After three years as a director, 26-year-old Sam Arthur has learned this: never count on anything; never believe anybody; and most importantly, never get too discouraged by anything.

Sound advice from someone who says at times he's felt like giving up.

Signed to London's Rose Hackney Barber (RHB) plus Rock Fight in the US and Entropie in France, Arthur attended Central St. Martin's School of Art and Design where he was exposed to all forms of visual arts. After finishing school he landed at RHB as part of a short-lived directing duo called Local, which quickly scored MTV airtime with a video for a little-known artist.

Since then, he has directed promos for DJ Vadim, Dirty Vegas, Royksopp, Del Amitri and Tall Paul. Needless to say, Arthur's happy that he stuck with the directing thing.

Arthur's most celebrated work has been animated, though he takes issue with the misconception that he is an animator first, director second.

"I never differentiate what I do. If a project needs animation, then I'll animate it. If not... People want you to be predictable, but I end up doing different things," he says.

His work varies from the absurd and kinetic to the low-key. Excellent animation executions include Royksopp "Poor Leno," where a little caged Leno longs for love and alpine freedom (a promo inspired by Arthur's longing to ski Whistler, Canada), and a tricked-out graffiti-derived video for DJ Vadim, wherein crazy rabbits lay waste to each other with lyrical bullets.

On the live action tip, Del Amitri's "Just Before You Leave" is a wonderfully absurd tale of puppet love and loss, and Dirty Vegas' "Ghosts" is a surreal yet simple video concept, where the road signs and billboards are blank.

"I hate when people call me an animator because I think the lines are blurred. For example, in the Dirty Vegas video, the signs were blanked out in post. That's animation. It's drawing over film. And I don't care what anyone says, it's no different from me drawing rabbits killing each other."

Though he has no commercial credits to date, Arthur is creatively equipped to deal with the challenges of spot work. "When I'm confronted by a difficult project, I get a kick out of turning it around," he says. "That's problem-solving and that's something I want people to know I can do.

"Hopefully, when people look at what I've done, they'll see a range of abilities and say, 'Let's see what ideas he can add.'"