Experience: Over 17 years real world experience of computer graphics in all areas from TV, Commercials, Feature Films, Software Development, Games and Creative management. Credits include numerous BBC TV News productions, feature films such as Contact, Starship Troopers and Mortal Kombat, and video games for EA Sports, Fox Interactive and Midway.

May 2003 - Present Day
Electronic Arts Canada - Art Director - Need for Speed Underground.

September 2002 - May 2003- Senior Lighting & Technical Director, Aardman Animations Ltd.
I am currently working as the TD for Aardmans commercials division. The primary role of the job is to provide solutions to any technical challenges that arise in the production of a CG commercial or short. This includes determining the software to be used, setting up pipelines and helping develop the techniques to achieve the desired results. I also frequently work on developing the 'look' of surfaces and lighting which may involve the creation of custom shaders and scripts. I am also working on improving the overall production environment - which includes integrating the new renderfarm and new production systems.

April 2000 - September 2002
Electronic Arts Canada - Senior Art Director
My primary focus at EA is on the NHL sports game series, in this role I am responsible for every aspect of the in-game and presentation art that our team creates. This covers both the visual aesthetics and the technical functionality of the art for PC, PS2 and Xbox titles.

The majority of my effort over the past two years has been in the creation of scripted real-time moments built using a variety of off the shelf and proprietary non-linear tools. In this I have been able to apply many of the techniques that I have previously learned in Film and Television work.

1997 Oct. - March 2000
Radical Entertainment - Global Art Director / Creative Director.
I was hired to start the art direction for "ESPN NBA Tonight" and "ESPN National Hockey Night". This was a challenge which required building up the art department whilst at the same time getting two major productions moving. Over a period of several months I hired many artist/animators and additional Art Directors. The production tasks involved inheriting several art pipelines integrating artists into this workflow and ensuring that we hit our deadlines.

From a creative view I was tasked with setting the style guides for the games and managing the 3D-world creation. I found this job to be extremely challenging as prior to working at Radical I knew very little about game production, Basketball or Hockey. At the end of both these projects I was promoted to Creative Director and continued on to direct the Fox Hockey and Basketball games and finish 'Jackie Chan Stuntmaster' for Midway.

1997 Jan - Oct.
Sony ImageWorks - Senior Technical Director "Contact" and "Starship Troopers"
At Sony I was first challenged with creating, lighting and rendering of the central section of the opening sequence for the movie 'Contact'. This was an 1800 frame continuous sequence passing through the Eagle Nebula gas clouds. This was created using a combination of Houdini particles, RenderMan shaders and brut force. I also aided the choreography, lighting and composition of the entire 4700 frame sequence. Following this I produced the final composite of the "pod drop" sequence working in Composer and a scripted in-house compositor, this shot layered over 120 images of real, model and CG elements.

On Starship Troopers. I was responsible for the first ship to be hit by "bug plasma" I animated, lit and rendered the 3D elements and then composited the real models and pyro elements into the shot. This was all done in TAV, RenderMan and Composer. This shot comprised of well over 150 layers and took six weeks to perfect.

1991 - 1997
Vertigo Technology Inc - Manager of Technology Inc, Head of Animation.
When I first started working at Vertigo we had 3 employees and 1 SGI, over the following years I helped grow the company to a team of 40 people and expanded the range of projects from just software to include full animation production.

I managed the release of three versions of Vertigo Software. The most significant of these involved the full integration of Renderman. In doing this we created a seamless link to Renderman (no RIBS). We also allowed shaders to be edited and animated from within the interface.

We also started a close client relationship with Disney BVVE leading to work on 3 Feature films, "The Santa Clause", " Escape from LA" and "Mortal Kombat". Apart from creating full CG shots for the movies most of the work I did with Disney involved debugging Renderman shaders and formulating ways both technical and logistical to get the shots done.

1988 - 1991
BBC TV News - Designer and Head of 3D News Animation
I started work at the BBC as a 3D Animator tasked with the challenge of creating 3D animation on a daily basis for inclusion into News Broadcasts. This was both a technical and educational challenge. Technical in that the hardware at that time was extremely slow and educational in that I was the only 3D animator in a predominantly 2Ddesign department.

We started with small projects and achieved success in delivering these to the weekly news programs, we then grew this to include National Titles and daily 3D graphics. During the Gulf War we delivered daily animations, 3D images and icons to the 2D Paintboxes. By the end of my time at the BBC we had created a department that was fully accepted by the 2D Designers and was working towards a seamless integration of 3D animation and 2D images.

1987 - 1988
Techex - 3D animation consultant, Freelance Animator
I was a member of the Technical support group and Animation support team. We built, configured and maintained SGI and PC based animation systems. Also during this period I worked as a freelance animator in Central London working with Soho 601 and Carlton Television.

1985 - 1986
Provideo - 3D Animator
Set up and ran the 3D Animation area based on a Cubicomp PictureMaker system. We delivered Broadcast and Commercial animations

1983 - 1985
Sika Productions - 2D and 3D Artist, Set design and Lighting assistant
At Sika I was the artist in charge of all 2D and 3D art. We used a Paintbox and PC based 3D Animation system from Digital Arts. In this position I was also lucky enough to be involved in many of the companies location shoots where I assisted in lighting and prop design. We worked on several Channel 4 Productions.

Education - 1980-1983 Bristol Polytechnic, BA Hons Graphic Design
Principle areas of study: Animation, Photography and TV production.