From the legendary Back Bedroom (actually, it was the big one at the front) of the Olton semi, Kevin began to develop games for Geoff Brown’s Birmingham based US Gold (later Eidos), one of the UK’s early games publishers. Kevin and the team had early successes with coin-op conversions for home computer platforms including the Amstrad, Atari ST, Amiga and the Commodore 64 with Gauntlet and Gauntlet II for US Gold and Galaxy Force and Hot Rod for Activision (this time from the back of the garage).
Following other hits including Mask and Captain America, Synthetic Dimensions were an equal founding partner of video games company Core Design, giving them their first big hit, Corporation, in 1989. Synthetic went on to design and develop fourteen top-ten and nine number one best-selling computer games for a worldwide market, including Legends of Valour, Terminator, Druid and Chronicles of the Sword for the Sony PlayStation. Kate became the first woman ever to appear in a computer game (Lara, get over it) with her leotard-clad appearance in Resolution 101 on the ST and Amiga in 1990.
In 1993-94, increasingly fascinated by virtual worlds and how they could be explored, Kevin and the team assisted US company VictorMaxx in securing a $28m flotation on NASDAQ by developing a 3D SIM ride, “Ghost Train”, for VictorMaxx’s very-much-work-in-progress VR Head Mounted Display (HMD) headset.
Synthetic Dimensions achieved numerous plaudits and awards including the Innovations Award for Perfect Assassin, with GTE, at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas in 1996, in recognition of unique technologies developed for real-time, multi-user 3D game environments. Other concepts taken to funding level and working with concept owners included working with dancer Michael Flatley on an animated series for TV; Astro Knights, a 26-part wholly computer animated cross-media project for French media company Canal Plus, and a fully animated cross media version of Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds. Jeff Wayne personally approached Kevin to make a CGI version of his classic album
The company won the Small Business of the Year title and the City of Birmingham Award for excellence in animation, both in 1998. Kevin was a finalist in the Ernst & Young “Entrepreneur of the Year Awards” in 2000. In the same year, together with Kate, he took Synthetic Dimensions public on both OFEX and AIM markets, in an IPO that valued the company at £24m.
Their final video game was Ed Hunter, 2000, based on Eddie, the legendary Iron Maiden mascot. The team worked closely with the band, providing graphics and merchandise (including lenticular posters and CD cover art) to support the release of the game and the band’s Virtual XI world tour.
Holographic Art
Kevin’s love of illustration and 3D design was always in the detail. With a forensic approach to graphics, Kevin developed a 2D to 3D image conversion system, “Syndimation”, to generate holograms, lenticular, anaglyph and polarised displays for marketing. He met many times with Hologram pioneer Martin Richardson in the late 1990s and Martin was central to Kevin’s early explorations in the subject of holography and lenticular art. Around this time he met and worked with David Burder and with Mike Medora and Nigel Robiette at Colour Holographic, producing holographic and lenticular imagery with them.
Kevin created both glass and foil holograms. He created the foil security hologram for Astro Zeneca’s logo and the official foil holograms for the merchandising for the children’s game Kwik Cricket; for conservationist, TV star and “Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin, and an “unofficial” version of Marvel’s Spiderman, as well as his own characters for Astro Knights.
He worked with manufacturing experts including OpSec, working with their head of holography Kevin Baumber. For Nike, Kevin created an in-window glass hologram display of French International rugby star Frederic Michalak running for a try. This was displayed in Nike’s flagship Paris store. For Newline Cinema, Kevin created an amazing Lord of the Rings Smeagal to Gollum transformation as a glass hologram, and a Christopher Lee as Saruman, also as a framed glass hologram, for LOTR film director Peter Jackson.
Regarding Kevin’s work in lenticular art, Kevin’s “Syndimation” techniques were used worldwide by companies including Reebok (trainers), Peugeot (six-sheet cabriolet hatchback), Disney (A Bug’s Life, Toy Story lunchboxes) and Iron Maiden. Kevin produced the lenticular artwork for both Piece of Mind and Virtual XI albums; a larger framed version of the Virtual XI lenticular was presented to the band members as gifts.
Almost all of GB Poster’s lenticular poster prints were produced by Kevin. The fully licensed images featured subjects including Manchester United; The Beatles Help! and Abbey Road; Elvis at Vegas; Heath Ledger as Batman’s The Joker; Hello Kitty; Shelby Ford Mustang; Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal FCs; Ben10; Star Wars; Rocky; Jimi Hendrix; Marilyn Monroe and Bob Marley.
Kevin was working on his own systems and content for 3D film, console and television when he was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2010. He died at home in Wolverhampton in November 2011 age 49. Goofy Ghouls and The Curse of the Mummy’s Nose are waiting to be resurrected.
