I started my career as an offline editor in the pre-digital, low-band, u-matic days of television broadcasting. Pretty soon I was enjoying the wonders of three-machine, betacam-sp editing and soon after that I was being dazzled by the prowess of 'non-linear' editing. Seriously, it was an exciting time.

Then one day somebody dropped off a showreel from a company called Alias|wavefront. I remember it clearly. It was cut to a Bad Religion track called '21st century digital boy' and I must have played that tape more than a hundred times. I hadn't even noticed that the sun had set!
It wasn't long before I had convinced my boss that 3D was the way to go and that we needed to invest. A couple of weeks later we had FormZ and Electricimage running on a PowerPC mac. Hot stuff then! It was right after Terminator 2 came out and they'd done that nuke explosion shot in the film with Electricimage. I spent my december learning the gear. I was hooked!

Pretty soon after that I got a job at a the Video Labs premiere FX unit called 'The House Next Door'. I spent many a late evening in front of an SGI machine patiently coaxing the goods from the hardware. I met many good friends and made lasting acquaintances while I was there.
It was here too that I was offered a job as a Flame compositor. So I followed the call and spent five years comping commercials and the odd fx shot for the then up-and-coming Video Lab film unit. That was a good time for me and I learnt a great deal working with several talented directors, with the 2D knowledge standing me in good stead later in my career.

At the end of the millenium I moved to Cape Town. I transferred to Video Lab's Cape Town facility as Flame artist and continued working on commercials. I managed to maintain my passion for animation using Maya, Alias|Wavefront's next generation software package. After many good years I resigned from the Lab and struck out on my own as a freelancer. I spent a year fighting the good fight after which I was offered a job as Flame artist at the new Condor post boutique which had just opened up in the Waterfront. I spent a year there working with many of my old colleagues from the Video Lab, after which I decided to open my own shop.

I managed to convince two talented youngsters to partner with me and we started SolidPDA(PostDesignAnimation). Now this is some story! We kept it running for two years with no capital! Talk about blood, sweat and tears! Although it was a great experience and I wouldn't change it for a thing, it turns out there's a world of difference between working on commercials, and trying to make money out of them! :-) We met some great people and did some pretty sharp work but it was not to be. We closed SolidPDA in September of 2006.
And then, in the funny way that fate has of working out, both my partners and I managed to get jobs with a company who were clients of ours when we were still up and running.

And thats where I spent two years, working for a terrific company called sunrise (www.sunrise.co.za ) with some of the finest human beings one could hope to meet. I filled a supervisory role at Sunrise, doing everything from recruiting & R&D to shading, lighting, rendering and compositing.

I love working with and learning from young (and old:-) talented people. I was also deeply involved in advising the story dept at sunrise of technical issues when they would start writing and storyboarding a concept. Given my compositing and cg experience I was able to plan technical approaches concurrently as the storyboard developed. I found myself working with the Director and Art director helping to plan and establish shots and sequences and how to achieve the best quality/efficiency solution.

Much of my time at Sunrise was spent on the second series of 'Jungle Beats' (http://www.junglebeat.tv ) and at the same time, we did extensive reseach on their second feature project called 'An African Tale'.

I left Sunrise halfway through 2008 and rejoined Condor Cape Town. I spent more than half a year at Condor working on several animated and vfx commercials and, once more, learnt an enormous amount from both the work and the people.

March 09 saw me going solo once more as a freelancer but that was short lived as I picked up a dream gig at Animal Logic in Sydney! (No small thanks to my mate Alfie Olivier :-) I spent 9 months working there, on a gorgeous looking Warner Bros. picture called 'Legend of the Guardians', as a lighting and comp artist. It was an unbelievable trip! I met so many wonderful and talented people and the job itself was an experience of note! 

I returned to Cape Town towards the end of 2010 and spent the summer working on two more episodes of Jungle Beat. My Australian experience came in handy and I'm sure you'll agree that the results look cool. See the gallery and showreel link for samples.
May 2011 had me packing my bags once more, this time for the northern hemisphere. I got a job at Aardman animation studios in Bristol, England. For those who don't know them, they're the guys behind 'Wallace and Gromit', 'Shaun the Sheep', 'Chicken Run', 'Flushed Away' and a bunch of other cool animated stuff. They're considered one of the finest stop-motion outfits in the world and I'm still stuggling to believe my luck. Thanks Pierre! ;-) I'm loving Bristol and the new people I'm meeting and of course I'm learning loads of new stuff, not to mention getting great experience. I'll be posting the trailer and any samples from the project as soon as I am able to show it so stay tuned.

 
Feel free to look me up on facebook or linkedin and send me a mail saying hi (or offering me my next gig!:-) and I'll do my best to reply. Ciao!

See the News or Gallery links for more info or mail me via the Contacts link for more.

Contact me via the Contact link on the left for a full resume'. 

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