Personal Background

All you ever wanted to know ...

Background

Favourite Games

I first got started with cg back in the late '80s with an Amiga 500 and a copy of Deluxe Paint creating images the old way, pixel by pixel. Most of the artwork I created was for demos or games written with friends. There was a lot of community spirit amongst the early cg artists back then, it was a great time to be involved in computer graphics as everything was completely new! It was a constant learning process no matter what you were doing.

I then moved to London at the start of the '90s to create art for video games (PC and SNES) and it was there I progressed onto doing 3D work with Autodesk's 3D Studio R1 on a 486/33 with 16MB of RAM (a monster of a machine at the time!) CG production for games gradually started to shift onto the SGI platform and I started using first Wavefront TAV then Explore and then settling finally with Softimage in around 1995. At this point PC hardware had really caught up with SGI and everything started to drift back over to the PC platform, although I still stuck with Softimage for another few years until coming full circle with 3DS Max which is what I currently use in production, although Maya is lurking in the corner.

Over the years I've been involved in pretty much all areas of cg production and I really enjoy the technical & hardware side of things as much as the creative.

I'm also a big gaming fan / collector, owning pretty much every major platform released in the last 15 years or so. I don't have any particular favourite genre of game, I play them all.

I've still a big soft spot for the old text adventures or interactive fiction as it seems to be called these days. I loved all the old Magnetic Scrolls and Infocom titles, well, at least the ones I could complete ...

Trying to pick out your favourite games from all the titles I have played in the last 25 years is next to impossible. However, there are some titles that have had a bigger impact on me than others, they had that extra detail and flair that sparked my imagination and drew me in and made them memorable. This I think is what separates the good games from the great ones.

So here is a list of the titles that have had a big impact on me.

Arcades

Galaga, Tempest, Space Harrier, Salamander, Nemesis, Gauntlet, Outrun, Super Sprint.

C64

Driller, Paradoid, Tau Ceti, Spindizzy, Mercenary, Elite, Hunters Moon, Koronis Rift, Dropzone, Trailblazer, The Sentinel, Gunship.

SNES

Final Fantasy II & III, Secret of Mana, Super Metroid, Super Tennis, Yoshi's Island.

Gameboy / Advance

Advance Wars, Metroid Fusion. Super Mario Land 2

Amiga

Castle Master, Damocles, Gods, Secret of Monkey Island II, Turrican III, Wings, Speedball 2.

Saturn

Guardian Heros, Nights.

Dreamcast

Soul Calibur, Sega Rally 2.

Playstation

Vagrant Story, Front mission 3, Final Fantasy VII, Metal Gear Solid, Parasite Eve II.

Playstation 2

God of War, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, GTA San Andreas, Silent Hill 3

XBOX

Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, Halo.

GameCube

Resident Evil 4, Metroid Prime 2 : Echoes, Resident Evil, Resident Evil Zero, Zelda Wind Waker, Prince of Persia.

PC

World of Warcraft , Age of Empires II, Dungeon Siege, Medal of Honor Allied Assault.