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NBN · Workplace launch
Seven Samurais
Seven characters representing principles for communicating and collaborating through Workplace — including connectedness, keeping things short and finding synergies.
2012—2026
Light Animations
It started with a communications problem, not a plan to start an animation company.
01
Another email wasn't going to work.
While working in internal communications at KPMG, I kept running into the same problem: important messages were competing with everything else landing in people's inboxes. Sometimes another email simply wasn't going to cut through.
So I experimented. I made a stop-motion piece with paper cut-outs, narration and my wife's digital camera. It took about a week. It went surprisingly well. When another communication challenge came along, I bought Toon Boom and a graphics tablet and tried 2D animation.
People engaged with it. That was the spark.
02
Maybe I could do this for other people.
In 2012 I built a very simple website and posted on Facebook that I was starting something new. Almost immediately, a former colleague in Switzerland got in touch about presentation work, followed by an animated video for her clients at UBS in Zurich.
That early validation was encouraging. The reality after that was much less tidy. Work was irregular, and I was trying to do the business development, the thinking and the production at the same time.
We also had two young babies at home. There were bills to pay, family life to make work and a business I was learning how to run as I went. Somehow, with God's grace, we managed.
What changed
I stopped trying to make everything myself.
As the studio matured, I began bringing specialist illustrators, animators and project leads into productions. My own role gradually moved towards the front of the process — working with clients to understand what they were really trying to achieve.
What's actually the problem?→Who are we trying to reach?→What should they think, feel or do?→Find the idea→Write & structure the story→Build the right team→Make it
The animation, infographic, presentation or website was the output. The real work started before that.
03
Then clients started asking for other things.
A client who trusted us with an animation would come back and ask whether we could help with a presentation. Or an infographic. Or a website. Or some other communication problem.
Because I could, I did.
Light Animations gradually became less about one medium and more about finding a useful way to communicate something. Animation remained part of the mix, but it was never the only answer.
AnimationPresentationsInfographicsIllustrationGuidesWebsitesVideoPosters
Some of the work
A few things we made along the way.
Bupa Villages Aged Care
From sketch to induction film
A two-minute animated welcome introducing new employees to the organisation's history, purpose, values and people. The surviving process material is a nice reminder that the finished frame was only the last step.
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Ivanhoe Grammar
Dare to Dream
Working from a narrative by the school's Director of Technology, we developed a five-minute animation imagining a future of education shaped by AI, augmented reality and personalised learning.
Direct Connect
A new dashboard, explained quickly.
A short walkthrough combining screen captures, text and branding to help internal agents understand and adopt a new dashboard.
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Some of the organisations we had the privilege of working with
The people behind it
I didn't do it alone.
Light Animations was possible because of the illustrators, animators, editors, project people and other creative collaborators who helped bring ideas to life. Some of the independent creatives I had the privilege of working with along the way:
Alberto Mar ↗Animator
Varunjyoti Deori ↗Animator
Esther van Doornum ↗Voiceover Artist
Glen Lloyd ↗Voiceover Artist
Cat Ashton ↗Writer
Lucy Holmes ↗Voiceover Artist
Gadis Kandina ↗Animator · Video Editor
Jai Ceresoli ↗Video Editor
Camilo M ↗Graphic Designer · Illustrator
Natalia Pisano ↗Animator
Rezza Rainaldy ↗Illustrator
Marianna Rudakova ↗Stop-Motion Animator
Elda Dedja ↗Illustrator
And to the many other freelancers, voice artists, clients and collaborators I had the privilege of making things with over the years — thank you.
2026 · Closing the studio
Why close it?
For the last six years of Light Animations, most of my attention had moved towards nonprofit work with organisations in the One World One Family Mission. I stopped actively developing the studio, although I continued working with some existing and occasional new clients.
When the time came to work independently again, I realised I didn't want simply to restart where I'd left off.
I loved what Light Animations gave me. But I didn't want Dinesh = Light Animations — or to define the next chapter entirely by the things I could produce.
So in 2026, I closed it.
I'm still figuring out exactly what comes next. I'm increasingly drawn towards facilitation, training and helping people build their own capability. We'll see where that leads.