Tell us a bit about yourself.

Trained as 'technical illustrator' in the old days of pens, ink, ellipse templates, airbrushes and CS10 board! Returned to university after an absence from illustrating for several years to illustrate in a more contextual way instead of mainly exploded and cutaway black and white line illustrations. I live in fantastic little town, Hay-on-Wye with 'Raggs' (border terrier). Broadband has just arrived, two years too late as far as I am concerned.

I'm currently working on a Star Wars publication for a New York client - "STAR WARS - Essential Guide to Weapons and Technology". Over 95% of the 100+ full-colour images were generated from scratch in LightWave using reference material supplied by Lucasfilm. The project is nearing completion and the book will be published in October in the US.

When did you see LightWave for the first time?

I think it was about 1998/99 and it was the cut down version called Inspire. At the time was using Studio Pro to produce very basic 3D models of car chassis and engine train for the American publishing market.

When did you first start using LightWave itself?

Moved on to LightWave 5.5 around 1999?, again using this for a pilot magazine in the UK showing car chassis. In the main everything produced was for the print market so large renders were the order of the day. Now using 7.5.

What do you like about the package?

One of the main criteria for me as a 3D artist is to be able to produce technically discernible images, as a complete package LightWave provides me with a number of features to do this, the main one being the excellent modelling tools. I feel sure any modelling job given to me that requires a degree of accuracy can be produced in LightWave - I love sub-patch modelling and the interface allows me to set up tool buttons where I want them.

I light most things with HDR images now (so much easier), texturing itself I see as almost another art form within the program - there are so many variations you can try in order to obtain just the look you have in your mind or have seen in a reference shot.

What could be improved for you?

Faster rendering times with Reflections and Radiosity turned on! Most pieces of work at the moment are for print at 300dpi and so require high pixel renders (perhaps I just need a faster processor in my computer).

What spec machine(s) are you using it on at the moment?

• Apple Mac G4 867MHz - Nvidia GeForce 3 64mb card - 768MB memory
• Apple Mac G4 Laptop 1.0Ghz - ATI 64mb card - 768MB memory

Both are running Mac 0SX 10.2