An Interview with Aljen Hoekstra
by Mike Lynch

SQ - Tell us about yourself, Aljen. Where are you from, where were you born, where did you go to school?

I'm from the Netherlands, born in 1980 and raised in a small city called Harlingen. Went to school there but moved to Zwolle when I was 18 for a study in Multimedia Design. Lots of Internet stuff going on there, but I was more interested in video and animation. After graduation I applied for the Image and MediaTechnology course (fancy name for a study in animation) at the Utrecht School of Arts and was allowed to enter. I moved to Utrecht and graduated with a Bachelor of Design in 2005, and I've been freelancing for the last year-and-half.

SQ - When did you start using Lightwave? And what was the driving force behind that choice?

When I was younger, some of my friends owned Amiga's and one of them showed me Lightwave, I think it was 4.5, or 5.0, or something. I spend a lot of time just watching him using it and asking him questions about it. Not long after we got a computer at home, and my friend gave me a copy of Lightwave. Think I was 13 or 14 at that time.

I remember building my first spaceship, which I had sketched out a week before. And the excitement when I could rotate it in 3d in the viewport... Since then I've been using Lightwave and I don't really feel the need to learn any other 3d package. Lightwave and I understand each other...

However I do see a lot of jobs being offered that specifically ask for Max or Maya, never Lightwave. That might force me one day to make the jump to another package, although I do think most of those projects can be done in Lightwave, but it doesn't fit their pipeline or they don't know what Lightwave can do.