Welcome to my site, a site about me and my interests.

This is the first development phase of this site and is a collection of some of the work I did at Bournemouth University in England. At Bournemouth, I did an MSc in Computer Animation for which I received a Distinction. The course is aimed at training you to become a technical director and teaches the technical aspects of computer animation from coding, mathematics, animation, rendering and lighting to using some of the industry standard applications including Maya, Houdini, Shake and Renderman. The final 3 months of the course was for the Masters Project which could be done on any aspect of computer animation and graphics. For my project I did augmented reality, a little different to the usual list of topics, but it was something I became really interested in during the second term. The final outcome of my project was a C++ application framework, called ARLib, for creating augmented reality applications.

Prior to doing my degree, I had been a software developer for 16 years working on enterprise business applications for the human resource and payroll markets, but  my interest in computers, particulary programming, goes back to 1980 when I wrote my first program for a friend's BBC microcomputer. It was a quiz game that had 5 hard-coded questions...I wish I still had the source code because I've never seen another game like it!!!

Learned to program on the ZX81
Learned about graphics on Dragon 32

I bought my first computer in 1981, a Sinclair ZX81; it cost me £45 and was the first machine that I used to teach myself to program.

One year later, I upgraded to a Dragon 32 -  a fantastic computer at the time, as it had a proper keyboard, colour and sounds, and I used it to teach myself 6809 assembler. Those were the days when you could buy magazines with program listings and I certainly wasn't an exception, as a couple of my programs were listed in Dragon User magazine (and I've still got those two issues somewhere in the cupboard!).   This was also the year Tron the movie came out and after seeing this film I became hooked on computer animation ans effects and started to experiment.

In 1987 - nearly 20 years ago - I produced my very first computer animation, complete with Top Gun soundtrack - on my very basic Dragon 32, written entirely in Basic.  At the time I was really pleased with my little homage to the film Top Gun; remember there were no animation/graphic packages around and therefore no keyframing capabilities...everytime I wanted something to happen, it had to be done using the spacebar! (happy memories!).  It was also in the days before hard disks or floppy drives for home computers, so the only way to capture the footage was output straight to a video recorder; cinema film-quality just wasn't possible.

Alongside my interest in computer animation, my career was taking off and I benefited from all that time I was spending at home programming and expanding my skills by being given some really interesting roles at work - developing new projects and innovating new software. I managed to keep my creative side occupied by working on user-interfaces, and anything else that needed new ideas or graphical input.

In 1996, I was asked to work for a fantastic small, newly-formed company and found myself in my element; in a small team of fun, motivated, hard-working people, we listened to great music all day long and still managed to develop some great software! Sadly, the bubble had to burst and, as with many successful, fast-growing companies, we were bought-out by a large firm in 2001. Life after that was never quite the same and, over time, a combination of things meant that the buzz became more of a murmur, and the motivation... well say no more.

So, in 2004, I decided I to take a career break and was accepted by Bournemouth University to do a Masters Degree in Computer Animation. It was a tough course but very enjoyable and I learned so much. If anyone is planning on doing a computer animation degree, then Bournemouth is certainly the place in the UK to do it and it is also the home of the National Centre for Computer Animation (NCCA).

After finishing my course, my wife and I decided we'd like to try living in another country so after spending 3 months driving our 3 young children all around France (6,500km) we decided to live in Annecy, which is an amazing place bordering Italy and Switzerland. Oh and it also hosts the Annecy Animation Festival every year...hmm... coincidence or perhaps a hint of my future new career....?!

Watch this space!

Annecy Lake and Surrounding areas

News

16th June 2008 - Added Web247.net link.

For those of you wondering where I have been for the last 18 months, well now you can find out by visiting Web247.net


9th December 2006 - Added Blue Fish Logic link.

After several months of hard work, our company Blue Fish Logic has finally gone live. The companies primary focus is to develop applications for Pocket PCs, however, I'm sure we will spread out to desktops and other mobile devices e.g phones.


19th September 2006 - New Website Goes Live!

After version 1 of DanDiggins.co.uk disappearing into ISP never-neverland, I am pleased to announce the launch of phase 1 of version 2 of slightly older DanDiggins.co.uk....enjoy!