Art and Music have inspired me to start drawing and making music when I was about 11. The most profound influences were from watching live performances and animation festivals during college—igniting a passion for the ever-expanding ways media and technology can be combined to create powerful experiences. I started studying digital art and design in 1982 and have spent my life immersed in Art, Design, Animation, Music, Theatre, Photography—and other storytelling media, helping organizations tell their stories, as well as exploring my own unique ones.
Influences
Art
When I was a young kid, I discovered M.C. Escher, Hieronymus Bosch, Salvador Dali, Patrick Woodroffe, Roger Dean, which inspired me to start drawing. I love the work of Mark Ryden, Odd Nerdrum, Jacek Yerka, Vladimir Kush. This led to my own surreal digital illustration and photography.
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Music
Early: 70s pop rock, Classical, Broadway,
Middle: King Crimson, Brian Eno, Genesis, Pink Floyd, Tangerine Dream,
Now: Sleeping At Last, David Sylvian, Daniel Lanois, The Bulgarian Women’s Choir, Randy Newman, Leonard Cohen and anything else that makes me want to sing it on stage.
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Multimedia Performance
Shows by Laurie Anderson, Peter Gabriel, Pink Floyd, Phillip Glass and others exposed me to new ideas of what could be done with combined media. This has led me onto the stage acting, singing, playing, and working on various aspects of marketing, set and projection design, for a number of shows.
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Animation
I loved animation as with most kids, but fell in love in college after seeing several animation festivals where both traditional and digital animation blew my mind. I started doing 16mm film animation, including some backlit hamburger—similar to claymation, but it bakes under the animation stand lights as you go. 🙂 My first gig after college was animation for the UCSD Psychology Department to help assess patients suffering from aphasia. I have continued to pursue this medium in various forms throughout my career.
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