growing up in the midwest didn't seem to provide much of an opportunity for that to ever happen. So, I wandered aimlessly through high school, getting decent grades, drawing monsters, robots, and sick little cartoons all over my notebooks, but being more concerned at the time about whether or not the rumors about two certain hot girls in my class were true. Wasted a lot of time wondering about that one. After High School I went to Junior College. Since I still had no idea of where to go career wise and didn't think anyone would ever pay me for drawing monsters, I thought, hey, how about data processing? Yeah, right! I lasted about half a semester with that. So then I decided, if I'm going to suffer through the tough as nails education of a junior college, I might as well enjoy what I'm studying, so, head first I dove into their art program. Thankfully they actually had some great teachers there or my head would have hit the pavement when I jumped because the program was pretty small. Loved the classes, loved the teachers, no rumors about any of the girls in the classes though. Oh well.

After graduating from junior college, with degree in hand, I set out to seek my fortune as an artist. Did I mention this was in the midwest? Not that many places looking for someone who wasn't excited about the idea of type setting as a career goal. So, it wasn't long before I landed my first job after the rigors of junior college as an assistant manager of a little mom and pop style video store. I'd still be stuck there today if a friend who went through the same junior college art program hadn't stopped into the video store one day. He was home for Xmas break and told me he was going to an Art Institute in California and that I should apply to the school. Six months, and a little financial aid later, I was on my way to California. Thanks Ed. The school was great, not the best neighborhood at the time, but the types of classes they offered were more than I could have asked for. Richard Milholland, Michael Wingo, Dan Quarnstrum, David Willardson, Jim Heiman, and Clive Piercy were just a few of the phenomenal teachers. After graduation, I tried my hand at working as a freelance illustrator. Did some product illustration for Mattel Toys, some design work for some t-shirt companies here and there. Then a friend of mine introduced me to the idea of working as a scenic artist for film and television. Sounded cool. It wasn't. You ended up going home at night with more paint on your clothes, in your hair, and in your lungs then what you painted on the set.

After doing a lot of product illustration work for a lot of different clients, I got the opportunity of my dreams when Jurassic Park came along. A friend of mine was dating a girl at the time whose father was working for Rick Carter doing pre-production art for the film. I did a few sketches for them and one painting that still hangs on the wall of my studio today. After doing a few jobs for small production projects, I found the freelance routine a little too stressfull, waiting for the phone to ring or wondering when accounting was going to actually get around to sending out my check. I decided to follow a few of my classmates into the field of animation. There I stayed for about ten years. I worked in almost every division within the field of animation as a freelance artist & on staff with Warner Bro's Television Animation for over seven years and a couple of other studios in between. I started playing around with digital illustration while working in animation. I was reluctant in the beginning to think I would enjoy sitting at a computer trying to create art out of something so sterile, but once I started playing around with it, I became hooked. I still find my best work comes from something that was initially created by hand through traditional means though, that I then scan and continue rendering digitally. I'm pretty much where I want to be right now. I have a diverse career going between my Photography and my Illustration that keeps me creatively busy and fresh, but any day that goes by where I don't get to draw some silly, creepy, or cute and fuzzy monster, feels like a day that wasn't quite complete. Fortunately, I have kids now who are always asking me to draw that kind of silly stuff for them. Ha-ha, thank God for kids!