Rick Schmitz
Illustrator, Cartoonist, 
Marketing Artist/Video Director

About Rick​

 

Thank you for your interest in me.  I am a Game Artist / Illustrator / Cartoonist with 30 years of professional experience.  I have created Concept Art, Digital Art, Marketing Assets, Drawings, Paintings, Animation, 3D Textures, UI Designs and much more.

 

I am also an Art Director/Studio Art Director for Mobile/Video games.  My work experience includes PopCap, Innogames, Sega, Goodgame and SOE.  As an AD, I have vast experience in Directing Art Style, Studio Level Management, Artist Management, Schedule and Planning, and Outsource Management.

 

 

I currently live and work in Hamburg, Germany, at Innogames where I have been an Art Director and currently serve as a Senior Marketing Artist.

 

Before that I was at Goodgame Studios, also in Hamburg, where I was a Studio Art Director leading 3 art teams.  We soft-launched the beautiful and cool mobile Hero Collection game Infernals.

 

Before that I worked as an Art Director for WildTangent to create mobile games for a huge variety of platforms.  I produced concept art, managed artists, art directed, created in-game assets and helped shape the direction of the Studio along with the Studio Head, Lead Programmer and Producer.  Shipped titles include Swipe the Gold, Polar Bowler, FATE games for Steam, lots of Slots games and Penguins! Escape. 

 

Before WildTangent I was the Studio Art Director at PopCap.  I managed 15 artists at PopCap's Seattle office and worked with producers, designers and engineers to ship dozens of fantastic, beautiful games for PC, Mac, Mobile and consoles. My tasks also included creating concept art.  Titles that shipped while I was at PopCap includes Plants vs. Zombies, Bejeweled 3, Bejeweled Blitz, Zuma's Revenge and Peggle Nights.

 

Previous to PopCap I was the Art Director at Centerscore/Vivendi where I managed 4 artists and oversaw the look and feel of a variety of casual games for the Mobile market.

Before Centerscore I was the Art Manager on Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar at Turbine Inc., supervising a team of 11 artists. I maintained schedules and approved assets for artistic quality and style. I created concept art, modeled, textured and animated many assets myself as well. I started out at Turbine in the role of Art Director for AC2: Legions. As the Art Director I guided the look of the project, managed a team of artists and personally created many of the game’s art assets as well.

Previous to Turbine, I worked at Sony Online Entertainment as Lead Concept Artist on EverQuest 2. In that position I was responsible for shepherding the look and feel of all the races and environments of the world and created hundreds of drawings myself as well. My time at SOE started as the Character Concept Artist and Animator for the original version of Everquest.

I have a B. A. in Studio Art from the UCSB. Before making video games, my professional career spanned a number of fields including Comics, Editorial Illustrations and Educational Software. A list of former clients and employers includes Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro, Sega, Bluesky Software, Image Comics, Marvel Comics, Malibu Comics, SCEA, 989 Studios, Jostens Learning, Presto Studios, Highlights for Children Magazine, and Humpty Dumpty Magazine.  

 

I have taught drawing and cartooning classes, been a guest lecturer at Cal Arts Character Design classes, I have participated in the Artist in Residence program at the Charles Schulz Museum and I have been asked by the University of Washington to consult on a video game concerning Climate Change.  Additionally, I've organized a monthy sketch club for local game artists, illustrators and comic book artists called TAG.  I currently live in Hamburg, Germany with my wife and one of my 3 kids.