Curiosity has always been the project. Everything else is a by-product.
Header photo — Aaron Grove
After more than twenty-five years working across visual effects, feature films, television, video games and technology, my focus has shifted towards building businesses and products of my own. Everything I've learnt throughout that career now informs the work I'm creating today.
Today I'm focused on two ventures. PHAES is a contemporary Australian design brand creating sculptural glass objects inspired by ritual, materiality and atmosphere, while Golden Glassworks supports Australia's fused glass community through the Bullseye Glass Procurement Program.
The rest of this website explores the people, projects and experiences that shaped my career, and the ventures that now carry it forward.
Two decades, six chapters.
Basement, forums, a first showreel → Plastic Wax, animating Broken Sword.
Fin Design & Effects. Toyota Kluger — one of the first full-CG car commercials in the country.
Collider. Building a VFX department from nothing, with Damien doing the heavy lifting.
London to L.A. VFX Supervisor at The Mill; "Two Weeks" wins a D&AD Yellow Pencil.
Co-founded Blowfish Studios. Siegecraft, Phantom Galaxies, acquired by Animoca Brands.
Exit done. Building something new.
Six studios, six very different educations.
Click through to what each one taught me.
A few things worth mentioning.
"Two Weeks" — Grizzly Bear
Visual Effects Supervisor. Music Videos category, D&AD Awards.
Blowfish Studios
Small Business, and Creative Industries category winner.
From my thoughts.
Deconstruction (Reverse-engineering)
I don't know exactly how I learned to think this way, but I've been reverse-engineering things since I was a kid quietly watching how they worked.
Read more →The Invisible Link
A lecturer who turned down a job and recommended me instead. Colleagues who kept reappearing, fifteen years apart, across three completely different companies.
Read more →Drop in the Ocean
The mistake I see people make constantly: they let the size of their local job market set the size of their own ambition.
Read more →No Question Is Too Stupid
A lead who could have made me feel stupid, and didn't. What changed once I became the one being asked questions instead of asking them.
Read more →