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Right then, seeing as you asked........

At the moment I'm 36, living near Cambridge with my girlfriend (of a very, very long time!) and 3 cats.

I work as Lead Artist for a company called Short Fuze in Cambridge developing a virtual movie making tool called Moviestorm. Having joined the company as the only artist pretty much at day one my duties include anything and everything from character and prop modelling, texturing, rigging and animating, Mocap handling, facial set ups and prop creation. Also a fair bit of paperwork and dealing with outsourcers assisting the other artists in a technical capacity, liasing with the programmers and stuff like that. Fingers in every pie really and generally not afraid to make suggestions elsewhere too, so anything and everything really.

In my spare time I tend to work under the name HappyToast, making music videos for people, bizarre and hard to describe animations and pictures, write articles and reviews for 3D world magazine, make 3d assets and animations, do some stuff for the Mighty Boosh, some web graphics, caricatures, publish books of zombies, colour in for 2000AD (I'm an ArtDroid!) and write sketches for the BBC!

I won a Master Award from Ballistic Publishing in the "Humorous" category of the gorgeous CG art book "Expose 4" for my picture "Bill's Snowmen" - Something I'm really quite chuffed about and have had over 100 front pages on my home from home B3ta.com, which I'm even more chuffed about.

I also cook, eat, sleep, listen to music, watch TV, play on my PS3, do a spot of decorating and if the weathers nice and it's looking shabby - a little bit of gardening. Oh, I also constantly intend to actually do some new pictures and animations of my own design, but I'm generally too busy doing other peoples!

I like all things creative - films, art, digital media, fashion, design, architecture, dance, sort of everthing really, buy a lot of music - preferably new noises that I haven't heard before, and play games that assault my senses and make me think I'm Bruce Lee or Superman for 30 minutes of the day.

I'm happy.

And I think thats probably the most important thing.

 

Me at work, when I was at Codies

STUFF
Quick shouts to everyone I know who wants a shout. Most notably Louise, Folks, St. Albans gang, Allan, Lee, the Welwyn massive, Stevenage crew, scattered remains of the PS2/3 posse, Codies collective, AudioMotion movement, the others, the rest and an occasional few still held dear. Also to all the cats.

And as always a healthy glass is raised to the memory of Paul Maynard, a top bloke without whom I probably wouldn't have done any of this 3d stuff.

Links to other sites of interest


Recommendations/Inspirations - updated whenever I find the time, excuse any repeats!:
FILM: Try Star Wars, Hero, The Incredibles, Night of the Demon, The Picture of Dorian Gray (Hurd Hatfield version), Edward Scissorhands, Monsters Inc, Enter the Dragon, American Werewolf in London, Finding Nemo, Shaun of the Dead, The Big Lebowski, The Big Blue, Death Becomes Her, Carry on Screaming, Sky Captain, The 6th Sense, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Some like it hot, The Thing, Ratatouille, Cabinat of Dr Caligari, Baraka, Amelie, The Matrix (1st one only, and not the last 30 seconds!), Ghostbusters, Ed Wood, Equilibrium, Shaolin Soccer, The Crow, The Princess Bride, Mulan, Donnie Darko, Batman The Movie (Adam West), Grosse Point Blank, Wall-E, Blade Runner, Microcosmos, Ice Age, True Romance, Young Frankenstein, Hamlet (Zeferelli's and Ken's), Leon, City of the Lost Children, Hellboy2, Delicatesen, Addams Family (and Values), and loads more.

MUSIC: Try Adam and the Ants (Kings and before mainly), Bloc Party, Lamb, Four tet, Goldfrapp, Mum, Howling Bells, O.H.Krill, The Delays, Nouvelle Vague, Tim Booth, DJ Format, James, Radiohead, Leaves, Santogold, Death in Vegas, Beck, Shakespeares Sister's 3rd album, Massive Attack's soundtrack to Danny the Dog, Bjork, Skeewif, Lemon jelly, Sneaker Pimps, Kasabian, Elbow, Kate Bush's Hounds of Love, Jurassic 5, David Bowie, The Cure, Yeasayer, Nikka Costa, DJ Shadow, Henryk Gorecki, Beastie Boys, Nitin Sawhney, Stone Roses, Gay Dad, Interpol, Tricky, Sigur Ros, Inspiral Carpets, Mattafix, Prodigy, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, JJ72, Babybird, The Mars Volta, Chemical Brothers and Jazz. Plus a million and one other cds that I've accumulated over the years.

COMICS: Try PopBot, Watchmen, Calvin and Hobbes, Most of Chris Bachalo's work, Tank Girl (Hewlett and Martin's!), Hellboy, Arkham Asylum, Ramos' Spiderman, Sin City, Danger Girl, Battle Angel Alita, Adi Granov's Iron Man (you can tell I'm an artist and not a writer!).
/ART: Try Walter Sickert, Alphonse Mucha, Dave McKean, Bruce Timm, Dermot Power, Tamara de Lempicka, Tim Burton, early Jack Vettriano, Brom, Gustav Klimt, Arthur Rakham, lots more Art Nouveau, Pre Raphaelite and odds and sods. Far too many for my tiny mind to recall right now.

GAMES: Try Tekken, PixelJunk Eden, Way of the Exploding Fist, Devil May Cry, Rez, Little Big planet, Bust A Groove, R-Type, Onimusha 3, Gitaroo Man, SSX Tricky, Atic Atac, IK+, Ratchet and Clank (all), Psychonauts, Katamari, Metal Gear, Soul Calibur, oh and Private Dancer and the TOCA series! :D