Previous Experience

 

Project co-ordination, Specification and Client Liaison

Product Design & Physical Media Management (Vinyl, CD, DVD)

Graphic Design & Print management

Web Design & User Experience

Web Development: HTML/CSS, PHP, Javascript (inc. HTML5 Canvas, Three.js, Web Audio API)

Object Oriented Programming

Unity Development: C# / Oculus Rift

Basic 3D Modelling for Prototyping: Maya

Audio Production & Engineering: Logic, Various Instrument and FX Plugins

Tru Thoughts (2002)

Having moved to Brighton with a mind to set up my own multimedia ‘label’ of some sort, I joined Tru Thoughts early in their life to gain some experience. At the time we were just four staff members and the two owners.

Initially I wore a number of different hats at the label (general office assistant, running club nights, managing accounts) which gave me the opportunity to get a decent overview of each component of the business before going on to occupy the specific roles of Production Manager and in-house Graphic Designer.

The Production Manager role essentially meant responsibility for delivering a suitable physical product on time and to cost, balancing the creative and business requirements of the label with the specific requirements of each artist. Including… Commissioning and supervision of album artwork, Supervision of studio sessions and mastering, Designing product and packaging specifications for various Vinyl and CD formats, Negotiating the manufacture and delivery of £250,000 worth of product annually.

The in-house Graphic Designer role involved design for releases as well as all promotional materials (flyers, posters, web banners, etc). Also responsible for supervising all print production.

Multilink Magazine (2005)

Having been somewhat put off the prospect of starting my own commercial label, I instead created Multilink, a digital magazine in pdf format, to further explore specific artists and media better aligned with my own personal tastes. I recruited a friend to assist with design and layout and set about contacting potential contributors.

Over the following two years I edited, art directed and published nine bi-monthly issues of Multilink, featuring a diverse collection of international artists and writers. Got a lot of great experience editing the magazine and managing the wide variety of contributors. Multilink was featured in Creative Review as well as being used by Issuu.com to promote their launch.

Inmo Ltd (2006)

In 2006 I declined the offer for the position of Office Manager at the label and decided instead to set up my own company to have more control over what projects I was involved with. I did however continue to provide Tru Thoughts with Production management and design on a freelance basis while offering the same services to new contacts I’d established via the magazine.

Capsule 01 (2009)

Capsule is a limited edition art book featuring work from various collaborators I’d been working with so far. Below is a short promo video I put together for it’s launch.

I’d wrapped up Multilink when I felt it had run it’s course. The novelty of the format was starting to wane and social media was now really picking up pace, providing people with their own publishing outlet and generally putting a lot more content in front of our audience. Capsule was intended as an experiment to see if an alternative, physical format might have potential but also as a way to provide a tangible souvenir to everyone who’d been a part of Multilink.

Web Design & development

I began acquiring basic web development skills back in 2005, primarily to create an online distribution point for the magazine. an initial static site using only html/css was followed later by a custom WordPress theme, introducing me to PHP/MySQL along with some simple Javascript for front-end features. I went on to further develop these skills by building sites for Inmo clients which lead to an increasingly curiosity with programming and logic as opposed to basically just writing scripts.

Programming, Interactive Graphics and 3D

In 2013 I completed a course in Computer Science and Programming, provided by MIT via the edX platform. The course used Python to introduce computational thinking and algorithm design along with the general concept of Object Oriented Programming. Fuelled by a successful outcome and the desire to use what I’d learnt in a visual context, I built a small interactive audio visualisation in Javascript with the HTML5 canvas and WebAudio API’s.

I’ve written a pretty in-depth blog post about the design process behind the project here where you can launch the live demo. At the time of writing certain aspects of the Web Audio API were only supported by Chrome though so I’m not sure about other browser support. The source code is also available to view with easy to read syntax highlighting.

With rumours of a DK2 (supporting positional tracking!) on the horizon, I was keen to gain a proper understanding of 3D and went on to take a Udacity course in Interactive 3D Rendering with three.js and WebGL. On completion of which I built a another browser based demo, again using the WebAudio API but this time in 3D.

Again you can find an accompanying blog post here covering the design process and providing links to the live demo and prettified source code. This one works across pretty much all devices and browsers (probably not IE though) and has a nice interactive element to it as well when you click the spinning cubes.

With a reasonable grounding in the fundamentals of 3D graphics (geometry, transformations, maps and materials, lighting) and their respective roles in the rendering pipeline, I moved on to explore specific software tools and gain a better understanding of various workflows. C# and Unity have generally been getting the most attention while I’ve also been using Maya for basic modelling and more recently have started to get involved with the Allegorithmic Substance Suite for authoring PBR materials.

On the Unity front I’ve been developing a VR Demo, initially to show something to Sam but since it served that purpose it’s back to being more of a personal project. I’ll bring an updated CV1 version into the office soon along with the basic Oculus Touch sample scene I put together the other week but in the meantime here’s a couple of screen grabs from the old DK2 version.

And to sign off, here’s a project from last year using fractals to procedurally generate some nice looking abstract geometry. Nice one for reading to the end though, you must be pretty sick of me by now :)