Biography
Burlew first developed the basic style elements of his stick figure art at the age of 12 while drawing a comic called "Mr. Demon" for his lunchroom friends. He attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY, where he earned a degree in Illustration, and has noted that "everything learned about color use or panel composition... picked up at Pratt." After leaving college, Burlew worked for several years as a professional graphic designer in New York, primarily working on elementary school textbook design and layout.
Burlew first began playing Dungeons and Dragons in high school, but his interest in the hobby lapsed until 2000, when Wizards of the Coast released the Third Edition ruleset for the game. Upon running his first adventure with the new rules, Burlew found that he needed several identical miniatures to represent a group of bandits, and so used graphic design software to draw simple stick figure cut-outs in the style he had developed as a youth instead of purchasing lead miniatures. He continued to use stick figure monsters for years in his D&D sessions. Burlew frequently assumed the role of the GM, a role he has likened to writing a webcomic.
Read more about this topic: Rich Burlew
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“As we approached the log house,... the projecting ends of the logs lapping over each other irregularly several feet at the corners gave it a very rich and picturesque look, far removed from the meanness of weather-boards. It was a very spacious, low building, about eighty feet long, with many large apartments ... a style of architecture not described by Vitruvius, I suspect, though possibly hinted at in the biography of Orpheus.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)