We like to dive right into the meat of things usually, but VFX is such an interesting and specific field that I think it would be really interesting to hear. I'd certainly love to hear what initially inspired you to pursue a career in visual effects and sort of if you can talk a little bit through your working in visual effects and working for ILM. Sure.

Yeah. Well, it was an indirect route. If I'm thinking about how it started, I was a cat draftsman back in the late 80s and there was a real focus on precision. I picked up some of that from my father who was a carpenter. Is it half an inch or is it seven sixteenths? You know, those details are sort of really important. And I really saw that focus on accuracy, that ability to

convey a graphical image when I was working as a cat draftsman. Also just for the listeners, CAD is a design software,

right? Exactly. Yes. And so CAD refers to the term computerated design and there are a few programs. The program I was using at this architects firm was called CAD VANCE, but the leader in that field at the time and for many years after was AutoCAD. I developed by Autodesk and they're one of the largest software developers in the world. I got my degree as an analyst programmer. And so I was writing code. I got hired by this architectural firm where they, it was sort of like an overlap between writing code and then also doing computerated design. And so that was sort of an entry to software. I was with that company for a couple of years and then I had an opportunity to join Autodesk, the makers of AutoCAD. And so initially I was testing software that I got into some technical writing for them where I was working in the UK, the UK branch and we would have to localize documents. The original reference manual would be written in, it would be produced in San Francisco in Sosa, Lito actually with the head office was. And then they would send that documentation to all the different territories, whether that's France or the UK or the Ivory Coast. And then local writers would localize a documentation, make adjustments specific for their market. So for me, it was changing to imperial from metric. I

see. Yeah. Important things to do in architecture, right? Because those are the little mistakes like in aerospace engineering where you mess up a rocket ship design because you forgot to translate from inches to centimeters or whatever.

Exactly. So this was pretty early in my career where I just had, I went from a draftsman to now working at Autodesk, get an introduce to different types of graphics software. And then I had this opportunity to be a writer for a short period of time, a technical writer. For me, as I made this transition from being introduced to computer graphics and then getting into using it for more artistic and entertainment purposes, it felt somewhat, it didn't feel right for me to describe myself as an artist in those early days. It just felt like pretentious for me to say, I'm an artist. I was introduced to these 3D programs and then my sort of knowledge of that world expanded from initially from coding to architecture to engineering. The now I'm seeing, oh, these programs have been used for animation and for, we're seeing them in movies, which was just so fascinating to me. And so I had an opportunity to join a games company. They were doing some really interesting things in motion capture and doing cinematic renderings for some of their games. I would say that for me, where I, an inflection point was they sent me to SIGGRAPH. So I was still living in the UK and SIGGRAPH is this annual convention. It stands for the Special Interest Group in Computer Graphics. And I went in 1994 Orlando. It was my first trip from the UK. And my boss sent me to just, hey, this was sort of pre-internet, right? I landed in Orlando and was just blown away that there's this worldwide community of artists and people were very open about things they were trying, the techniques that they were attempting. And there was this thing called the electronic theater where the world's best animation is all it gets distilled down to three hours of the best work in the world. And so I'm seeing commercials. I'm seeing short films, students work, samples of work that was featured in movies that all gets distilled down to this three hours that you be all just the thousands of attendees get to just sit and watch this collection of work. And it was just so incredibly inspiring just to see this work, to get these ideas about what I'd never thought of using this tool in this way. And just the artistry was really quite inspirational. Around that same time, well, Jurassic Park, right, that came out in 1993. And the film itself was really inspirational. I remember the sense of awe seeing the characters in the movie were responding with awe as were we, the audience, right? The first time you see the raptor or the T-Rex, the Gallimaeum is stanpy, right? It's like, yeah,

I just saw it the other week. They did a 30th anniversary rerelease in theaters of Jurassic Park. So I literally saw it a week ago and it still blows me away. Like it's still I've seen the movie 50 times or something. And every time you go see it, especially in the big screen, that awe is still there. And the visual effects and the CG dinosaurs, you know, there's very little of it in the movie, less than people probably remember. It's probably, I think, only 12 minutes of CG shots in the film. But it's so memorable and it's so game changing and inspiring and beautiful and perfectly done that it, I mean, it really changed everything, at least from the film side in terms of acceptance of CG. Yeah.

Yeah, it really did. And for me, it was the movie, but then also as much, oh, perhaps even more than seeing the movie, there was an event held at the South Bank that's one of the CG supervisors from Ireland, Stefan Fangmeier, that he gave a presentation on the work of Jurassic Park and that myself and a number of the colleagues from the games company, I was at, we attended this. So seeing wireframe and shaded previews of the stampede, getting to hear sort of the work they did and the challenges they had with storage and rendering and compositing, it really helped me to see that connection between the work I was doing as an artist at a games company doing cinematics and the work that they were doing at the highest level, that I saw that connection that, oh, okay, it's the same techniques, it's the same sorts of challenges that we're overcoming, although at a much higher level than I learned were at than what I was tackling. But I think that was sort of the seed for me that, oh, wow, I'm in this same world, like we're solving similar things. And I think that was the sort of beginning, that was the genesis of my hunger to get into doing more computer graphics, doing more animation and that hopefully one day I could get into visual effects and maybe get to that level. That was the beginning. I had an opportunity to relocate to the States in the late 90s in 97, I moved from London to LA. And I got to grow as an artist going from an artist to a supervisor as that company was growing and they were being taken on more ambitious projects, did the worked on the pilot paraleas and shots in panel destination to and elf and Talladega nights. And that was a lot of fun.