Richard Van As, a graduate of Digital Media Arts College (DMAC) in Florida, came from Britain to study visual effects animation. According to the school, he was looking for a graduate program in the U.S."Once I had found the DMAC website I knew that this would be the place that could take me to that next level I was looking to get to," he said.
Van As first found artistic inspiration when he viewed the move Jurassic Park as a child. He told the school that he thought he wanted to make dinosaurs for a living.
The animator eventually began producing commercial work, such as an animated television advertisement for Pediatric Sleepsolvers, which aired in the Palm Beach area. He then went on to larger projects for Atlantis Studios.
"I was required to produce six different animations to be used in an infomercial for the client's product," he told the school. "That project was more technically challenging but was rewarding in that I gained a lot of knowledge in a very short space of time."
Overall employment of artists and related workers is expected to grow by 12 percent over the next several years, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
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