What could be improved for you?

I take this in general, since I don't want to list opinions on single tools, and since this is what is bothering me the most. Together with the benefit of the wide range of LightWave's possibilities is a general disadvantage showing up in the fact that some tools and features almost work - with an accent on almost. I don't have that much experience with other applications actually, so I don't have many comparisons, but I am pretty sure I am not totally off-track here. For example, LightWave has soft body dynamics, but working your way around the cryptic logic of Motion Designer is tough. Many people do use volumetrics and hypervoxels but the results are not always very good in my opinion because of the slowness of their rendering and little errors. Those examples work great in tutorial experiments and small test set-ups but if you really want to use them in a substantial context they will sometimes pull your leg on the way.

From what I have seen of LightWave 8, it seems many of those things will be updated to my pleasure though.

What spec machine are you using it on at the moment?

This is embarrassing. It is a couple of years since I bought my current main machine, and not much since. It is an AMD 1.4 GHz you can boil eggs on when rendering, 512 MB of RAM, nVidia GeForce3 64 MB RAM graphics card, 40 GB HDD and hundreds of backup CDs.

I had a P4 machine here until recently used for rendering. I am currently looking at buying an up-to-date machine and get rid of my current one, so by the time this is published I may be properly geared up.

Are there any plug-ins you wouldn't be without?

This might seem ungrateful towards all the people putting their heart and soul into developing free and commercial plug-ins for LightWave but I very seldom use any of them. So the answer to the question is: actually no, not really. There aren't any plug-ins that I couldn't be without. As I said before; I think that LightWave itself gets me where I want perfectly. Some plug-ins can be a lot of fun to play with, but I can't say they have proven to be essential for me. I think SasLite and C4 are the only 3rd party plug-ins I have ever used in a professional job.
However I am really bad at keeping track of new stuff. This new FPrime thing from Worley seems damned cool though.

The Annoying Thing is a superb animation. Tell me about the soundtrack.

Thank you! I didn't reflect on the fact that I didn't know who created the sound until I was encouraged to put the animation up on my site. A friend sent it to me as an mp3 file some years ago. When I finished the animation I didn't know who to credit for the sound, so I put it as a question in the end credits. Because of the huge spread my animation got throughout the internet I started to get piles and piles of emails with all kinds of suggestions on whose voice hid behind this hilarious noise.

A little more than a month after I had put the animation up I got a phone call from a somewhat confused person claiming he recognised the sound in my animation as his own creation. His name was Daniel Malmedahl and he said he had been contacted by a friend of his telling him to check out my website. I was a little uncertain at first but when he gave me the "proof" of performing the sound live on the phone there was no doubt he was the guy I was looking for. Apparently he was oblivious to the fact that his sound had spread around the internet, even before the Annoying Thing. He told me the he didn't actually make that sound as a joke at first, but as a serious attempt to imitate the 2-stroke engine of a moped of his. He has a talent and interest in imitating the sound of engines. This was about six years ago, and it wasn't until a friend of his put the sound on a CD that they used to play at parties he realised the hilarious quality of the noise. From that CD, the sound somehow found its way to the internet and eventually ended up in my mailbox. After having been contacted by Daniel I changed the credits of the animation and on my site. The old version is still around of course and I still get plenty of e-mails from people wanting to help me with clues as to find the creator of the sound. When I get time I do my best to reply and give Daniel Malmedahl the credit he deserves, as sadly none of the tips I get ever include his name!