I was based in Bristol (in the UK) until May 2003 but since then I've been living and working in London. I've moved on from the college in Bristol and am now working at University College London. It's a support position but also involves a certain amount of web development which has enabled me to increase my IT skills still further.

Though general IT is of interest to me, my major passion is for art, both traditional and digital. I've been honing my skills with various PC based packages in the hope that I will eventually be able to find a suitable 'creative' job.

Software

2d: I've played about with lots of stuff, a lot of it free on the cover of magazines, some of it not... I have been fortunate enough to have access to Photoshop working on a map for a local book. It's obvious why this is the professional 2d editing tool of choice! Cheaper and more readily available software I've tinkered with includes: Painter (very nice 'natural brushes'), Photoimpact (a 'cheap' Photoshop clone - though it does have some very nice web tools, but it doesn't reek of quality like Photoshop), Canvas (I got version 6 with a magazine - I've only really used the vector tools on it which are very nice..)

I've become a convert to Oekaki... Even now, I'm still not entirely sure what it's all about, but basically it's a Java-based applet embedded in a web-page which allows you to use relatively limited painting tools... To a certain extent the challenge lies in using these limited tools to their best advantage, and as it's not possible to cut and paste from other software everything posted on the site is done using the same tools. Have a look at www.oekakicentral.com to get a better idea.

3d: Amapi is a nice little modelling program which I've become quite adept with, but it does tend to be a little unstable and has relatively limited texturing and rendering capabilities. I've tinkered with things like Bryce, Poser, Amorphium and so on, but they're hardly high power (though they do of course have their uses). I'd love to get my hands on 3d studio max but that's a little out of my price range at the moment... I've played around with Gmax which apparently has lots of similar features but has limited export options so I haven't felt compelled to spend too much time on it. I'm thinking of getting hold of Maya (they're generously letting you download a 'render limited' version to learn on!)... but my main 3d experience has been with Animation Master - a wonderful piece of software (not least because of the price!) which has some really high end features.

Web: I can't reccommend Dreamweaver enough - I've used this exclusively in my current job - it's a superb web tool and each update seems to improve it even more. The MX version has some very handy tools for creating dynamic web pages which serve as a very good introduction to web languages like PHP. Microsoft's Frontpage may have its supporters, but is in my mind a far inferior piece of software and I shun it like the plague - which made having to use it at a previous job rather unpalatable... you just have to look at the HTML it produces :(

Skills

Modesty... though I'm a dab hand with a computer (be it in 2d or 3d or just getting the bloody things to work!), brush, pen, pencil and paper (including origami!). My main problem is that I spread myself too thin... I haven't got enough time to devote to all these different skills, work and have a social life as well (oh and play games!)... What I need is for some nice person to give me a job doing a couple of them so I can spend time at work developing them further and then use some of my free time on some of the other things I want to do...

Do people really read this sort of thing? Probably not..