I have always had a fascination for technology, however, I never really thought about programming when I was younger. Up until Sixth Form I just wanted to make robots, so when I was at Sixth Form, I chose to take Computing (as I wanted to know how to make the software to control a robot), Electronics, Maths and Physics (Which was only for the first year). That was when I discovered my love for programming. Within 2 weeks of first programming, I had made a crude visual basic console-based game in my free time and I realised that all I wanted to do was to create programs that people could enjoy. As such, in my second year I took an extended project in Games Design in which I taught myself Java and the Android SDK, in order to do make an Android phone game. After which I decided to go to university to do a Games Programming degree at Bournemouth University.

In my first year of university, I was my class’s student rep and in the second year I was employed to be a PAL Leader (Peer assisted learning) by the university. For this I ran a weekly session for a first-year class on my course, to help them with any problems that they were having with the course. I was also part of the game development society and took part in a few university game jams, one of which my team came in third place and another which we came in first place.

During my undergraduate Games Programming course, I realised that I could also use the skills I was learning in other fields of technology. I had always loved animation and visual effects used in films and had always tried to be creative at any opportunity, creating the sprites and art assets for all the game jams and assignments I did. Unfortunately, I have never been the best at art, and even though I enjoy it, I never thought there could have been a way to be involved in the animation process. I realised on the undergraduate course that I could be involved, by creating programs and scripts to help with the process and using methods such as procedural generation to create background objects. As such I decided to take a MSc in Computer Animation and Visual Effects in order to give me the knowledge that I need to be able to work on either games, animation or visual effects. The MSc was part of the NCCA (National Centre for Computer Animation).

Even though I am working in the Visual Effect industry now, in my free time I still like to try and take part in Game Jams and have taken part in a few Ludum Dare ones.