One of the newer masters of fantasy art, Ben is adept as a character and a background artist with an exceptional talent for lighting.

From his site … Ben was born in Essex, England in 1969, moving to New Zealand when he was three (his parents opted to follow the head strong youth), and has lived there since.

Art has always been a strong passion, combined with the love of fantasy, sci-fi, the direction of film, design and illustration seemed logical, but not so. As a young fellow Ben had aspirations of being the next Jacques Cousteau or David Attenborough, and accordingly gave up art as a subject when fifteen to follow the sciences.

A degree in Zoology followed, it was here that he could see the down side of pursuing this career, more than likely it was going to lead to a life time of living at school/university.

So after eight or nine years in remission a bad case of the arts flared up leading to a course in Visual Design and a chance meeting that found him working at Weta Workshop on the first pass at King Kong in 1996. The rest is recent history: LOTR, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, and King Kong.

All of this has lead him to where he is now hunched over a computer at home drawing pictures for RPG books and the like.