About

I am a maker and creative and I love to share and experiment, my first love is animation and model making, but I just happen to be rather good at software.

Professional Career

I have worked at NNUH as a Reprographics technician (wetroom photographic processing- remember that?) and Illustrator, the John Innes Centre as a Graphic Designer, progressing into online design, Archant Regional as Web & Graphic Designer, where animated flash banners were de’rigour and online video started to come in, Open Academy for a complete corporate design overhaul and photography archive. Then working at City College Norwich where I tested, researched, animated, illustrated, photographed, video’d, and created layouts for; books, vehicle wraps, touchscreens, AR, 3D maps and anything else my boss could think of! I then took on the challenge of the UEA Media Suite as their Digital Learning Technologist/Manager, where I oversaw the finishing build and installation of 9 edit suites, a new sound room, an online booking system and social media presence and a 20 seat Mac lab where I went onto to teach Premiere, Avid, InDesign, Illustrator and sound production across the Humanities Faculty.

In my current job I have gone back to my first love of making things move, as I support all of the students on the Animation Course at NUA. I specialise in model-making and stop motion fabrication and filming, plus teaching TV Paint, Premiere Pro, After Effects, Audition, Toon Boom, Animate, Audio Recording techniques and professional workflow in Dragonframe. but also keep on top of my video and design skills by making screencasts of my sessions and handouts for the students to follow along later.

I also do freelance video editing and logo creation in Illustrator.

One of my personal highlights was when I studied for my MA at NUA. I wanted to use current technology to make my art playful, immersive, interactive and memorable, using the beauty of the animated line in its form and movement, my inspiration coming from trying to make museum’s interactive.

I created an experience in which an audience sees the Great Bustard flying in Norfolk again, hunted to extinction (in the UK) in the 1840’s, in an installation using sculpture, animation and interactivity with Augmented Reality to produce a truly transmedia exhibition. The interactive installation on first viewing might appear as a static gallery/museum space, until the viewer steps into that space and their presence triggers a beautiful visual animated reaction from a physical object.

Although underpinning the outcome was a lot of technology, and I had to learn MAX msp, projection mapping onto a 3D shape, installation set-up and overcome testing on pcs, to using the college macs, I still wanted my animation to be beautiful, the sculpture to be impressive and to evoke a feeling of wonder and a sense of intrigue as the story behind the extinction of the Bustard and it’s reintroduction in my creative, interactive installation.