Hi, I was hoping that would catch your attention.

It's been a minute or so since my last post

I won't start this with the usual "'I need to get back into posting / Updates coming soon!" thing that you see on most artists neglected websites.

Truth is, I post fairly regularly on social media (mainly Twitter) and this blog has taken a back seat in the absence of any recent long form content.

With that said, here's a brief update of what's happened since my last post in 2017:

• Got nominated for an Annie Award for my work on Hellblade and went to the ceremony in L.A (which was mind-blowing and so surreal).
• Made a slight career move and said goodbye to my home of 8 years at Ninja Theory to start at Playground Games as Principal Animator on an unannounced project (still super excited!)
• Started teaching Games Workshop 1 at iAnimate. I've done 4 semesters and it's been very fun and rewarding.
• Started streaming on Twitch.

Yes, I guess I'm a streamer now!

The main goal of my Twitch channel is to provide an over the shoulder view of how I approach animation. I've learned a lot over the years just watching others work and I wanted to try and give others that same opportunity. There's no set agenda, just me working on what I want to work on and sharing the process with those who are interested with a light sprinkle of Q&A.

The series is called Lets Animate! and I'm currently working on a combat sequence inspired by games like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. It usually runs around 2 hours and I've done a few ( 7 I think?) so there 14+ hours of animation workflow to catch up on. 

​https://www.twitch.tv/cgmation

Come and say hi every Tuesday at 8pm (London, U.K.)

I did a live interview with Jason Shum yesterday which was streamed on Facebook. It was a lot of fun and there were a lot of great questions to answer! The stream is now online and you can check it out on Youtube here:

Here is an interview I did recently with Artem Sergeev for 80 Level.

​We cover how I got started, how I tackled animating Senua and the Enemies, different tools I used and various challenges I encountered.

Read the full interview here.

​A talk I did recently at the Digital Art Conference in Frankfurt is now available to watch... for free!

Hellblade is done.

No more tweaks, no more fixes.

Out in the world for everyone to see, on August 8th.

It's difficult reaching the end of a project to look at it without scrutiny, without thinking what you could have done to make it better, more polished. When you've spent a good chunk of time looking for problems and bugs, it's hard to see with fresh eyes what has been achieved. At some point you just have to stop and see that you did the absolute best you could in the time you had, and that's OK.

But for all the little imperfections there may be, I'm super proud of what our little team has achieved. It hasn't been easy; making games is HARD. Like, really frikkin' hard -- but it's this challenge and the amazingly talented people I've worked with that has pushed me into becoming a better animator, and a better game developer.

Now there is nothing more to do except wait for the release, and hope people enjoy the experience

I hope you like it!

Here's an update of our progress on Hellblade, now scheduled for a 2017 release. The video showcases some of the cool new stuff we've been working on. 

Here's a fun little animation I found for Disney Infinity 3.0 that I thought I'd share. This guy was quite a challenge with fairly limited controls and his stumpy little legs but I managed to have some fun with it nonetheless.

Here is a short Q&A I did for the University of Bradford where I touch on things like career development, what I would have done differently, and advice for graduates looking for their first job. Hopefully there are a few key take aways regardless of whether or not you're studying at university .

Here's the follow up to the previous Combat Revisited development diary. We've been focussing on refining the combat system to get something fun and rewarding. It's still very much a work in progress but it's great to see the progress we've made so far. Check it out!