John graduated from Ravensbourne College in 1967, applied for a job, and joined Pearce Studios. John had been working with Lionel at the Slough studio for about 3 years by the time I dropped in for "a couple of weeks" in 1970. By then John was fully trained and working on his own jobs independently of Lionel although of course as the boss Li had an oversight.

When Dave also joined later it transpired that they had briefly known each other at Ravensbourne where Dave did his Foundation course. John used to cycle to work every day from where he was lodging in Hammersmith to the Studio in Slough ... and back !

John was well-trained by Li in all aspects of the production process, and did all the Rostrum Camera work on his own jobs in addition to dealing directly with clients. He took on a huge amount of projects and along with Dave pretty much kept the existing work of the studio going through while Hitch Hikers was in production, as well as undertaking huge amounts of tracing, painting, spotting, darkroom work, registering, etc.

John was excellent at explaining to juniors what he wanted and how it should be done, passing on his knowledge and experience.

The major sequence on Disaster Area in episode 5, with it's tumbling missiles and bunkers miles from the stage, was entirely John's. In Episode 3 he also turned one missiles into a whale and animated the other missile into the bowl of Petunias on the Heart of Gold control room display screen. He also worked with Rod on the Magrathean Planet Building and Missile homing sequences. The broken mouse cage was his as was the Red telephone, literally - he photographed his home phone for the phone number sequence !

John continued to work at Pearce Studios till 1984 when the studio was shrunk. He continued on his own to undertake freelance graphics work and film animation up to 1989. But John is at heart a Fine Artist and later developed this side of his creativity by taking a 3 year break from graphic work to concentrate on painting. He later went on to mix graphic and web design with painting and competitive cycling.

His own website is at www.johnpercy.co.uk