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I was born in Washington D.C., August, 1963; the same month in which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous speech, ?I Have A Dream?. A month later my parents and I moved to Flint, Michigan where my Dad took a job as a teacher. In the five years that I lived in Flint my Mom bore three more children and on my fifth birthday my family left Flint and moved to Landover, Maryland.
Like many kids in the suburbs of Maryland, when I wasn?t in school or hanging out with friends in the streets, I was watching TV, mostly; cartoons, science fiction, and action adventure shows. The cartoon that most affected me was the Justice League of America. I would sit in front of the TV, after watching them and try to draw the characters. And then one summer vacation, a cousin would introduce me to the world of comic books. He even gave me a few from his collection. Ever since then I have been a steady collector. Eventually all of my friends would become collectors as well. We would spend weekends and summer vacations gathering together to make the trip to the local "7 Eleven" for our sugar and comic book fix, then scurry back to my back yard to read each other?s comics and critique the adventures of our favorite comic heroes.
My friends would often remark on how long it took me to read a comic, until they realized that I was not just reading the books but also absorbing and studying the visuals. The unique styles each artist had would keep me engrossed. Eventually I began to copy my favorite scenes out of the comics. My parents would often take an interest in my drawings and encourage me to continue drawing. They enrolled me in an after school art course where I began to learn the fundamentals of drawing.
It was in high school that I began to think about what I wanted to do as a career. I always had a strong interest in perspective drawing and was considering a career as an architect until I learned that it was possible to make a living as a comic book illustrator. With the help of my parents and teachers, I began searching for a school that would teach comic illustration. All of the art schools I checked out had no comic illustration departments, but all seem to say the same thing, that a good education in Illustration would be a good start toward my goal. At that time, the Rhode Island School of Art and the Philadelphia College of Art were ranked the number one and two schools for illustration in the country. I chose to attend PCA because of the proximity to family and I liked the inner city of Philadelphia.
In my freshman year I met several students with the same interest of working as a comic illustrator. The upper classmen of this group began publishing a school newspaper called Duckworks, which consisted of 10% articles and 90% comics. These same students would eventually quit school and start their own comic company called Comico Comics. Throughout my junior and senior year, I stayed in contact with the guys at Comico showing them my work in the hopes that they would publish my work. During the winter break of my senior year Comico called with a job offer. They had just been contracted to produce the comic book adaptation for the animated cartoon Robotech, and they knew very few artist who knew how to draw in the Japanese animation style. I was one of the few people they knew who could. I took the job of drawing Robotech the Macross Saga and so began my career in comics.
For almost four years I penciled Robotech the Macross Saga until its final issue. I was immediately offered a new assignment, penciling the Elementals which lasted another four years. I then went on to work for Valiant Comics and penciled various projects for them such as X O Man O War, H.A.R.D. Corps, Death Mate, PSI LORDS, and others. After working for Valiant Comics I worked on a project called Pantheon for Lone Star Press as well as Freemind for Future Comics and the Amazing Liberteens for Arjack Press. Recently, I joined Maximum Overtime Studios and began working on a project of my own creation called The Cadre which will appear in the pages of GRITZ N' GRAVY MAGAZINE.
Like many kids in the suburbs of Maryland, when I wasn?t in school or hanging out with friends in the streets, I was watching TV, mostly; cartoons, science fiction, and action adventure shows. The cartoon that most affected me was the Justice League of America. I would sit in front of the TV, after watching them and try to draw the characters. And then one summer vacation, a cousin would introduce me to the world of comic books. He even gave me a few from his collection. Ever since then I have been a steady collector. Eventually all of my friends would become collectors as well. We would spend weekends and summer vacations gathering together to make the trip to the local "7 Eleven" for our sugar and comic book fix, then scurry back to my back yard to read each other?s comics and critique the adventures of our favorite comic heroes.
My friends would often remark on how long it took me to read a comic, until they realized that I was not just reading the books but also absorbing and studying the visuals. The unique styles each artist had would keep me engrossed. Eventually I began to copy my favorite scenes out of the comics. My parents would often take an interest in my drawings and encourage me to continue drawing. They enrolled me in an after school art course where I began to learn the fundamentals of drawing.
It was in high school that I began to think about what I wanted to do as a career. I always had a strong interest in perspective drawing and was considering a career as an architect until I learned that it was possible to make a living as a comic book illustrator. With the help of my parents and teachers, I began searching for a school that would teach comic illustration. All of the art schools I checked out had no comic illustration departments, but all seem to say the same thing, that a good education in Illustration would be a good start toward my goal. At that time, the Rhode Island School of Art and the Philadelphia College of Art were ranked the number one and two schools for illustration in the country. I chose to attend PCA because of the proximity to family and I liked the inner city of Philadelphia.
In my freshman year I met several students with the same interest of working as a comic illustrator. The upper classmen of this group began publishing a school newspaper called Duckworks, which consisted of 10% articles and 90% comics. These same students would eventually quit school and start their own comic company called Comico Comics. Throughout my junior and senior year, I stayed in contact with the guys at Comico showing them my work in the hopes that they would publish my work. During the winter break of my senior year Comico called with a job offer. They had just been contracted to produce the comic book adaptation for the animated cartoon Robotech, and they knew very few artist who knew how to draw in the Japanese animation style. I was one of the few people they knew who could. I took the job of drawing Robotech the Macross Saga and so began my career in comics.
For almost four years I penciled Robotech the Macross Saga until its final issue. I was immediately offered a new assignment, penciling the Elementals which lasted another four years. I then went on to work for Valiant Comics and penciled various projects for them such as X O Man O War, H.A.R.D. Corps, Death Mate, PSI LORDS, and others. After working for Valiant Comics I worked on a project called Pantheon for Lone Star Press as well as Freemind for Future Comics and the Amazing Liberteens for Arjack Press. Recently, I joined Maximum Overtime Studios and began working on a project of my own creation called The Cadre which will appear in the pages of GRITZ N' GRAVY MAGAZINE.
