David A. Cherry

David Cherry took a long time deciding what he wanted to do in life before he finally settled on art. At various times he has been a brick layer, a gas station attendant, a postman, a lifeguard, a popcorn and candy vendor in a movie theater, a scholar focusing on Latin and Ancient History, a short order cook, a carpenter, a roofer, and a lawyer. He figured he was trained for just about everything but art.

He had settled down to being an attorney and was happy with it. The work was intellectually stimulating, the hours were good, and the pay was getting so good he was feeling guilty about it. Then his sister, multiple Hugo Award winning author C. J. Cherryh [yes, they do spell the name differently, but they really are brother and sister], talked him into going with her to something called a Worldcon.

"She [Carolyn} had just sold her first book, The Gate of Ivrel, " Cherry recalls, " and she wanted me to go along to keep her company since she wouldn’t know anyone there and was a bit nervous about her first big public outing as an author. I had no idea what we were getting into. Up until then, Carolyn had been a high school Latin and ancient history teacher. I had had no idea she wanted to be a writer. I thought all those late nights at the typewriter had been spent doing lesson plans. And although I read SF and fantasy voraciously, I had never heard of a science fiction convention, much less a Worldcon."

But Cherry went and wandered in awe through the exhibits and panels of the 1976 Worldcon in Kansas City, dressed in his gray three piece suit and looking more like hotel security than a fan. Eventually, he stumbled upon the art show—and his life was changed from that point.

"I had always played around with art as a hobby," says Cherry. "I liked doing realistic depictions of myth and fantasy, but the art world wasn’t buying that and the art schools weren’t teaching it; so, I had never considered it as a career. But when I looked at those acres of art panels, it struck me that the professionals there were making a living doing the kind of art I had always wanted to do."

In the following years, Cherry found himself working more and more at his art, teaching himself how to draw and paint. The obsession with it grew. In 1980 he accepted his first professional illustration assignment, having never seriously tried to work in color before. In 1982 he left his law firm and began to work part time as an illustrator. In 1983 he got his first paperback cover assignment. In 1984 he quit legal practice altogether and went into art full time. In 1986 his art won two of ASFA’s Chesley Awards [ASFA being The Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists]: One for Best Color Work/ Unpublished and one for Best Cover/ Hardbound. In 1987 the Donning Company published a book of Cherry’s work, entitled Imagination: The Art and Technique of David A. Cherry. In 1988 that book was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Non-fiction Book, and Cherry himself was nominated for the Best Artist Hugo. He was nominated a total of nine times over the next ten years but never won the Hugo although he has won almost every other award available in the field of SF and fantasy illustration.

Cherry has done covers and illustrations for the works of such authors as Stephen R. Donaldson, Poul Anderson, John Brunner, David Brin, Piers Anthony, William Shatner, L. Sprague de Camp. Lois Bujold, and, of course, his sister, C.J. Cherryh, to name but a few, but he devoted as much time to totally original works as he did to covers and illustrations. In fact, he did very few covers at all in 1988 and 1989 since he devoted virtually all of his time during those years to serving as President of ASFA. Still his work from that period found its way into several major exhibitions including the Park Avenue Atrium in New York and the Delaware Art Museum.

By the mid 90’s Cherry had married the beautiful Davette Shands and, with their daughters Kira and Kasi to take care of as well, David all but left the book cover market in favor of making a name in gaming art. "It did pay better", Cherry recalls, "but the real reason I was drawn to gaming art [pardon the pun] was because most of the gaming companies are still very young. And the people whose vision and enthusiasm created those companies are still there in charge of them. They are personally involved. They love the genre, all aspects of it, including the art. The book publishing field used to be that way. Publishers and editors like Don Wollheim, Lester Del Rey, and of course, Ian Ballantine, really loved the art and cared that the covers be all that they could be. With their death something spiritual and soullike went out of the business. I found myself dealing with people who cared nothing for science fiction or fantasy and a few months before had been editing cookbooks. Working for them was a chore. The fun was gone. In gaming, however, everything was fresh and new and exciting. It was also growing and expanding like mad. I immediately fit right in and was never at a loss for work. "

Cherry’s good friend, Bill Fawcett, is largely responsible for Cherry’s shift to gaming art. "He had a lot of connections with various companies and kept steering work my way," Cherry recalls. "And we would work together whenever we could. He is a kind of Rennaisance man and wears many hats. He is a writer, an editor, a publisher at times, owns one or more game development houses, and when that is not enough, he brokers deals which match writers and artists to produce such books as The Pern Guide, and The Guide To The Wheel of Time. It was Bill who hired me to do the concept work for a computer game of his, Shattered Light. He wanted me to become computer literate. So he gave me an advance large enough to allow me to buy my first computer. Two months later, he sent me a copy of Photoshop, without the manual, and gave me the assignment of coming up with a game ready UI screen in 30 days to meet the next milestone for the project. I logged over 450 billable hours that month studying Photoshop and working on that screen, but I made my deadline, and I learned a lot about computer graphics in a short time."

Today Cherry is Senior Concept Artist for Ensemble Studios, the developer of the world’s most popular real time strategy game, Age of Empires. The start that Bill gave him directly connects to what he is doing now. "It is like a reward for all those tough years working as a freelance artist. I love Ensemble. There is no other company like it in all the world. Tony Goodman, the President and founder of Ensemble, has assembled an amazing team of professionals and provided us with an almost perfect work environment where creativity can flourish. Everyone there is a top pro. And we all get along really well. I love what I am doing, love the other artists I am working with. Heck. I even love my Art Director, the Emmy Award winning Brad Pollard, and I never thought I would ever say that about an Art Director. I am very grateful to Bill Fawcett for starting me in this direction and for all his friendship and support throughout the years."

Now that Cherry is working for Ensemble, he has no plans to take on any more freelance work. Ensemble has more than enough to keep him busy. But Bill Fawcett and he have one last project to finish together. Right before he was hired by Ensemble, Cherry had begun work on illustrations for a companion guide to Terry Brooks’ bestselling series, Shannara. Bill came up with the concept for it, sold the idea to Ballantine Books, then hired David to do the art and their good friend, Teresa Patterson [author of the Guide To The Wheel of Time] to do the writing. The book has been over a year in production and contains some of Cherry’s best work yet. He has just finished the art for it and is working on the layout of the book. It is hoped that it will hit the stands sometime in the Fall of 2001.

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