Some years ago, an off-the-cuff comment from a high school friend stuck in my head. Nowadays, I use this as a way to identity myself. Somewhat tacky I know, but that’s what friends are for! I’ve since registered the trademark WickedP® and now use it as an identifying name in various forums.
So, that’s where the name came from. What about me?
I’m a born and bread Tasmanian, from the lands of down under in Australia. We are, quite literally, down under, because Tasmania is underneath mainland Australia. The next stop south from us is Antarctica.
My journey into the world of digital arts probably started in the last year or two of high school. There I studied CAD and was one of only 2 people in the entire state to use camera matching in an animation for final project work. I’m not sure who the other was, but we were quite possibly the first at a high school level to do this. This was back in the late 90’s!
From there, I had a year off, did some casual work, then went to university. To be frank, I didn’t enjoy uni. It’s meant to be one of the more memorable times in your life, but mine was fraught with nothing but problems and health issues. Our family went through a terrible time. Mum was in a coma for months, I had my own health issues, which included having to undergo a facial reconstruction… I left uni feeling like I got very little enjoyment from it. Sadly, for some years afterwards things didn’t get any better. But I’ll cover this another time perhaps.
Since university, I’ve acquired all sorts of skills. No work has been in the field of my studies yet, but I’m working on that change. After hours I spend my time dreaming up moving image projects, programming and building ideas for film, animation and moving image things. I taught myself C++, PHP and general website engineering and administration. I’m not a web page designer, but I’m fairly well versed in things like WordPress. I built the theme for this site myself, which is nothing to write home about I know, it’s a long work in progress, but I use it as a test bed to experiment with (and is probably why it will look a bit ratty at times!).
I also have a 3D printer, which is a great way to waste material… but have fun making things with anyway. Below is a print of ProxyMan. He’s the demo character I use for testing and editing motion capture data with. More of him and the plugin can be found in my project stories and in various blog entries.
A short side story – my uncle once sent a rocket into space for his PhD thesis. Unfortunately it didn’t survive, but I’ve always liked space and I thought this was pretty cool. So I’m dreaming of a project to send something to space. I’ve started it. Maybe I can catch one of Elon’s rockets at some stage.
This site is just my personal bubble and a place to add my own digital rubbish. Though I generally will only post about things relevant to my projects, I will occasionally branch out from this. I’m also developing WickedP Studios – a separate entity – which you might hear more about in the future too.
– WP