How old are you?

Sadly, 41 but saying that I never reached escape velocity from childhood. In fact the only difference between myself and my kids is that I have larger trousers and for a while I'm better on the PlayStation (but probably not for long).

Tell me about your kids.

My boys are Cale - aged seven; and Torin - aged five. They like Harry Potter, Beyblades, Metabots, Transformers - all that type of stuff. Oh, and they are into boogie boarding.

Tell us a bit about yourself.

I'm currently Munky Design ltd (based in the UK). I design, direct and produce broadcast titles and sequences, at the moment mainly for the BBC for whom I used to work as a broadcast graphic designer for nearly 17 years. When I began at the beeb it was at the BBC's open university and all our work was on film in fact my first job was cel painting a wireframe spinning bottle animation to make it look flat shaded - it took me a week! We had one of the first Quantel Paintboxes that came fully loaded with an amazing three fonts, as you can imagine, we were blown away!

From there I went on the join the BBC's London graphics department doing promo graphics and then general broadcast titles and sequences. Working at the beeb was great, allowing a varied mixture of live action direction/model shoots/motion control shoots/cel animation/special effects and illustration. Sometimes when the budget was tight I even used to make my own models, mostly from cardboard; in fact I remember making a 3D cardboard storyboard. I've had to learn many skills in order to realise my ideas. This has really stood me in good stead for a freelance career as I can turn my hand to most things.

I used to use Hal, but I moved more over to the desktop as I could design, animate, do 3D, composite, etc., all on the one machine. I've seen so many changes in the last 18 years. The stuff people do now was just incomprehensible back then (god I sound like a right old buffer chewing the fat with other wrinklies). Being in possibly the largest programme-making facility in the world working with some of the most talented people in television was a dream job, but I wasn't seeing my boys growing up so now I freelance from my studio at home and it's great too. Me and my munkys. When I'm not slugging it out in the design world I try to stick in a bit of surfing, windsurfing, kitesurfing, snowboarding, enjoying my sons' childhood, the countryside where we live and not commuting (total commute time per day is nine seconds).

How did you start at the beeb?

I tried for a job in news graphics as I'd done a lot of early 3D and 2D digital stuff at college but I didn't get the job. Anyway I was working for a slide presentation company when the boss of the graphics department at the BBC Open University production centre, Sue Dix, called me up and offered me a job as she'd been on the board I'd failed for news and liked my stuff. So there I was quitting a new job to take up a contract at the BBC. It was the best thing to ever happen to me as on my first day I met my partner and mother of our children Jane.

Did you get any awards while at the BBC?

While at the BBC I picked up a few gongs. Three gold BDA awards. A gold Promax. A BAFTA nomination. A Design Week finalist nomination and a Royal Television Society award for best titles. There are some more but I can't remember what they are.

When did you discover LightWave?

I first saw LightWave when version six arrived on my desk in a box, because Infini-d was not really up to the range of stuff I wanted to do and I needed more flexibility and more speed so after few days trying out another designer's Cinema4D I ordered LightWave as me and C4D were just not meant for each other and my C4D friend suggested LightWave so I took the risk and bought it on a project.

I first used it two and a half years ago (the project was about space, so I had to stick myself in at the deep end taking a laptop home for Christmas to learn on and, thanks to all of the space tutorials out there especially Tony Gilchrist's boiling sun tutorial, I came out alive and I haven't wanted to put it down since.