Today we’d like to introduce you to Richard Goodwin.
Richard, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I was born and raised in Rochester, NY. I grew up on a street full of kids older than myself, so I was always the runt trying to fit in with the older crowd. Being the runt wasn’t all bad, though – they took me in as one of their own and shared all their glorious older kid toys with me, and for a kid like me, it doesn’t get better than that. Every Transformer ever conceived by man, an honest to god full set of Voltron cats, TNMT until my eyes bled, more He-Man than you could shake a stick at, I was a king among a sea of toys, and that stuck with me.
My father owned a sports bar where I had the supreme privilege of watching Saturday morning cartoons on a wall of big screens before the lunch rush started. Let me tell you there’s nothing that comes close to watching transformers and he-man like that, it really spoils a kid. I guess I’d consider myself part of that rerun generation – I grew up watching 80s cartoons and playing with 80s toys even though I did most of my growing up in the 90s. Naturally, I got my start in the art world drawing my toys, I’d keep journals of characters from shows and comics that I liked. I kept drawing through high school and decided I wanted to study art, more specifically illustration in college. I chose SCAD as the place to start my formal studies in illustration. Flash forward through many years of odd jobs and self-discovery (because we all go through that phase) and here I am wrapping up my thesis! Over the years between undergrad and grad school I remembered that my life revolved around the awesome characters I grew up with. He-Man and Skeletor, Optimus and Megatron, Lion-O and Mumm-Ra. I still collected the toys, I still watched the shows, but it had been a while since I’d been drawing those characters. I wanted my work to get back to the basics, back to what I grew up loving, something I could pass on to the next generation of kids not so different from myself. So now I find myself working in all the fields I love, I’m working on an entirely original card game that I’m calling Neon Fantasy or Infinite (we’ll see which wins) for now, which is chock full of homages to the cartoons, toys, and comics I grew up with – it’s a love letter to bright colors, ridiculously cool characters, and wild gameplay. I’m working on a toy line for the characters in the game because cool characters really do need a cool toy. I’ve got comics, books, miniatures, and other games in the works – it’s the whole nine yards and I’m loving every minute I work on it. It’s a really great feeling to see where I am now – when I was a kid I knew this is what I wanted, and I’ve finally come full circle.
Has it been a smooth road?
It’s been tough from the start, but I’m finally pulling through that and seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I’ve struggled a lot with finding my voice artistically, I think all artists do – I kept trying to be someone I looked up to, but finally realized that I should be looking up to myself. Once I had that moment, I put away the art books, turned off the internet, and started doing work for myself, the way I wanted to, as unapologetically as possible. We all bring something unique to the table, it just takes time to find it, and the only way to find it is to clear the creative table and take a long hard look at yourself. That’s when I started seeing people responding to what I was doing. Of course finding work in the wide world of art is a feat of strength in itself – I kept throwing myself against the wall until I broke through. Self-improvement is a constant struggle, I want to be better, plain and simple, and at times that desire to be better has been crushing, but I’ve learned to channel it healthily – nowadays I fuel myself with that desire that at a time slowed me down.
Any predictions for the industry over the next few years?
I see the industry only becoming more and more diverse – we live in this amazing time and place where illustrators can be themselves and be successful without editing themselves. The world is full of diverse groups of people and those people have diverse tastes. Digital platforms have made it possible for creators to find their audiences and on the flip side, digital platforms have made it possible for audiences to find exactly what they’re looking for. Projects that would have been impossible for someone to complete 10-15 years ago without the backing of a publisher or corporate entity are possible through crowdfunding. Self-publishing has never been easier and continues to get easier. We’re part of an ‘I can do this on my own’ generation of artists who refuse to take ‘no’ for an answer and find a way to bring their projects to life. That attitude has created an unbelievably rich visual landscape that only continues to evolve as we move forward. I believe we’ll see the print come back in a big way in the next 10-15 years – We’ve become detached from the analog world and shifted to the digital in recent years, but the world is cyclical and we’ll shift back to analog once we’re tired of digital, and that’s coming. In the up and coming years, I see more illustrators recognizing the connection they have to being an entrepreneur – it’s not enough to solely be an artist, you have to know how to run a creative business from the ground up.
Has there been a particular challenge that you’ve faced over the years?
My biggest challenge has been finding my style. When you are always seeing work you love you try to emulate it and I did that for years – it took me realizing I just wanted to create work that I loved to find my style. I was caught up with the idea that I needed to be better than everyone which was a backward way of trying to improve. I’ve come to a place where I just want to do a little better than my best every day and that’s enough to keep me fulfilled. I think we have gotten into this place where we compare ourselves to others incessantly, and that has to stop, we have to look at ourselves. It’s so easy to look at others, the real challenge is to not.
Let’s change gears – is there any advice you’d like to give?
Get your work out there! There’re no excuses nowadays with all the platforms we have to share new work, use those platforms to get feedback – use all the people out there on social media as your personal focus group! More than anything do what you have to during the day so that you can do what you want at night. Don’t feel like you have to take a job, make a job, do what you’re passionate about with no compromise. I’m a big believer in working hard – you’re not going to make your break into the field working 1-2 hours a day, you need to be dedicated, you should stay up late, wake up early, or both. One of my favorite quotes from Arnold Schwarzenegger is in regards to that – ‘I’ve always figured out that there 24 hours a day. You sleep six hours and have 18 hours left. Now, I know there are some of you out there that say well, wait a minute, I sleep eight hours or nine hours. Well, then, just sleep faster, I would recommend.’ . There’s nothing worse than wasted potential in the creative world. We’re living in this amazing creative world now and opportunity is everywhere, go find some of them and stay hungry, you have to be a shark in this ocean!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.richardillustrates.com
- Email: richardillustrates@gmail.com
- Instagram: richardillustrates
