I am a professional freelance digital artist based in Sydney, Australia. I am UK born, and hold dual Australian Citizenship. I am available for contract work, asset creation, concept work and training, please contact me at davideking@gmail.com for inquiries.

ACT3 Entertainment
Academy of Interactive Entertainment
Autodesk Media & Entertainment (Formerly Discreet)
Animation Farm
Animal Logic
Ambience (now The Lab)
Babyfoot productions
Bigworld games
Creature'N'FX Workshop
Eidos (via Rocksteady)
Electric Art
Epic games (via Animation Farm)
Fuel
Firaxis (Via Liquid)
Firedance Games
Goodoil Films
Liquid Entertainment (USA)
Liquid Animation (Australia)
Microforte
Microsoft (via Microforte)
Monkeylab
ProMotion Studios
Rocksteady Games
SensAble Software
Shadows In Darkness
Turbine
TurboSquid
Z-Space

Like many artists of my generation, it was the work of Ray Harryhausen and Jim Henson that inspired me on my path. I remember rushing home from Clash of the Titans with a poster tucked under my arm in a b-line for my felt tip pens. Likewise films such as Krull and The Dark Crystal hit me like a bomb, and by my early teens I was seeped in fantasy art and special effects film making.

I soaked up every 'making of' documentary I could find and saved my pocket money in earnest for trips to JBE stage lighting in Rochford where I loaded up on goodies like contact blood, Rick Baker books, Kryolan makeup, sugar glass and liquid latex. I sculpted and cast masks and puppets at home, peicing together how to do it from books by Rick Baker, Dick Smith and back issues of Fangoria magazine. I somehow managed to make my very own Skeksis head- complete with pneumatic controls I made in High School shop class! I was determined to be an artists at Hensons Creature Workshop and work with Jim. Sadly that was not meant to be, and in 1991 he died before I ever got to meet him.

During this period I also created my own video games for my classmates using S.E.U.C.K on a Commodore 64, and later Amiga (imaginatively named dungeon bash 1, 2, 3 and 4). This was followed by my first films at high school- one of which was a cheap rip off of Predator crash edited on a school video camera. We had a skinned guy (hey Mark), hanging from a tree and everything- much to the surprise of the other people using the local park at the time. I became more interested in film making, and started playing around with an old super 8mm and vcr at home.

At college I started directing stage plays, including co-directing the drama major end of year play -Roses of Eyam, as well as providing life cast body parts and set designs.

In 1992 my family moved to Australia, where I studied media and art. During that time I produced an A.I.D.S awareness documentary and my first proper short film - an adaptation of Royal Jelly by Roald Dahl which I wrote, directed and created the effects puppet for the grisly climax. At that time, the pre-digital era, film school was prohibitively expensive, so instead I started a Batchelor of Fine Arts in painting instead at the Australian National School of Art. I worked nights and weekends at the Canberra Repatory Theatre as a crew man, lighting operator and working on props and sets for many plays and stage shows.

The big turning point came for me whilst shooting a photo comic project on my weekends. I heard about a 3D course at the local TAFE and decided to check it out. It was a million miles away from the primitive state of 3D art as presented by the art school, and I found myself instantly drawn to it. Jurassic Park had just hit cinemas and the world was buzzing with how cool the future of 3D would be.

I left my fine artist degree to jump on the 3D bandwagon as it roared past. My background in theatre, model making, sculpture, minature painting, theatre performance, set design, puppetry and film making all came together in one place. It was awesome! As they say I ate, slept and drank 3D- pouring over manuals and spending every hour I could on the academies PC's. I worked hard, got noticed and was hired directly from the class by Microforte games.

Within a year I was promoted to Lead Artist. I headed up the Sydney Art department for over six years helping transition the company from sprites to real time 3D, and from first generation to 'Next Generation' techniques. During that time I got the opportunity to return to directing - creating several game cinematics and pitch demo promotions for the company, as well as leading the art team developing Bigworld MMOG tech.

I eventually left Microforte to become a freelance character artist- quickly landing a job creating a set of new characters for the Unreal Tournament '04 game. I had the dream task of redesigning my favourite classic game beasties- the Skaarj. After Unreal, then the floodgates opened and I found myself busy creating character art for a range of titles and game pitches. I became known for being able to model characters and creatures extremely fast- so fast I could do it infront of a live audience, which drew the attention of Autodesk..

I was contracted to Autodesk (then Discreet) to act as their consultant for the Games Industry in Asia Pacific. This gavee me the opportunity to travel around the world, visiting game studios, helping pipeline development, providing games design seminars, demoing new features and generally swapping tricks and techniques with artists. It was an exciting time as new development studios and outsourcing companies where springing up, and eager to learn.

This lead to a series of shows and speeches at places such as GDC and SIGGRAPH, and culminated as a creature modelling challenge at the SIGGRAPH 3dsmax 6 launch, where I was given the task of modeling a cinematic creature infront of the max user group - an audience of over a thousand containing people from Blur, Blizzard, Ubisoft and many more. Terrified? You betcha. Fortunately, somehow I managed it. I released my first training DVD highlighting some of the techniques I used called the '3D creature workshop' published through Turbosquid. Its a best seller - (hopefully I will find time to do more!)

After returning to the games industry briefly, I met my future wife Kathryn, and we decided to travel the world a bit, and work in London. During this time I continued to produce art for games companies, but took the time to develop new personal work to encompass films and television production. This payed off - on my return to Sydney I started working on TVCs and Film, for companies such as Animal Logic, Fuel, Babyfoot, Liquid, Goodoil and Zspace. My first film work was surfacing the digital wild thing from Where The Wild Things Are- another dream job - 'Wild Things' is my favourite book and the first large stage play production I had seen as a child. Absolutely magic.

Kathryn and I married and settled in Sydney, Australia, where I continue to work on a diverse range of projects for games, game cinematics, film and TV.

Its been a wild ride so far, and I have no plans to slow down. Fingers crossed.

Dave King

PICTURE GALLERY Some fun shots from the tours

'Speed modeling' Anthony Robbins Style at CGOverdrive 07

CGOverdive speed modelling show

With 3dsmax mistress Kelcey Simpson

One of my Skaarj models and me see eye to eye


Live at the max 7 launch (I am under screen on right) at SIGGRAPH Max User Group


SIGGRAPH 'Dave King power modelling in 3dsmax 'show

Seriously Jet lagged and creature sculpting in Japan for Sony on a Phantom Omni


3dsmax launch in Korea with Toxikian and musician Warren Bones