Tom Richardson

I also paint scenery for opera, theater and rock & roll tours and I do murals and custom finishes for private customers. Before beginning work in the movie business I managed the paint show at FM Productions, where we painted for Rock & Roll, Las Vegas, Industrial Shows and theater. The paint shop billed about $4 million per year. Before that I worked at the San Francisco Opera Scene Shop for several years.

I am a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Fine Arts where I studied figurative painting with Neil Welliver (also Artcyclopedia, and Neil Welliver's palette), Paul Georges, Alex Katz and Yvonne Jacquette. I assisted in an undergraduate life drawing class taught by Rackstraw Downes.

If you are familiar with how movie sets are made, you know they are collaborations. I did not design any of the sets shown here, and I worked on them with many other people. I did contribute significantly to the final painting of these sets, or in some cases the sculpting of them. Click on a picture to see a larger image.

"The Matrix Reloaded" Reloaded did the best box office of all three films. The freeway sequence alone was worth the price of admission.	"The Matrix Reloaded"One and a half miles long, it had four miles of walls when you count the off ramps. Possibly the biggest set ever.	"The Matrix Reloaded" We wrecked 200 cars, I aged all of them. We had 6 hero trucks, 2 of us did all the graphics.	"The Matrix Reloaded" We had about 15 Cadillac CTS' and 12 ESC's. When one was damaged, or had new bullet holes, I had to paint all the others so each could stand in for any other one at any time. We saved only one for establishing shots in Australia.	"The Matrix Reloaded" The bike I pedalled up and down the freeway, if there were skid marks I tried to paint them out between takes.
"What Dreams May Come." Painting the logo from a 90 foot crane.	What Dreams May Come. The aircraft carrier with rust age and with velvet gashes pasted on.	"What Dreams May Come." The aircraft carrier as it appeared in the movie, it's the ship on the left. The others are computer generated,	"What Dreams May Come." Annie's Hell House exterior with the upside down cathedral.	"What Dreams May Come." The sea of faces. These were made from life casts, then replicated by vacuform. I only painted them, and tried not to crush them while walking through them to paint them.
"What Dreams May Come."The exterior of the villa. So much of the writing about this movie was dedicated to the digital visual effects, that some articles indicated that the villa was completely a visual effect. In fact we built and painted it, inside and out.	"What Dreams May Come." An example of the aging in the interior of Annie's Hell House. The painters and decorators completely redressed the house for the Hell House shots. We broke walls, glued new layers of paper onto walls to make a peeling effect, shredded curtains and shades and painted and aged the whole thing.	"What Dreams May Come." Here's a series of images showing the progression on the main arch in the Library from under construction to lit for shooting. I spent weeks, literally, in and around and on top of this archway readying it.	"What Dreams May Come." The arch was constructed of wood and plywood. Styrofoam sheets were applied and then carved and worn away to give it an ancient look. The books were first handmade by Dale Haugo and Todd Bray then multiple vacuforms were made of them to fill the library.	"What Dreams May Come." The tank is filled and this is the final look, dressed and ready to shoot. In the foreground is the shore of the villa which was at the opposite end of the tank.
"Nash Bridges." The hole between Nash's penthouse and the neighboring building.Carved styrofoam bricks and carved stryrofoam concrete	"Nash Bridges." The story is a missile is fired in the neighborhood. The wall is plywood with texture, the edges of the hole are styrofoam, the wood window and metal grate are custom made.	"Down Periscope." About a dozen of us completely scraped, sanded, primed and then painted fake rust on this WWII submarine, the Pampanito, which is normally on display at the Maritime Museum in San Francisco.	"Phenomenon." This is one of those movie stories, when they scouted this farm it was all weathered wood, perfect for the movie. The owners then whitewashed everything including 6 feet of a tree in the middle of the yard. So we had to make it all look like weathered wood again, and paint the tree to look like a tree.	"Flubber." Faux wood graining in Hoenicker's mansion.
"James and the Giant Peach." The peach was too big to go from Hunter's Point to Treasure Island on a truck on the Bay Bridge, so here it is traveling by barge under the bridge.	"James and the Giant Peach." Putting finishing touches on the peach and the hill on Treasure island. You can see the top of the peach behind the hill left center, it was too big too fit in the door	"James and the Giant Peach." The peach about to roll down the hill. Ready for its closeup.	"James and the Giant Peach." The peach pit house in the beginning stages of carving.	"James and the Giant Peach." James' peach pit house as it appeared in the movie.
"Mumford." The aged truck in which the handsome stranger arrives.	"Mumford." The old gas station outside of which the handsome stranger is attacked.	"Woman on Top" We painted the trim on this apartment at Haight and Fillmore, redid the lobby and added the murals and an elevator inside.	"Woman on Top" We painted this backdrop for the cooking show. This set was originally made in Brazil, we recreated it in record time for a fantasy sequence.	"Woman on Top" The control room for the cooking show, this too is a recreation of the original set made in Brazil ands established in some scenes, additional scenes were shot on this set at Custer Street Studios.
				Grateful Dead Backdrop Grateful Dead Backdrop
"The Rainmaker." Some of the work on The Rainmaker involved remaking elements that had been shot in Tennessee for insert shots. This is a remake of Miss Birdie's interior. By some miracle I had the exact thermostat in my tool shed left over from some apartment renovation years ago.	"The Rainmaker." This is another insert shot. We completely remade Rudy's apartment. Shown is a heater that the carpenters built and I painted to match the one on location.	"The Rainmaker." The Judge's chamber built on stage at Alameda.	"Nash Bridges." A painted enlargement of a pulp fiction novel for a character's apartment.

Design for "A Cinderella Story" - Winnepeg Ballet