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Contributed to 2004 IGDA White paper on online and downloadable games
Lectured at OFFF ’03 Media Arts festival, Barcelona
Lectured at Brighton and Hove City college multimedia course.
Personal work featured in “Taschen’s 100 Favourite Websites”
Contributed work to Creative Review DVD 01
Contributed to .net magazine
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My work at SCEE has involved a combination
of interaction design, graphic design, animation, development, and
the co-ordination of projects between various teams and departments.
I’ve also had an R&D role, scoping out new technologies, and
working with SCEE technology group, as well as exposure to the marketing
process. Some of the projects I’ve worked on are:
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As the project lead for the front-end,
I worked with external agencies from around Europe, and
internal design, usability, content and server teams to
lead the creation of the new version of Playstation.com
for Europe (launched April 2006). Responsible for adding
embedded video content and RSS feeds for the first time.
http://www.playstation.co.uk
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Rapidly developed in a 3 week period from
first seeing the browser to launch, creating the site involved
R&D work to scope out browser functionality and the video
download mechanism. Development involved working with SCEE Technology
group and the yourpsp.com content team.
(viewable on a PSP w/ 2.0 firmware, click “PSP” bookmark,
then Europe)
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Working with external agencies, the internal
content, design, and server teams to successfully launch and maintain
the yourpsp.com site.
http://www.yourpsp.com
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An online interactive feature based upon
the Open university shows of the 70s, it was created to promote
the PSP title.
http://uk.playstation.com/flash/worldofmercury/mercury_psp.html
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An online experience to showcase the PS2
title, the site consists of a 3D environment using the original
Maya environments and characters to lead the user through the
world of God of War.
http://www.godofwargame.com/
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At Randommedia, I ran the research and development
programme, as well as being responsible for all game design output.
I was involved in the production of the majority of games and installations,
from programming to modelling and animation. Work at Randommedia
also includes the production of web
sites, architectural kiosks, and educational interfaces for children.
Below are some of the more significant projects I’ve worked on:
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A gaming installation designed to provide
players with the experience of flying like a bird or superhero
by using webcams for the user interface. The short length of each
player session led to the requirements for difficulty curve, balance
and simplicity of controls being similar to an arcade game. The
game environment was laid out to avoid disorientation and to provide
constant challenges and fun things to fly over, around or through.
http://www.handcircus.com/fly/
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Combinational-logic puzzle game designed
around the concepts of teamwork and co-ordination. The rules were
designed to be simple to learn but to provide very complex puzzles
by exploiting emergent complexity. It was featured in the IGDA
2004 Online games white paper.
http://www.eqoa-game.com/
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Children’s creative toy to tie in with
the “Here’s one we prepared earlier” part of the show. Rather
than just create a static canvas for people to lay out their creation,
it was designed to promote the pleasure of building things with
your hands and the fun of playing with what you had made.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/bluepeter/active/createamake
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Online game designed to capture the fun
and frustration of real-world crazy golf. The user interface was
designed to be very simple and easy to learn. The level design
aimed to provide variety and all the expected obstacles (windmills,
loops, jumps) while still being true to the nature of the series.
Finalist for best online game at the BIMA Awards 2003 and SXSW
2003.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/shootingstars/games/krazy_golf
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An online experience set in an abstract
3D environment, this site was portrayed as a futuristic newspaper
covering the Helghan war. The site featured fully animated, rotatable,
3D vehicles and characters using the original PS2 Maya assets,
to showcase the game’s outstanding artwork.
http://www.killzoneps2.com/vektaToday
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A re-skin of the “Shooting Stars Krazy
Golf” engine, this online Shockwave 3D game added strategic elements
by allowing the player to pot the ball in the available holes
in any order, encouraging replay
http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/twopints/game
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Multiplayer and single-player game designed
to take advantage of the target audience’s experience of pool
and subbuteo to provide an easy to get into football game. A simple
A.I. system was designed to allow the players to enjoy it solo.
http://www.tif2004.com/
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An action-puzzle game created for the BBC,
based around the concept of hapless roadies and their need for
control. Won best game at the BIMA Awards 2002 and was a finalist
in several others.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/games/gamezone/roadies/
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User interface concepts for the interface for the £150 million educational
project. The concepts were based on research into interface design requirements
for children at different developmental stages.
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I was responsible for Flash development on
projects including a website for the music video directors Hammer
and Tongs and a games portal for the Coca-Cola drink “Alive”.
At Poolside I was responsible for website development and got a good introduction
to all aspects of New Media. While there I contributed an interactive typography
toy to the first Creative Review DVD.
Part of the IBM “Pre-university Employee”
programme, one of 50 successful candidates from 1000 applicants.
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Outside of my professional work, I am currently working on a number of projects
to explore various ideas and expand my knowledge and skill set. For a more
detailed portfolio, please go to http://www.handcircus.com
.Below is a selection:
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Arcade Flying / Action adventure, the
game is designed to be simple to play (using only 2 thumb-sticks
and 2 buttons), but provide complex interactions through physics-based
events and puzzles.
http://www.handcircus.com/cloud/
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Physics-based action game of medieval
castle battle, this game aims to exploit the fun of knocking
over “Jenga” stacks or smashing large lego models. Partly
inspired by Rampart and the old board game “Crossbows and
catapults”, you play one of a pair of neighbouring kingdoms,
in an all-out battle to topple the neighbour’s castle and
outbuildings.
http://www.handcircus.com/mott-and-baileys/
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Hippo Lake is a simulation of a simple
environment populated by a number of agents able to interact
with each other and their environment. Its main purpose was
to explore artificial intelligence that can be simulated using
simple steering behaviours (and phenomena such as flocking)
- and is based upon Craig Reynolds’ “boids”.
http://www.handcircus.com/hippo-lake/
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3D action adventure set in Victorian London,
revolving around an elderly ex-member of the British diplomatic
service and his young granddaughter .The story unfolds around the
world, revealing deceitful diplomats, exploited eastern European
scientists and much more.
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A casual-gamer focussed puzzle game centred
on the physical properties of light, this game involves manipulating
the light emitting/aborbing/reflecting elements to guide the avatar
through each puzzle.
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Interactive treatment for PS2 of the cult comedy movie, taking advantage of
Singstar peripheral, this game centres around the activities in the
major set pieces of the film : driving and
singing. It can be played either in party mode, allowing you to simply
sing numbers from Ray Charles and many others, or in full story mode,
featuring driving and mission based gameplay, as well as Singing challenges.
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- Over 6 years of full-time professional object-oriented
development experience. Rich-media Architecture planning skills,
including considerable back-end interface specification experience.
- Very strong skills relating to all aspects
the Adobe Flash Platform (beta tester on numerous products), particularly
focussing on Actionscript 1-3 development.
- Solid understanding of development for realtime
3D, using OpenGL and numerous game/rendering engines such as Ogre
and Shockwave 3D.
- Good C/C++, C# and Java skills as well as
extensive experience with scripting languages such as Maya MEL script,
Javascript Virtools VSL, Director Lingo, LUA.
- Good understanding of a large number of
algorithms commonly used in aspects of games such as graphics, animation,
and AI. Practical experience (and published projects) using the
Havok and Ageia PhysX physics engines.
- Over 6 years experience of game design, prototyping and documentation
for numerous platforms and environments (from Flash games, to console
game prototypes and interactive installations).
- Good experience of Level design using 3D
Modelling software (particularly Maya) and bespoke tools such as
Valve’s “Hammer”.
- Strong user interface and user-centred design
skills
- Extensive experience prototyping new interaction
design concepts.
- Adobe Flash skills to a very high level.
- Graphic design training and experience.
- Strong working knowledge of Photoshop, Sketchup,
Virtools, Macromedia Director, and some 3DS Max experience.
- Strong Maya skills and exposure to a large
variety of 3D character and environment assets from numerous game
studios.
- Very comfortable with video editing and
solid understanding of different video compression codecs and containers.
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Videogames (been an avid player for over 20 years), cinema, animation (from
classic Disney and Betty Boop to modern day), narrative and the elements of
story (especially interactive narrative), drawing, a wide variety of music,
AI, classical and modern art, interactive art and installations (especially
dynamic typography), reading (especially Kurt Vonnegut, Haruki Murakami and Tom Robbins), speaking Japanese, seeing
the world, all things unusual.
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PLAYSTATION 3 developer workshop covering aspects of development and content creation
for the new platform.
Course covering the principles of interaction design, user testing and the creation
of accessible interfaces taught by the founder of Apple’s HCI labs.
Short course on creativity and the principles of graphic design
With Modules in Politics, Philosophy and Psychology. Final year project was to drive animation in Maya from MIDI
data, for which I received a first.
Maths, Physics, Chemistry A-Level – All with grade
“A”
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