Ryan Wood set out originally to pursue a career in illustration, but found his calling as concept artist in the video game industry, and relegates illustration work to the side. He is currently working for Avalance Software, a game development studio that was acquired by Disney.
Though he does maintain a presence on the Shannon Associates artists representatives site, his blog, woodyart, includes some illustration work but seems largely devoted to his personal projects, with lots of whimsical caricatures, posters, and cartoon-like figures and faces rendered in a relatively finished digital painting style.
His detailed rendering gives his springy, exaggerated characters a fun three-dimensional quality, set off by nicely chosen colors and lots of tactile textures, as in his period piece caricature of baseball legend Honus Wagner (above, top).
Wood teaches as part of the Schoolism online art classes, led by Creative Director Bobby Chiu.
There is an older tutorial based on one of Wood’s images created several years ago, that was used as an example by Corel as what was possible in their Painter 6 digital painting software (the current version of Painter is XI).
There is an interview with Wood on the Character Design Blog. Wood is also a contributor to the group Avalanche Software Blog.
Love his work, beautifully executed, with a wonderful sense of exaggeration and painterly excellence. Thanks for sharing!
Interesting artist. His work has a unique feel.