Born in January 1974 to David and Kathleen. A sickly baby, born bright orange, my throat was unconnected to my stomach, so I was unable to keep any food or drink down. The hospital wanted to keep me in, but my Mum wouldn’t have it and took me home. She claims I never slept for the whole first year, and that before I was one year old, I could read.

 

I grew up on Hard Lane in St. Helens. I once met a guy with a Lonely Planet Guide to England. I looked up St. Helens but there was only one mention of the whole region between Liverpool and Manchester, in which St. Helens sits (slightly closer to Liverpool). It just said that ‘the stretch of land between Liverpool and Manchester is some of the most undesirable in the country’, and moved on.

 

After getting a degree (2:1) in Illustration, and before I’d even been on the Internet, I started a work experience course at Connect in Liverpool, a funded initiative to help local businesses get online. The premise was that any local business could have 2 days free design and programming time, to get a basic site up. So, having no experience in web design whatsoever, I met the Liverpool public and quickly made them a website, learning how to do it along the way. This was 10 years ago, so some of them had no idea what the Internet was. Design, programming, dealing with a client, and learning on the job were intertwined from the start. I still do lots of small web-jobs every year for friends and family, its a great way to help someone and get to know them.

 

After Connect I got my first (and only) full-time job at Amaze (also in Liverpool) around 1998. Amaze had emerged from the University, and was already well stocked with a mad gang of talented and unlikely folk. They stressed the importance of merging both design and programming, they built experimental navigation systems (the navihedron!), and employed ‘creative technologists’, an ‘apprentice information architect’ and even a physicist, I seem to remember.

 

It is said a man should have 3 careers in his life. After about 4 years I left Amaze and bought a one-way ticket to the other side of the world and declared I would never touch a computer again. I undertook a variety of casual jobs - dock-work, building sites, removals, goat-herding, djing, gardener etc but realised, after a year, that I missed my old job. I also made a decision to learn how to build the objects that I had been handing on to developers. I thought if I knew what was possible with the code I could also design the objects better in the first place. And lo I went walkabout, and did camp in the Bush for 40 days and 40 nights, with an Actionscript book, and learnt the basics of coding. I also got arrested, but that’s another story.

 

After returning from Australia, semi-feral, broke and out of the loop, career-wise, I moved back in with my parents on Hard Lane again. Slowly the work started to trickle in. I moved to Brighton, and tested my new code-skills with freelance Flash work in London, and also taught myself how to VJ (using the Internet). At first I used layers of samples from TV and film, all mashed up and on the beat, playing the individual clips on a midi keyboard, but then I moved onto my own creations, made in After Effects, which I was starting to use. After wrestling with Flash for years, After Effects was relatively easy, and lots of fun to use. I only played a few live gigs though, including one supremely messy gig at Bestival, as I drifted away from the club scene. I still have the projector though, and the software/hardware and miles of wires needed to make it happen, I’m gonna get back into it this year! Hear Me Now!

 

The skills I picked up whilst learning to VJ have trickled down into my day-job - last year I probably did more After Effects work than Flash, as Design agencies get used to the fact that the Web can handle TV quality motion graphics and video. Flash video has become the standard for delivering video, with sites like Youtube and Vimeo (who I use) using FLVs. I think that designing for the Internet is changing from the legacy of print (using Photoshop/Illustrator to make static designs which are passed onto programmers) towards a skillset more in line with TV and film - designing for motion right from the start, using Flash and AE. After Effects in particular is ideal for pitch-work as non-static ideas can be knocked up relatively quickly, without getting bogged down in the logistics of how to build it, although I’m aware of what can and can’t be done in Flash, so all promises can be delivered. I did this for a pitch for some work with Coca-Cola, previewing how a Papervision site would look. Familiarity with the 3D nature of After Effects (Camera Movement, Focal Point, Lighting etc) helps to understand what can (and will) be done in Flash in the next few years.

 

I still think of myself as a designer, because thats how I started, and because I don’t enjoy getting too tied down in code, but I still enjoy the different buzzes from both designing and building objects. I script all my movement in Flash, and use organic 3D particle systems in After Effects, so designing and coding go together naturally now. Most projects I undertake involve learning something new and implementing it as I go along, so I feel comfortable trying new techniques, but I always make sure I remove my footprints and wipe the sweat off the end result, so it looks effortless, and is clean, simple, intuitive and usable. The bottom line is that I’ll usually aim a little bit higher than what the client asked for, while still fulfilling the brief, even if it means spending extra (unpaid) time learning and researching new potential techniques. Honestly, I honestly can’t remember a client of mine ever being unhappy with what I’ve made for them.

 

I’ve worked on my own as art director, designer and developer on projects, and I’ve worked as part of large teams, passing my designs to programmers to build, or having designs handed to me to animate. I think my years as a freelancer have equipped me with an open mind in regards to the techniques employed to meet a brief, and a no-nonsense attitude to getting things done. I’m able to design from the top-down - knowing what both Flash and After Effects is capable of, I can design for either, and in a lot of cases build it too. I’ve just learnt CSS and Wordpress, in order to build this site, as thats what the Web seems to have settled on for now - CSS layouts with video content, so I process all my video through Vimeo, and the web-sites I plan on building for friends and smaller businesses will probably be Wordpress-based, for the time being, until the Web shifts again. I’m also learning how to move up to Actionscript 3, but I want to focus on the design side of things this year, maybe even get another full-time job. I basically want to design and build cool, useful objects with interesting people.

 

My old site can still be seen at www.tonycarberry.com but most of the work on there is also on here.

 

I’m currently looking for work in both Manchester and London, and I’m able to work on-site or remotely. I’m looking for primarily contract work, but if the right full-time job came along I’d take it. Thanks for looking at the site, I hope you liked it. Drop me an email - tc@tonycarberry.com - to check on my pricing and availability, or to just say hello..

EDIT: I now work 3 days a week (Mon - Wed) building the weekly Talksport magazine in Flash. Possibly the funniest Flash job around. I’m available for work for the other 4 days o’ the week though. Probably.