Featured Artist - Rich Smith

Ralph Thomas·April 25, 2026

I first met Rich at LightBox Expo I believe. He's a mild-mannered humble guy with tons of talent. I was blown away at his dynamic drawings and amazing characters. I think his story will resonate with you... keep reading to get to know him better!

How did art play into your childhood?

Art, particularly drawing, has always been a huge part of my life. Some of my earliest core memories involve drawing. From drawing spring time scenes in preschool featuring big flowers and animals to drawing and creating my own characters with my friends in elementary school. I, of course, became the “kid who draws” in class. If I was holding a pencil I was drawing. Even when and where I shouldn’t. Not much has changed since!

Were the people in your life encouraging?

Encouraging for sure. I’ve had no shortage of high fives and “atta boys” when it comes to my art, especially from friends and family. That said, I come from a small blue collar New England town so figuring out what to do with the skills I had cultivated was a challenge both to myself and those around me. Like everyone agreed I should do something with my art but there were no clear paths I could be directed to. Maybe that’s just a part of the journey though because here we are!

What were your biggest influences: cartoons, comics, pop culture?

My biggest influences were and still are cartoons, comics and movies. Growing up when I did there was a ton of crossover. Most of my favorite movies had cartoon tie-ins like Robocop, Ghostbusters, Rambo, etc. I’m also a huge horror/monster movie guy! Beyond that I’m a sucker for the work of cartoonists like Jack Davis, Bill Watterson and Akira Toriyama. Add in a dash of super hero comics and that’s my style in a nutshell.

What sort of projects are you working on now? Personal or by assignment?

Both. As far as current freelance projects I can’t really go into much detail, at least until announcements are made, other than I’m cooking up another horror rock album cover and some fun comic work. As for personal work I am currently finishing up chapter one of my creator owned comic, Special Monsters Unit. The idea behind it is to blend a buddy cop action movie like Lethal Weapon with classic monsters. I am also writing the script for another creator owned book of mine called Mischief Night. Both should be ready to rock by summer time this year!

What would be your ideal job?

I absolutely love designing characters. I love expressions and personality and I believe my skills would lend themselves well to character design roles. I’ve also been very interested in literary illustration for novels. I dig books like The Last Kids on Earth and would love to do something in that vein.

If you were Edgar the Bug (from Men in Black) and could jump in the skin of anyone and also draw like them, who would you be?

Oh man, that's a tough one. My first thought is how silly can we get? Like I’d be down to jump into the skin of someone like Bill Murray just to see what he could do. But for a more serious answer I’d go with either Jim Lee or Joe Madueira. The rate at which they create show stopping pieces has always been unreal to me.

I love that you primarily ink your work with, well, actual ink. How often do you ink digitally? Or do you only color digitally?

I’ve actually come to develop a kind of hybrid method. I draw small on paper with a pencil and then scan it in. From there I might make some adjustments digitally. Maybe resize some things or move things around but I try not to go too crazy with that. I then convert those pencils to blue lines and print on decent paper like bristol board and its on to inks. Then I scan those and color them digitally. I find, at least for my art, digital works best as a tool rather than a medium. I find way more joy in working with real tools. Having a finished piece that I could hold, hang and point to as the proof of hard work is way more satisfying to me than a file sitting on my computer. Also I feel like there is infinitely more personality, at least when it comes to my work, in a true final piece than with pixels.

What are your favorite tools?

My all time favorite tools are a carpenter’s pencil, cheap halloween pencils I grab in bulk and my ink brushes.

What cereal box character best represents you?

I think I gotta go with Tony the Tiger! I feel like I’m a positive guy and I dig sports.

Tell me about the Corner Box Challenge.

The Corner Box Challenge came about one day a few years back when I was bored and creatively stuck. I needed to draw something, ANYTHING, and when I warm up I tend to draw faces. So I started drawing some faces of X-Men characters. Doing so made me think to look up some old corner boxes and give one a refresh in my style. I posted it on IG and people loved the idea. The most common comment was “I need to do one of these”. I then decided to design the templates and open up the challenge to everyone! I’ve done it twice and it’s been so much fun to see everyone’s work and see others connect through a sort of group project like that. I may have to fire up the challenge again soon!