
Richard Larson
Bio
Welcome to my portfolio site, and feel free to view samples of my work and an out line of my career as a commercial artist. I have a very broad range of interests and skills in production art that gives me a very robust understanding of different aspects of projects and approaches to art asset creation.
I have been working as an outsource artist for Cryptic Studios since 2016, supporting all their titles in many disciplines, including concept, character, environment, and UI. Before that, I spent eight years as a vehicle/outsource artist for Turn 10 studio, working on the Forza franchise, and before that, three years advertising agency experience at Lustre Communications in Seattle, in addition to the occasional freelance work. My work experience includes group and solo projects with tight deadlines and stringent client requirements. Throughout my career I have always made it a point to get the best results as quickly as possible, optimizing my workflow for quick iteration and reusable assets. I pride myself on being a flexible and diverse artist that can smoothly integrate into any pipeline and frequently perform beyond expectations. I like to develop processes and pipelines to facilitate creativity without compromising predictability, sustainability, or efficiency.
My current employer is at Cryptic Studios, as an outsource artist, where I wear many hats. I was a founding architect of the outsourcing department, partnering with teammates and leads of the individual departments to facilitate all disparate pipelines and processes. We support character, environments, concept, 3D, and UI with visual targets, and spec critique. The outsource department serviced numerous games including Never Winter Online, Star Trek Online, Champions Online, Magic the Gathering Legends, and some currently unannounced productions.
At Turn10 Microsoft, I had the role of a vehicle artist, working on the Forza franchise. My duties included maintaining a high level of polish and realism across a large library of content. I created and updated photorealistic materials and textures that could be used by the entire team of artists, internal and external. I crafted the assets to allow drop-in functionality, while allowing controls for the artist to customize toward the distinct look to match their reference. This also maximized reusability for a more efficient game resource footprint. To maintain stringent spec and visual quality, I also made corrections to existing content created by outsourced artists. Directing outsourced content creators entailed continually updating specs to match the developing game engine and sending back corrections on submitted content to maintain a trained outsourced staff. I worked with programmers and tech artists to help prototype game features and art tools for the franchise. I also had the opportunity to use my skills in rigging, character art, and animation.
At Lustre Communications I started as a contract employee, but showed enough diversity and adaptability that I was hired as their first full time employee and then lead 3D artist overseeing a team of four. My role included defining production pipelines, contributing visual assets, and taking responsibility for overall polish. These projects included broadcast graphics for clients such as Autodesk, Microsoft, Discovery Channel, T-Mobile, Alaska Airlines, and Ford.
If you are interested in any of my skills or experience I would be glad to talk shop. Feel free to contact me through my personal email at: