Known to the Poser community as mrsparky, my name is Al and I live in the south of the UK between Portsmouth and Brighton

From a kid drawing on the walls until today, I've always been involved with the arts, both academically, personally and professionally.  Anything from creating murals and doing illustrations for friends to working as a graphic designer in a community centre, pop-up card engineer, website creator, arts and crafts playleader, plus photography and video.

     While creative jobs are great, often the reality is short term contracts which in turn can means a low income. Therefore, like many other artists, I often take on other work. which mostly tends to be PC techie stuff.

     So it's only natural that all these skills and interests would converge and come together in the creation of 3d models. Initially that was through my personal site (Sparkyworld) which offers freebies and other bits. Then around 7 years ago, and along with John and Barry, I helped to co-found the popular poser site Vanishing Point. Helping to develop innovations such as interactive 3d applets to display poser products and toy giveaways.

     After doing a 1 year top-up course at the local university.  I graduated with a degree in IT management and concentrated on developing website design methodologies based around the WSDM model especially with respect to micropayment systems.

     Once again this started to blend in with the other things I did.  While I wanted to explore to new ways of selling Poser and other content, like many small businesses I was hindered by a lack of help from the banks and too much red tape from the government.

     So when the university offered me the opportunity, via business connections and links to financial support, I took it and started PoserDirect in the autumn of 2009.  At the same time I learned to make 3d models rather than texturing other peoples.

     Since I've mostly been a totally self employed content creator, however as the cold wind of winter 2010 has arrived, harsh cutbacks in Europe and the UK, sales have slumped a lot, therefore I've had to take a temporary step back from content creation and concentrate on other forms of work.

     However, I feel when times are hard that's when artists get truly creative. Therefore I'm currently planning new ideas (both in terms of products and concepts) and working with other artists and stores.  I'm not claiming that these ideas will be earth shatteringly innovative or make people rich and famous, what I hope to achieve is something that reflects the skills, designs and ideals I have and share this with other people.