I’ve been fascinated by dreams for as long as I can remember. The idea of being able to communicate dreams and ideas with each other is something humans have always worked towards.
On some level, all media aspires to the communication of concept. Speech, literature, theatre, music, print, photography, video, cinema have each brought us successively closer to being able to share personal realities with others. I believe that games bring us even closer to this ability as they let us create interactive substitute realities for people to experience in a manner unlike any previous media.
I am currently a student at the University of Hertfordshire on the Games Art pathway of the Animation BA(hons).
Before attending university I studied computer science, music technology, physics and philosophy before moving on to an art foundation diploma.
I spent a large amount of time working to create content in the virtual world of Second Life (SL) and still sell items on the SL Marketplace to this day.
With a team of content creators and friends I operated and designed two sci-fi themed locations residents could explore, shop, live and play in. The first, Starbase Alpha, was a large 3 sim estate offering a marina-like living facility for ‘spaceship’ owners as well as a large commercial district containing a wide range of content creators. Gained official recognition by Linden Lab (creators of the Second Life platform) as one of the definitive places to go when seeking science fiction item stores and content.
The second, Mesa 5, was a cyberpunk themed virtual city measuring 256x256x700m in usable area (not counting the various space themed areas above the city). It became a well known location in the SL Scifi community and for a time was the #1 most visited/popular PG13 scifi area in SL. Mesa 5 was in fact so popular that a rental system and waiting list had to be developed to handle all the requests for residential rentals. Mesa 5 was also a popular location for aspiring SL photographers and has a sizeable amount of user-created content on Flickr.
After studying classical piano and music theory up to grade 5, playing pieces up to grade 7 before (much to the dismay of my very musical family) I decided I preferred music as a hobby rather than a career.
Under Sensei Alan Cuthbert of Kamiza Dojo, I practised jujitsu for 8 years and kobudo for 3 years, acting as a class assistant/assistant instructor for 3 of those years. I attained the grade of shodan black belt with 4 tabs in kobudo before stopping due to illness and back injury.