My names Chris, I grew up in Nottingham, England. I've always loved art, my father was a part-time watercolour artist and avid drawer and painter when I was a child. This alongside my own love for drawing and making things always drove me into various creative media. I grew up mainly drawing in pencil, until I found computer graphics and gaming. I started doing very basic graphic and motion design in my bedroom around the age of 12, for friends and online social media. Around the same time an art teacher at school introduced me to graffiti, something my father had also bought me books about. I became fairly fascinated and spent many upcoming years drawing/coloring away in my sketchbooks. I finished school and did my A-levels. When deciding what course to pick I wanted to do something creative, and at this point my passion for motion graphics had also bred a passion for particles and the 3D side, using After Effects and Cinema4d. So I looked for a uni course with exactly that, after finding some cool graphic and motion graphic design courses I stumbled across various visual effects courses. The idea of taking my particle and motion graphics knowledge to the next level where I could create anything in 3D grasped me, and so I applied for various Universities. I got into the University of Hertfordshire, which was an amazing moment, it was a fairly competitive course to get onto and the Lecturers all had great portfolios of industry work as well as the student reels themselves so I knew it was where I wanted to be. Late into my first year at University, I decided I wanted to specialize in effects, simulations, and particles. This was something that wasn't particularly covered by my course, but nevertheless, my lecturers pointed me in the right direction and I found time to push that side of my skillset whilst learning the general course too. In my second year of University, I applied for an internship at MPC in London, as I was really keen to get my foot in the door and meet some industry FX artists. Amazingly I was given a job opportunity instead, a short-term contract over the summer but nonetheless a fantastic opportunity. I joined the MPC FX Team and worked on various sequences. It was a very memorable experience with many highs, but also a lot of hard work. I then spent my third year of university building my portfolio, working on various student projects across my year group, and finishing my dissertation. Once I graduated it was nerve-wracking for a few weeks, i was hoping my prior industry experience would give me a better chance of securing my role out of university but the film industry at the time wasn't hiring many juniors. Our lecturers were very proactive around this time doing their yearly share of all our portfolios to their various contacts across the Film/Games/TV/Animation industries, I was contacted by Rare who had seen some of my waterwork on my showreel alongside other pieces they were very impressed by and so my journey into the games industry began. I thoroughly enjoyed transferring my skills, and seeing what my film and rendered background skills could do within game development, my first year in work I spent a lot of time learning and building up core game dev skills, as well as being able to utilize my simulation and Houdini knowledge to really push visual and overall quality to assets I created. I wanted to make it my mission to one day be able to create film-quality visuals but in-game, something I always strive for. I love the problem-solving side of okay so it's like a film shot but, it needs to work from X many angles, and the player may do this or this or an AI may walk through it, it adds a layer of challenge which is something I'm always up for. Since then I've had the pleasure of working with many talented game developers and artists, at Rare, The Chinese Room, and Surgent Studios my current employer.