A lot of artists are familiar with your work, but can you give us a quick recap of what you do and how you got started in the industry?

Sure thing! I’ve been working as a concept artist and art director in the entertainment industry for the past 11+ years. Most of my work revolves around videos games and feature films. I’ve also been involved heavily in education; from teaching at Art Center to Gnomon and finally starting my own design school in Singapore,

How I got started in this industry is directly linked to Art Center. I wore an Art Center T-Shirt to GDC (Game Developer’s Conference) and was spotted by a producer from EA. He asked me “do you go to this school?” I answered “yes.” And he gave me his card and told me to send him a portfolio. Well, a few weeks later I was sitting in an office at EA with a lake view and a beautiful blonde 3D artist office-mate! (whom later became a good friend of mine at went on to ILM) From EA, I moved around to different gaming studios and eventually ended up in Hollywood.

What have you been up to in the past few years?

Back in 2006, I was a bit burnt out and wanted to do something different. I actually started to fly airplanes and got heavily addicted to it (used to fly around LA at least 3 times a week). But I still craved something else. So, after speaking to a friend of mine, who started a successful mobile-games company in China, I decided to take a risk and start my own game studio in Beijing. It was not an easy decision; since I had put in A LOT of my own financial investment plus moving to China. But I also knew that taking risks is part of getting the reward. Thus, in July of 2006, my wife and I moved full-time to Beijing. China is a booming market in just about everything. There are a lot of investments going on especially on the media front. After moving to China, it took about 6 months to secure a 7-figure private investment.

After spending about 2 years in Beijing (which was wonderful in the most part), we finally completed the game and sold it off to a US publisher. This freed me from my daily position and allowed the company to run itself. In late 2008, I started to plan my next move. I do sometimes miss the fast-moving design world in LA, but I also have my personal goals in life to achieve.

I had a few things on the table. 1 – A very generous offer to start a media studio in Los Angeles; backed by a heavy investor. The aim of this studio was to design entertainment products which can bridge the gap between virtual items (such as films and games) to consumer products. 2 – Start another game studio 3 – Well, 3 is more complex so let me back up. During my time in Beijing, I often flew down to Singapore for business meetings. After going there so many times, I really fell in love with the country (especially Singapore Airlines!). So after Beijing, I was toying with the idea of starting another game studio in Singapore. However, after visiting all the schools and various studios there, I noticed a huge lack of qualified employees. There’s no use putting up a multi-million dollar invested gaming studio if there are no talents available for hire. This got me thinking about starting a school.

I love to teach and the idea of starting a design school came very naturally. We also held a lot of discussions with the Singapore government, who are very supportive of us. They offered us grants and other subsidies to base my design school in their country. Long story short, I moved to Singapore in the spring of 2009 and officially launched the FZD School of Design in July. We are now moving towards our second term intake and things are going very well.