Seeing as the website is far from done, has not really been advertised and been found by very few people, either through my FB- or GitHub-page, writing a blogpost may seem like a shout into the void. Nevertheless, here we are.
I would like to present myself, and give you an idea of what this page is going to be, for me and for you.
I´ve always aspired to be a comic book artist, ever since I read my first pages of first The Phantom, and then various Marvel titles of the 80s. I was always drawing and writing stories when I grew up; unfortunately my vivid imagination was never matched by artistic prowess, and so I grew increasingly more frustrated with time, not being able to properly bring life to my stories. Disillusioned, I quit drawing. In fact, for about 10 years, I didn´t draw a page.
Enter the advent of open source digital media in general, and 3D CG in particular. Digital media turned out to be a good medium for my rather sloppy style, as I realized I could just draw a loose concept and then correct all mistakes on the computer. So, again, I tried to realize my dream of becoming a comic book artist.
Problems were threefold.
- I started in the wrong end. I would usually start drawing concepts, which looked cool on paper, but as soon as I started writing a story, I felt limited by what I had drawn. Instead, I would start with a story, and didn´t design any characters until I had their basic story done.
- Self imposed limits to the creative process. I would start with a project, force myself to try to make it work, and when I hit a block I again I lost interest, until one day I had a realization. The problem was that I was limiting myself to one project, and I should allow myself to work on anything I found the inspiration for. I noticed that by doing this, by starting with one project, get an idea for another project and work on that for awhile, and then go back – I didn´t kill my inspiration they way I had always done.
- I limited myself to doing comic books, but I was also interested in animation and computer games, always feeling that would be too complicated. What would I do if I didn´t limit myself to one medium?
Suddenly I had 8 projects!
This sounds like madness to anyone who knows anything about project management, but I could allow myself something you don´t have when working for a studio – time. I would let this grow organically, let the process take the time it needed, and although project completion was further into the future than if I worked on one project alone, once I delivered it would be several projects in a short period of time.
So that´s where I´m at, still at a pretty early stage, about a year has passed and I´m starting to get ready to tackle the visual part, very happy that I spent this year finetuning my ideas. You can already see some work in progress and concepts in the galleries, but I´m only starting to hit my stride, and I´m still learning to use programs like Krita and Blender. I fully expect to have a playable alpha version of my first game by the end of the year.
Next blog post I will go into a bit more detail about the projects I´m working on, and I hope by then I will have something more to show.
