Graham Toms (and arachnoid friend!)

We recently got the opportunity to speak to Graham Toms. Graham has recently taken on the job of restructuring the Newtek educational and training program, and is known in the Lightwave community not only for his work, but for his views on the relevance of formal artistic understanding to 3D.

By Adam 'NLightUK' Hauldren

SQ - Some standard questions to start: Where were you born? When did you become interested in art or computers? I was born in what used to be called West Germany, but my Father was in the Army. I was born in a military base hospital in Munster West Germany. But the territory in that base was British so automatically a British Subject.

SQ - (chuckles) Graham...you know this is for Spin Quad right? Yeah.........I'll behave now… Because of my father being in the military we were always traveling. My education suffered generaly in regard to be part of that nasty habit of being another brick in the wall (Yahoo! Pink Floyd! I must be old!). So Art was something less prescribed so that remained constant , something that developed for me. However the other academic subjects suffered. However I have tried to do catch up since leaving school and generally eratae, erritate (oh bugger, I can't spell, it's my bad education you know!), irritate people with erroneous facts. Anyway Art was always something I got praised for so hence I continued drawing much of my spare time. Positive reinforcement and all that. However by the time I left school art become something I loved and developed into something I was passionate about. I could tell stories visually without having to worry about punctuation or bad grammer.

SQ - And how old were you at this time? Er.................much younger, somewhere between the Suez Crisis and the End of the Vietnam War. I can't remember the date. My Maths is terrible, so thats why I can't give you the date. I
a lso don't like people reminding me its my birthday. Nobody buys me Birthday presents. The world can be a cold place sometimes...

SQ - (laughs again) is it really your birthday? I got one Birthday card for my Birthday...that’s all . That sucks. However it was my Wife and Children who sent me the card so they are forgiven for reminding me I am another year older? But only just forgiven. Yeah, it was sometime around the beginning of this month...perhaps...

SQ - Happy belated Birthday!!! from me and the rest of the SpinQuad community. The cake was nice... it looked nice mixed with my pea soup...