About
When the time comes for me to bring these words inline with what is currently happening in my life, I find it remarkable how much my views, my work and more importantly how much I have changed. Life has moved me, sometimes reluctantly, caused me to switch track and change direction. What defines me as a human, as a father as an artist is how much I look forward to tomorrow, whatever it brings.
Currently, as Digital Content Development Officer for the Faculty of Arts at the University of Ulster reporting to the business liaison office, I engage with the Creative Industry sector, Colleges and the Universities in the development of networks, projects and through consultancy. I also lecturer part-time in the faculty’s School of Creative Arts, teaching undergraduate and postgraduate design. At the end of each semester I feel exhausted and swear never again but within a couple of weeks I can’t wait to get back at it. Selfishly, this is because I learn more from the students I engage with then I can ever offer them.
My career began in animation, myself and a few hundred other Irish kids, got lucky. We were born at the right time. Arguably the most exciting animation studio in the business–Sulivan Bluth Studios rolled into town just as we left school and our lives started on the paths they are on today.
For me the path started in EFX or Special FX as it is better know. Richard Williams called it background animation, which though thought of as somewhat demeaning to the art does describe very well what it was, then in the 80s. EFX was the art of animating anything that moved that was not acting. Smoke, water, fire, trees, shadows and later in the 1990’s, character tones and rim-lights which made the characters look less flat against the growing use of 3D backgrounds. Perhaps flatter more illustrative backgrounds might have been a smarter move. Luckily most of my time was spent doing the fun stuff.
Fun came to an end in 98 while working on Dreamworks “The Road to Eldorado” and RSI (repetitive strain injury) put the kibosh on my career as an animator, at least for a few years. There is nothing easy about being told you might never be able to draw again and those few words turned my life upside-down in a way that I could never have predicted.
In 1999 I took my hands off the wheel having realised that the sense of control I had over my life’s direction was merely a figment of my imagination. It doesn’t matter how hard you work, how good you are, or how hard you try to develop. Random events outside of your control will either knock you on your ass or lift you up and open doors you couldn’t see. Control is a figment of ego. Where hard work, continued self development and being good at what you do does pay off, is in our ability to make our own luck. I have been a consistently lucky bastard from one end of this life to the other, I think we all are, but there is no point being lucky if you don’t have your tools sharpened to the point of being able to take advantage of it.
Sometimes even after you have arrived it’s difficult to know if you are really there.