Tell us a bit about yourself.

After completing a BA(Hons) degree in Computer Animation at Bournemouth University I got my first job as a character animator. I brought in my own home machine and worked for free until using a copy of LightWave until a position became available. I have been at the company for seven years now and am now the Animation Director. My main achievements have been animating the Kit-Kat moth commercial (with a LightWave moth flapping around a real naked light bulb, along with the slogan: "Give yourself a break"), which received a British television and craft award in 1999, directing the animation for the children's series Busy Buses and most recently directing the animation for the BBC's Christmas comedy campaign.

When did you see LightWave for the first time?

When I started the company was a LightWave animation house and also a re-seller so I was quickly introduced to the package and worked with a team that already had huge experience in the software.

What do you like about the package?

The thing I liked about the package most was its ease of use. I found it very simple to achieve what I wanted without to much fuss and bother. As well as being a character animator I am a bit of an all rounder it and I have always found most aspects of the package easy to get to grips with.

What could be improved for you?

There are always things that can be improved and from what I have seen of version 8 a lot of my wants have been answered. What I find more important on a day to day basis hitting tight deadlines, is stability and ease of use and that I can get results quickly and without any complication.

What spec machine(s) are you using it on at the moment?

Several PCs with Dual Xeon 1.75 GHz with 1 GB RAM and nVidia Quadro cards.

Are there any plug-ins you wouldn't be without?

X-Dof for depth of field as I find LightWave's in built DoF is quite poor in terms of the render quality.

In your opinion: Integrated or Separated? :)

Separated. At the end of the day they are quite separate things and for me it seems natural to work this way.

Tell us about your new ad for BBC comedy.

We were commissioned by BBC Broadcast to create a 60-second promotional trailer that will be broken down to two 30-second spots, to be shown on BBC 1, 2, 3 and 4. The trailer features exaggerated CG caricatures of Jonathan Ross, David Jason and Nicholas Lyndhurst as Del Boy and Rodney, Ummi Kumar from The Kumars At No 42, Kris Marshall's 'Nick' from My Family, Ralph Little’s character 'Johnny' from Two Pints of Lager And A Packet Of Crisps, plus Alastair McGowan and Ronni Ancona impersonating 'Posh and Becks'.

How many people worked on the spot?

There were five of us in total - Julie Otten, Jamie Franks, Chris Lumsdale, Jonny Grew and myself.

What were the responsibilities of the five people in the team?

We tend to work as a group on most things but these were people's main tasks.
Me - creation of characters and direction of the piece.
Julie - character animation and lip sync.
Jamie - main interior modeller and texturer
Chris - main exterior modeller and texturer
Jonny - some modelling for exterior and also some character animation and lip syncing.