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Steve Aplin was born in Wimbledon, England, in 1972, the toe-head son of Barry and Jackie Aplin. After a brief stint at Ewell Castle Secondary school where he had the pleasure of adopting the wholly fashionable ensemble you see on the left, he enrolled in a year foundation studies art course at Reigate School of Art & Design, where he was able, for the first time, to get his hands on a camera and create a fantastically bad stop-motion film named 'The Museum'. At least he *thinks* that was the abomination's name, but has decided to push it so far to the back confines of his mind that he's really not sure anymore. But the experience did get him excited about the world of animation.
From here he miraculously gained admission to Bournemouth & Poole College of Art & Design to study Illustration & Graphic Design. Besides being close to a beautiful beach, the college also had a great animation department. On the first day there he was offered the opportunity to experiment with animation for the first semester, which only after accepting did he discover would be his entire time at the school. Fortunately this turned out to be a happy choice. With a few hand-drawn shorts under his belt, Aplin joined forces with Matthew Bagshaw to create the hugely ambitious stop-motion epic 'Kingdom Come Freely' for their final year project, clocking in at a whopping 15 minutes in length. They were told it couldn't be done. What they should have been told is that in that short time it couldn't be done WELL. However, it's fruits were enough to land Aplin a job at Sales Curve Interative games company on leaving college.
Hired to complete hand drawn animation and design work for the company, after 3 months Aplin found himself sitting in front of a computer and 3d Studio, with the solid request to 'learn it'. With no prior experience, this seemed somewhat daunting, but with the help of those around him including friend for life Virgil Manning, he found a new passion - digital sculpting.
This led to a position at Sega Europe, London, where he was again fortunate in his meeting with Wayne Kennedy. Wayne patiently assisted Aplin with the heady task of learning Softimage, which entailed Aplin bugging him incessently on a daily basis. Kennedy, himself a hugely talented modeler & animator, soon landed himself a position at Industrial Light & Magic. Up to this point, Aplin had only heard mention of the legendary effects house in distant sunny California after having his mind blown by the work on Jurassic Park. With Kennedy's support and influence, Aplin wound up being hired by ILM in May, 1996, and has never looked back. He now lives in Oakland, California, along with his beautiful wife Larissa, their incredible daughter Zadie & their 3 insane cats.
Steve Aplin can be contacted at: steve@steveaplin.com
Click here for film credits.
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