resume . recent additions . emailer Born and raised in northern Chicagoland, Friend spent his childhood wandering the floor of his father's printing and engraving company, watching giant machines press out letterheads and business cards and eyeing the guillotine cutters from a safe distance. Sifting through the large dumpsters that held the discarded paper, he would bring reams of the misfit discard and doodle all over them at home. Friend ventured out to New York for school and shortly after entered into two internships in the commercial world. The first, with Curious Pictures, threw him into the world of commercial and broadcast, working in their newly developed computer department creating animated graphics and illustrations. The commercials ranged from graphic designs for Play-Doh to rotoscoping stop motion rigs for aniti-tobacco campaigns. The second was with @radical.media where he was placed on a traditional animation team working on a piece for Marvel Entertainment. He very quickly learned the phrase "we'll fix in it post" and learned to ignore the heartbreak received when working on a shot for a week and having it not make the final product. From 1996 on, Friend decided to take a risk and persue his freelance illustration and animation with his creations; a slightly dark but whimsical fantasy land just shy of reality with dreamlike inhabits. From digital to watercolors to sculptures to photography, his work has been used by such companies as Sesame Workshop, The Jim Henson Company, Nickelodeon, Disney, MTV, Saturday Night Live, The Cartoon Network and Mattel. Some of the houses he has worked at are Curious Pictures, Hornet Inc, SpeakeasyFX, and RSA. In the summer of 2008, Friend signed on to be the art direct and production designer for SpeakeasyFX to create Sesame Workshops's first CGI segment featuring the muppet characters, Abby's Flying Fairy School. On the project he was in charge of creating the environments, props and secondary characters for the pre-school show, which you can now see if you tune into Sesame Street every day. Friend has illustrated for books such as Blueberry Mouse (Alice Low / Mondo Publishing), Daniel and the Great Bearded One (Richard W. Friend III / Mondo Publishing), The Squampkin Patch: A Nasselrogt Adventure (J.T. Petty / Simon & Schuster) and Clemency Pogue: The Scrivener Bees (J.T. Petty / Simon & Schuster) He is also an avid lover of puppetry and continues his theater and television endeavors in the field.