intro

My Story (its a bit wordy, but it's who I am.)

I have been sculpting professionally now for a little over eight years. I have always been into art in general but never really looked at it as a way to make living until sometime late in High School I guess. After attending Vocational training in Commercial Art while in my junior and senior year, I attended The Art Institute of Pittsburgh. I changed my course of study to Industrial Design in college. I was very fortunate to have studied under, what was in mine, and many others opinions, the very best staff of instructors that the IDS course has had to date (you know who you are...) . While in school I studied everything from automotive design, architectural design, to sculpting and special effect make up, to name a few. I, unlike many other took interest in all and had no preconceived idea of what I would do with any of it. In 1993 I graduated with Honors. At my portfolio review I had gone into one interview and ended up being one of two graduates chosen to head up a sculpting department for the San Diego based Halloween costume manufacturer, Disguise Inc.

At that time Disguise has had no experience in having an in house sculpting dept. So we were set up in the middle of this huge warehouse on a lunch table and expected to make it work, and that is exactly what we did. Before long we had hired a staff of locals as well as fellow alumnus from AIP. and we fast became a very credible department. The first year that we were aboard Disguise had gotten the license for The Power Rangers. This catapulted Disguise into the top three manufactures in the country. Not too long into our hire, the partner that I started the dept. with resigned. I assumed the full Management of the dept. and with the help of my employees was able to foster that dept. coined Fright Asylum. While at Disguise I had worked on licenses like Disney ( The lion King, basically everything Disney produced we did costumes for.), Saban ( The Power Rangers, Beetleborg ), Marvel Comics ( classics to X-Men ), Sony's Godzilla, Dream Works Small Soldiers and many many more. In my Dept. we handled everything from concept design to fit price point, up to pre production. We had basically become a company within a company. We handled our own sourcing of development supplies, setting up terms with vendors, inventory, waste management and disposal, not to mention money management. It was nice to have funds available but that too meant managing a budget. That gave me a very wide realm of areas to learn about. I was also responsible for directing the Fright Asylum photo shoots, and defining the style that they still use today to represent their masks. Along with the license product, we were also responsible for developing and maintaining a proprietary line for the adult Fright Asylum and for the accessories to the costumes that were being developed in other departments, from adult to infant. I will be including picture from Items that I worked on while in the Company's employ very soon.

In late 1998 I was offered a position at Disguise's #1 Competition. Rubies Costume Co. is the largest costume manufacture in the country and they had started a west coast development building and were looking for someone to head up a sculpting dept. I felt that at this point in my career, ( hell, five years out of college ) I was being given another chance to foster, from conception, the start of a new dept. How could I resist. Well I couldn't. The name of the facility is Imagination Design Studios. We work with Rubies and a host of other companies that Rubies owns, Mask Illusions being the company that we contribute to the most. Since I have been there we have already topped any license I have worked on to date with the 1999 prequel to STAR WARS. This was my first taste of what my life will be like here. I was given the responsibility of working with the licensing dept. at Lucas. We actually got to go to the ranch. (For all you star wars nutz aren't you jealous ) but really, I am now taking on a different aspect of the job and that is personally representing not only my work, but the company that I work for. To me it says alot when a Multi Million dollar company has faith in me to represent them. While employed at Rubies, I have started my own company as well. That is MRK Unlimited. Under this company name I offer a vast array of services ranging from marketing my own artwork in various forms, to a list of services to other companies such as sculpting, mold making, painting and conceptual design. Please look further into my site and you will get a feel of what it is that I have to offer. Thanks for taking the time to get to know me a bit, If you have any questions or comments please feel free to contact me.