Rick started his career as a teenager in his parent's house in Michigan getting a rejection call from Stan Lee's office regarding his idea to direct a Spider-Man movie filled with cameos of other heroes to ignite a series of films that would eventually require Marvel branded theaters to show the vast number of serialized movies the could be created. An idea ahead of it's time and not Ironman-centric so I missed out.

His next step was to work on the ill fated horrendously bad yet fun Fantastic Four movie. Not that one, the one Roger Corman was hired to start but not finish in 1993. Ever upward, he moved onto Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and made all sorts of kookie visual and special effects from hand drawn energy (still his favorite) to stop motion to live action puppetry, to complex composites while putting his picture or name into the show wherever possible. At an invitation from Stan Winston, Rick applied to work at his shop, but as it was located in the Valley and Rick lived on the West Side, Rick decided he want to be closer to his then growing family.

 

This lead to directing video game cinematics for Electronic Arts, where Rick directed virtual icons from James Bond to Superman. From soup to nuts, Rick created the stories, drew the thumbnails, made animatics for CG vendors to follow and supervised editing and sound sessions. Often Rick called upon his compositing background to do the finishing polish himself. Alternating between directing and compositing, he dutifully stayed in his office when told "Don't come out until Tom Cruise is no longer in the building." Unrelated, Rick caused a panic and the FBI was minutes from entering his Flame bay due to a hilarious misunderstanding. He did sneak his name into the first Harry Potter movie, so that's sweet.

Later as a compositing supervisor and VFX supervisor Rick seemed to be on track to finish his career out on film and television in NYC, but daringly moved to Atlanta while remaining part of a New York office to just confuse the heck out of everyone. He currently enjoys trolling his kids, dogs, wife, and coworkers with bad puns and dumb shenanigans.

 

Oh yeah, he's also a T-Rex for hire, but that's another story and there's a button for that!