Rob was raised in the cursed town of Yateley, Hampshire. At the tender age of three, he developed a passion for cinema when his uncle showed him Fiend Without A Face (1958) on an 8mm projector. As a result, he became a strange child, obsessed with monsters, sharks and insects. As a “sensible adult” he studied Animation Filmmaking at The Surrey Institute Of Art And Design and in 1997 made his very own film THE MAN IN THE LOWER-LEFT HAND CORNER OF THE PHOTOGRAPH, which won five international awards and several cheap sales to broadcasters. In 2001, he made THE CAT WITH HANDS, a tale about a very bad pussycat . It was inspired by a recurring nightmare Rob’s older sister Eleanor had when she was young. The film was funded by Channel 4, and won six fairly prestigious awards, including the Soho Rushes New Director Award. In 2003, having been given funding by S4C and SGRÎN, Rob made THE SEPARATION, another stop-motion piece that won 15 international awards, including the Welsh BAFTA for Best Short Film, and Best Animated Film at the Melbourne International Film Festival. It also made a member of the audience faint from emotional shock in Stuttgart, which made Rob most happy and determined to carry on making films.
The following year he made his first fully live-action short, MONSTERS, commissioned by FilmFour and The UK Film Council as part of their Cinema Extreme scheme. This grisly tale of sibling tension was inspired by a childhood memory of finding a severed goose head outside his suburban family home, as well as by a virulent relationship with his teenaged sister before she finally transformed into a human being. It was premiered at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in 2004, was nominated for the Golden Melies Award, and has received some shockingly positive reviews, like this one (the cheque’s in the post). He currently has numerous projects in various stages of development. Some are live-action, some are animated. Some are long, some are short. He lives in London
