David Russo(II)

The School of Visual Arts and Parsons School of Design in New York City began Russo's formal training as a creator working with the top artists and designers in the business, Milton Glaser, Seymore Chwast, Herb Lubalin and Dennis Wheeler. In 1990, Russo was signed to an historic book deal for a first time author across two divisions at Simon & Schuster Publishing, culminating in an eleven book publishing deal throughout the nineties. All of the books feature Russo's renowned interactive art and high detailed images of mazes, children's scenes, humor art, alphabets and writing. They were published in Japan, Australia, Brazil, Portugal and Europe and translated into six languages. Throughout the 90's David Goldman Agency licensed the art from these books, along with his A-Z illustrated alphabet series to top publishers and manufacturers around the world resulting in over 25 licenses and 70 product designs featuring his artwork from toys and games to posters, puzzles, apparel and more. In 1992, Russo made it on air selling his books and self manufactured 5 games in 1 mat product on QVC. He also made numerous live appearances in bookstores and museums around the country, along with television and radio appearances. Dick Clark featured Russo creating a 4'x8' maze live on one of his game shows.

The advertising world quickly took notice. Russo's ad for Absolut Vodka titled "Absolut Amazement" was one of the most expensive ads the campaign ever created; a double-gate-fold interactive pull out poster. Advertising assignments for HBO, Jose Cuervo, 7/11, Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising and others followed, as did a commission for a Mad magazine collectors' edition cover in 1993 and many special posters to follow. Articles on Russo's art career followed, in: Print Magazine, Studio-Israel, Idea-Japan, & U&LC to name a few. Many private collectors and museums have Russo's work in permanent collections and several traveling shows have also featured his work.

In Russo's early years he began as a production assistant and set builder for television commercials with Steve Horn Productions and Jenkins Covington Newman Productions working directly under the founder Andy Jenkins in New York. Russo then moved into traditional cell and computer animation, trained at art school and Dolphin animation studios. He worked at Mazin Wycoff Animation in 3D model building, Diamond Defaria Animation (Scrubbing Bubbles) and then ran the production department of ARM Animation in New York. He has designed many animated characters and stories during his career.

In 1996, Russo gained entry into the world of Hollywood via mentor-ship by Martin Erlichman (Barbra Streisand's legendary manager of 45+ years and producer of films such as Coma and Breathless), which eventually turned into a non-exclusive partnership, creating Erlichman Russo Productions. Over the past 15 years, Russo has become the idea/format guy, created over 20 entertainment properties, specializing in inventing the ideas and concepts, designing the formats, building games, packaging the talent, from idea to sale with some of television's biggest producers.

To date as creator/executive producer, Russo has sold: The game show "Rouletter" to Paramount with John Goldhammer, "Dr. Judy" to FOX Syndication with John Goldhammer, 15 episodes of Combat Missions (2002) to USA Network with Survivor's Mark Burnett, 10 episodes of Magic Johnson's "Who's Got Game?" (2003) to MTV with Scott Messick and most recently, Russo was EP on 7 episodes of "Hey Paula"(2007) w/Scott Sternberg Productrions/Bravo. In 2010 Russo optioned the Pacman brand and is now in partnership w/Merv Griffin Entertainment to build a show around the mega world brand. Rouletter is expected to go into full production in 2011.

Russo is trained in several different martial arts and is a 4th degree black belt and Sempai Sensei in the art of Jujutsu with his own Dojo still in Maui.