Big changes! After over twenty years in academia, I'm now a full time artist and maker. My creative life now centres around comic books, animation and musical instrument making.
Since 2016 I've been working on various comic books, including my project work on my MA in Illustration at Falmouth University, which I finished in 2022. This has generated a lot of unfinished project - so my first big project has been to finish projects. The first of these, 'Masks 1' is on my website homepage. This was envisioned as a quick project in early 2020, but was set aside in favour of my Illustration course. It was the obvious first candidate for completion.
Since leaving the animation industry, my own animation practice has been in hiatus, but my enthusiasm for it was re-engaged by creating teaching materials for classes in narrative and storytelling. I've been working on pre-production and storyboards for a new short experimental animation called 'Hollowhead' which I'll start production on in earnest at the start of 2025. This will include aspects of stop-motion, CG and 2D animation.
My practice of musical instrument building is still in its early stages: I completed a scratch-build Octave Mandola in 2023 (the first part done on a course at West Dean College), and also build my first electric guitar from a kit. My main instrument project of 2024 (largely at West Dean) is a Clavicytherium (an upright Harpsichiord). This is is based on the instrument in the collection of the Royal College of Music in London; which is the oldest surviving keyboard instrument in the world. This is now about half complete and I hope to have finished it by the end of 2025. In between working on that I've build a new electric guitar from parts, which I've christened 'Hugo'.
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