I graduated in Sculpture, and decided that rather and going and doing an MFA, because I had a daughter who was about 10 then, that I would not leave Art, or not leave being creative, but get a skill that I was assured was very marketable. So people went "If you go to the Digital Design Studio", which is the post grad studio at Glasgow School of Art, "and learn those skills, then you will not only be able to get a job, but you'll get a good job". So I went away and did that for 2 years, I did an mPhil in 2 and 3D... 2 and 3D something and digital prototyping.

Well of course 2 years had gone by and there were no jobs! Because the digital market was kind of flooded, but I did get a job in a games company, which was great. I was there for maybe a year and would have stayed on except for family circumstances, so I left. And with games companies, you don't really leave games companies, you move games companies. So if you've been out of work, away from the games industry for six months you're considered to have lost your skills. So having just got a foothold there, I kind of lost it. But it was invaluable experience.

So I came back to Glasgow, and what was interesting in the games company, that in a studio of 35 people there was only 3 women and I was far and away the oldest.

I was early forties. But it was great to get that chance, and great to be accepted in a games company as a) a woman, and b) no spring chicken. So I came back, didn't quite know what to do, had picked up a little bit of teaching night classes, not digital stuff but drawing. Then I bumped into Deborah Norton, who had been in my year. Debs had done other stuff, anyway we talked about what we could do. We had these skills and thought about architecture. We were both interested in architecture and we thought maybe we could offer ourselves as freelancers to companies, and so we started to investigate that. What we realised when we started to do research and development is nobody could agree on what software they wanted it made in. There were either young architects coming up, who knew 3D software, and were doing it inhouse, or people who didn't know the software and didn't know what they were asking for. It became incredibly difficult. In the midst of all that, we were approached by a textile artist, who had been given a grant to make an exhibition, and she wanted a digital element. So this venue was the most infested stately home that English Heritage have ever received, so it had been full of all different kinds of insects. So she made these insects and related them to the people who had lived in this hall. She wanted us to animate the insects, and she wanted us to animate them as she had made them in the textile. So that was great and we did that. It was great, it was projected down from the ceiling to the floor as part of this. And kids came along, they put their hands into it, they started to play with it and we realised that we'd hit something else, we'd hit a way, partly going back to our old backgrounds, of putting work into a public space as an installation. But doing it digitally.

We did get paid. Basically she had an amount of money left and said 'What can you do for that?'. And that's what we did. But that was great, it made us think that this could have legs. We finished that in the April, then we gave up the architecture and started looking at clubs, events, just talking to people. There was an advert for Nesta at the Lighthouse. It was the first 'Inside Out', which was like six weeks training, but you got paid for the training, you had to have graduated quite recently, and then you would pitch for a £10,000 pot and you could pitch for part of that pot. So by a technicality, only one of us could do this and I was the one who was eligible because I'd graduated at a different time from Debs. But I'd go back every night and go through everything with Debs, went through papers, everything. If there was any decisions to be made, we sat in my kitchen and made those decisions, all the homework we did together.

Yeah. And this NESTA, it was aimed at graduates from Glasgow School of Art, who had a potential business idea. So we had jewellers, we had textile people, there was a girl who was a bag maker, there was a product designer, mostly I think there was about four jewellers.

Well NESTA, they were tremendous. They were tremendous and demystified a lot of things. Like nobody was trying to turn you into Alan Sugar, they were going 'look, this is it, this is a business idea, this is how you judge things, this is how you get out, this is how you do marketing, this is how you develop'. I mean really good solid stuff. And we got £4,000. So that got us like the studio, it got us a contract template, we made the decision to become a limited company, yeah that's what it paid for. But it was through Nesta we made those decisions. It made us professional. It made us take ourselves seriously. Then we got lucky, we got a music video after that. That was kind of beginner's luck, and so we did begin to think 'this could work'.

I know. People don't know what we do. It's been really difficult. And so what you do is you try and judge do people want you to be an artist or do they want you to be a business person and you try and bias whatever you're saying. But what it is, although people then got it, they didn't understand where it could be put. So we've done more stuff, we'd done stuff for various bits and pieces, then we got this award. The thing about that award is that gave us, the style award gave us an opportunity to show people. We were going 'right, now people have heard of us' because nobody had heard of us, or we didn't think anybody had heard of us, we could get people in to see what we do.

Yeah we got Tastemaker of the Year, 2006. Then about a month later we had this event we'd been planning. Lots of people in, all our projections, 3D stereo stuff that we'd got interested in working in because nobody else was doing that, certainly we couldn't find any artists doing that. People came and they loved it. Glasgow City Council, Glasgow with Style loved it. They just went "we haven't a clue what you do with it".

[laughter]

Thanks for the glass of wine. You're dead interesting. Bye. Then we had a terrible year. So here we were, we had a lovely trophy.

Well I think there's two things, I think in Glasgow as well, people don't trust you... like we got bits of interest, people would phone up and go "could you come in and do this for... £250". And you're kind of going "eh no! we can't actually". I mean you know this is serious kit, particularly the 3D stereo stuff.

It's not familiar with, and also I don't think people trust you until you've gone away. We also wanted to go to London, because we thought, if we go to Designer's Block - it's got a foot in art, it's got a foot in design, it's one of the shows that people find very interesting. Then we're going to hear, people are going to say "yeah but so and so's doing that". And also if you're going to crash and burn, be visible. But people walked in, and just got it. So we had architects coming in and going "could you do this with architecture?" - "yes." Events people were coming in, and instead of going "oh it's very nice", they were going "what's the viewing angle? could this do a stadium? would it work with lights round it?" We ended up with about 60 business cards of people saying contact us, and about 100 names that people had written in our book, or email addresses just wanting to keep in contact. Including, a guy who does Times Square in New York who said he'd be very interested - and that's one end of it, but down to things like a musician saw us and it wasn't useful to him, but he contacted Martin Weir of Erasure fame, who he knows works with 3D sound and was looking for a visual package. And we went down and saw him, and he's since flown up to see what we do. So it was an extraordinary response. I mean the idea of anyone from Glasgow City Council getting on a bus to come and see us is like... you know... a surprise. Never mind the idea of 3 people getting on a plane.

Well it is. Everytime we think we know what we do, somebody comes and asks us to do something else and we go "OK we can do that as well". So like with the Six Cities we did animation, but we also worked with a games designer who made bits of the animation downloadable on the website, and we also mucked about with making a path out of cable ties - you know something very physical. And we realised, we don't just do animation. What's happened since then, the great thing is we've come back from Designer's Block, we've got all this interest, but we're in a strange hiatus, it's a strange kind of limbo we're in.

Yeah it's a constant pull and I think what Debs and I have always realised is that it's almost, it's not that we don't care about the business as much, we do, but we understand that there's whole areas that we have to be less passionate about. Like we're almost becoming art directors in a way. We're aware we can't do this on our own. We're going to have to go and look for work, and we're going to have to hand bits of it over to other people. And we're going to have to be less precious. Now that doesn't mean that you compromise the content, but you become much more open to bringing people in. It's letting to go to a degree of that... that stamp, that was your stamp as an artist. Which is a really good thing, and in a way it adds to the work. We have formed a more creative partnership and we have to let other people in as well. And the good thing is, the way it has very luckily fallen with Debs and I, is Debs is very good with figures, she is very good with a business plan, and I'll phone up people and stand up and do presentations.

We're now trying to hedge our bets and call ourselves content makers.

Yes. Because it's not that we don't do character animation, we could do character animation because we'd get someone - with our ideas and our scenario - there's plenty of character animators out there. But hopefully it's becoming less of an issue, because we're getting a reputation for being... interesting - people that do stuff. So people come up now and go "Do you do that?", "I've got an animation problem, can you do that?". Which is how we've got this game - could you do this game for this amount of money? And yes, because we know a games developer and we've run it by him, and we sat down and worked out how many weeks we could afford to spend on it.

At the minute we're trying to get a name for the 3D stereo, because nobody else is doing that and that makes us unique. Then when people come to us we can say and look we do all this. So in a way, it's defining ourselves as one thing, so it gives people something to hold.

I think the thing is, that there's so many strands to the business... what we've also learnt through NESTA is getting the work in, marketing, you know people have to know that you're there. Like at the minute I haven't done any work for months, because it has all been about bringing work in, so that's been very interesting. It's also been about negotiating a partnership, and it's also negotating money, like trying to get money to keep going. It becomes very interesting. Yes, I think as artists it has helped because when we do sit down and use the software... we don't use it conventionally. And I don't mean that in a grand way, but what it is we do tend to experiment. So somebody would go "I need to rig up a character, and I need this kind of music, and this kind of movement" - we'll kind of go "oh that looks really pretty... ooh what happens if you do this". And if you mix things, that there's not a conventional way to use the stuff - so it becomes very exciting. So it becomes about discovery. And of course you're building your skills all the time, and you do have conventional skills, but we do tend to be a jack of all trades.

Debs and I have been very lucky and very committed to the partnership. We weren't friends, well we were colleagues/friends enough, having done two years on a very small course. But it meant when we created the partnership we didn't have... there was a kind of honesty, and a kind of brutality we could have with each other. And indeed at times continue to still do, where we're absolutely honest with each other. And we kind of saw that there were great personality differences between us but there was also great strengths. And the people at NESTA were impressed with that. And we've seen partnerships die, that we've kind of taken quite personally because it's nice having other partnerships around the place because you feel like you can relate to those partnerships. And there are rules that Debs and I have, which is honesty, that there are certain places we go that we know we can say things to each other which are professional and actually at times quite personal, but we know we will not walk away until we've got to the end of them. Also neither of us hold onto them. We both say that we learnt a lot about ourselves and we've changed a bit. There are people in the studio who hear us starting to have a disagreement and actually leave the studio, but in actual fact, if we know we're going to have a disagreement we leave the studio. We will go outside to a public place where we can't actually yell at each other, and we will talk it out until we reach the end. And we've developed a great respect for other being able to do that.

Oh my god. I never, I mean I hear people saying this and I go "oh I'm that person that never thought it could be this hard". It's changed me in that I never thought I'd find running a business that interesting. I thought I'd find the work interesting, and that the business would be something I did in order to do the work. The whole thing of having to think for yourself, and in a way there being no safety net, is very very exciting. It's very exciting getting a bit of work in. Because if it goes well, then it's because of the work we've done. And that's installation, that's the ideas. If it absolutely bombs, then that's our responsibility and that is quite exciting.

The highlight is definitely Designer's Block. Well I have to say, the Style Award was great, because nobody knew who we were, so I mean it was a joke - when our name was announced people were going 'WHO?', apart from we had a mate in the audience who was clapping madly and waved to us. That was a lot of fun, because we had nothing to lose. Designer's Block was a highlight because we now had this kind of reputation, apparently. We knew Piers, Piers had been one of the trainers on NESTA.

Yeah, he and Rory are Designer's Block. And it was London, it had cost us... we had begged, borrowed and stolen to get, we had called in every favour, we borrowed the equipment... In fact, the opening night, it opened at half past six, at about quarter past six Debs and I went into the car park and went "oh shit, we've completely messed up how we've set up the show, we've done it wrong, it's too this, it's too that". And Debs went "we have to go in and stand beside the work", and I said "you're absolutely right". And we walked in. People had come, there was so much support, and people walked in and saw the 3D stuff and were blown away by it. About an hour into the show, one of the runners for Designer's Block came said "you're the talk of the show" and we were going "aaarghh it's another 80s movie!". And we knew, that that was where we could absolutely crash and burn. We were at a point where we almost wanted to crash and burn. We didn't want to go ahead unless we had something there, you know it's like being in a big digital casino and going "It's on!".

Christmas... about a fortnight ago! I think Debs and I both agreed, because we couldn't get the finance, because we'd taken it so far

Exactly. And it's not that thing of "oh we need a job". I mean in the first months we had fantastic rows, fantastic rows where we could have killed each other. And those are the minutes you want to quit, but they're only minutes. And that's you settling into a company. But really it was when, having remortgaged my flat last year - that's a lot of personal finance. And we're sitting here, we should have been at Designer's Block at the end of this month, but because we couldn't raise finance in time we've had to let that go. We were asked back, to go and represent - to be one of 20 companies chosen.

Exactly, what we need is between twenty and thirty thousand pounds. Which is nothing. And Glasgow has changed, suddenly we're going to Glasgow... and Glasgow Regeneration and Development have been fantastic, and have bent over backwards, but there have been other departments who have just gone "we don't do creative companies. Unless you're in bio-sciences, or food technology we're not interested." Whereas a couple of years ago they were going "oh you're exactly what we need"

Exactly. Having said that, we have some great support. We have a mentor, who comes and works with us for free. We have a financial guy we got through our accountant, who has helped not rewrite our accounts but lay things out for a bank, in the appropriate way, in a professional way. Christmas was went we went to the Royal Bank of Scotland to get this small business guarantee loan, and because I own my flat we couldn't get the loan. We could only take it on as a personal loan, which is huge. Whereas with the small business loan, if everything goes wrong, the government covers 30% and we cover the rest. And it's such a small amount of money we were asking for. We're now going back to Glasgow City Council, who are saying they've had all their match funding cut, they can only do match loans. So we're still kind of seeking that, but it go to a point at Christmas where we just went "we've had enough".

And it's not invidual people, but it's such a tough system to get through. And in fact we heard a guy at Red Kite, an animation company in Edinburgh, and he went "my god... the times I've had to beg and borrow 15 thousand, 20 thousand. Now he said he's just borrowed half a million!" And they offered him more.

Yeah, and it's obvious from anyone looking at a business from the outside is this is the time when we flip the business up. We've got the interest, we've done the marketing, we know the interest is there. And there was a bit where Debs and I both wanted to go "enough"

No. We sat down and went "well how do we feel? well we'll stay a bit longer"

It's a cusp, it feels like we're on the cusp of something, it's just that you don't know. And also there's people we've borrowed from, that we want to pay back, and we can't walk away.

We're making an interactive game. Which has come through Designer's Block, which is great and it's a London company who are employing us to make the game. And it's this thing of as soon as we get names and contracts - that just turns the whole thing. So we're running the last 100 yards.

Oh I'm pushier, much pushier. I tell you a good thing I've discovered - I'm getting intouch with my inner salesman. That scared me to begin with, because I do not want to be a car salesman. I met Jo Woodford, who again we met through NESTA, and she's one of these people who rings up once and month to see how we are and says "stay there", and she's a very hard headed business trainer. And I went "OK how do I do this?" and she said "Do everything a car salesman doesn't". And she said it is about giving people what they want, so it's basically getting to know people, getting a relationship with people, finding out what they need, seeing if what you do fits, and then making sure they know that. Then you can negotiate a bit, and get their confidence. So it's not dishonest being a good salesman, which was my fear that you're trying to sell things that people don't want. So I'm much more comfortable with that role, and doing presentations.

Yeah if we're doing anything interactive, like we did a flash card for a sound company, and we worked with Dave Sapien who's a games developer and Flash coder. So Dave was able to break the back of that really quickly, and then we were able to put the graphics in. We wrote the scenario and asked Dave to give us the Flash for it. You need to get to know what each other's strengths are, and then that can be a strong collaboration.

Yeah, although the other thing we've done is with the live drawing, where rather than us doing the live drawing, which is using a Wacom tablet and Corel draw and Photoshop, but it's projected so it's like a live animation. With that we've chosen not to use ourselves because we didn't want to get our egos involved, so to step back and get really good illustrators, who are really keen to do it. And we found that one illustrator who really like working with this one musician, and they worked really well together. So you build up those collaborations, and I find that really exciting because it's that Gestalt thing - the sum of the parts is greater than the total.

Yes, and there's this guy who we met, who's based in France, he's interested in working with us. There's a guy contacted us through Artist's Newsletter, who's a London based musician, who we've been trying to collaborate with, we just haven't found the right - everytime we've tried there's been a problem with one side or the other. But you keep those people, those friendships and working relationships going, because the potential - that exciting potential is always there.

I think the biggest thing to watch out for is doing something for nothing. At NESTA we learnt about "Risk It" models, and that can be good - it's when you, say someone comes in and goes "can you do a music video, but we've only got this amount of money" and you need to think what actually do we stand to get from this. Actually we stand to have a music video, which we did, and along the record didn't do so well all the CDs sold had our video on them. So you go right, it's worth it. But you do get people who come along

exactly. So you do it for enough time to get yourself a reputation and then you don't do work for that. I think we have consistently over delivered, and there comes a point when you go no we have to have a rate that we have to bring in. And there was some way of working that out - say in the year, you take off weekends, holidays and give yourself six weeks off, then the fact that 20% of your time is going to be on admin - if you take all that off, then you have something like 120 days to make your turnover. And work out your daily rate from that.

Yes over delivering! Because you are passionate about it, and I think that's what we're realising - not that we're less passionate about the work, but we've been able to let go of some of the kind of aspects of it. Things like the live drawing have come in, where we're using other illustrators, which is great, so you're opening it up into different fields. And in a way the passion is now about the business, the passion for the work is still there, but seeing the live drawing at the opening of a club, seeing 3D stereo, someone coming up to you and being interested in 3D stereo - and instead of going "right who's going to make the work? what's my idea?" it's more of a "right you go do that, because I need to go and work on this project". It's very exciting.