Working Day Comic Success!

A Link To my Comic "Peas and Carrots" the First "Working Day Comic"
Proof that it can be done, and done well!

I drove with my family to Spokane, Washington on Friday October 19th after getting out of work a little early and spent the night there with my in-laws. The next morning I got an idea for the comic and headed over to Merlyn's comic and game store at about 11:20am. I started promptly at 12:00pm (the official starting time for the Merlyn's group) and worked straight through until 4:00pm when I took a half hour break. By that time I had seventeen and a half pages finished so I was making good time. I came back and worked for another half an hour before my father-in-law and kids showed up when I took another half hour break to chat and look at the store with them and get some lunch. I completed all twenty-four pages of the comic at two minutes before seven o'clock. That's fifteen minutes a page which is what I had planned for. I thought that I would run over, but I didn't! This gave me an additional two hours to go back over my work and make adjustments and touch-ups here and there. The most significant thing I did in this "extra" two hours was to add dark black lines for panel borders.

So yes, I did it! I was the first one finished and I did all twenty-four pages in a Working Day--not spending more than eight hours actually drawing it! An entire comic from concept to completion!

I did a practice run the night before of three pages in an hour. I used a two pass method of penciling and then inking and was barely able to complete it. This is what prompted my use of going straight with pen and allowed me to finish all the pages with time to spare.

I'm very happy with how the comic turned out! I feel there is a lot of energy and expression that I was trying to capture. The pages and panels flowed from my hand almost immediately after the thoughts entered my mind. It lacks the stiffness of some of my other more well planned work. There is of course a significant lack of polish in the work. Honestly it mostly looks like quick thumbnails and chicken scratch... very sketchy. Since I was using straight pen, I had no chance to erase which increased my drawing speed, but made it hard to fix mistakes.

Next year, my focus will be on putting a little more quality into the work.

So there you go.

There is no need to burn yourself out for twenty-four hours when you can get great work done in a working day so long as you stay focused. I think about all the time some people waste when they know they have twenty-four hours to complete the project. Many probably only end up spending eight good hours on it anyway! I had a great night's sleep and was fresh for Sunday morning the next day. No coffee, no energy drinks, no falling asleep at the table. Just a good solid day's work. Honestly, outside of my hand cramping up a bit due to lack of practice, it was pretty easy going.

So next year, my challenge to you is to complete your 24 Hour Comic as a Working Day Comic.

Working Day Comic

It's that time of year again. Time for the 24 hour comic challenge!

Here's a post from last year's event.

I've decided to make myself the inventor of a variation on Scott McCloud's 24 hour comic. I'm calling it the

Working Day Comic

All the rules for 24 hour comics hold with two more on top of that.

1. You can only work 8 hours on the comic (IE no overtime).
2. You can take up to a 1 hour break for lunch that does not count towards your 8 hours.

That's it!

So if you're like me and love the idea of 24 hour comics but don't like the idea of 24 hours, or if you're a huge fan of the effectiveness of the 8 hour work day, you might want to give my variation a try.

I will be happy to post any and all Working Day Comics that you send my way. In fact, if I get more than 3 submissions (outside of my own), I'll start an official web site for it.

Best of luck!

Caster Update

Continued progress on Caster. I'll be making a new downloadable version available soon.

Back in Action!

My wife made visit to Seattle, Washington a month ago and rather than getting it out of her system (she is from there and wants to live there), it fortified her desire to move back. We had previously decided to stay here in Utah and see what we could do about budgeting more money for travel because it's just too expensive to live there. Well, about a week after she got back I got an offer for a great job there that would pay enough for us to live there. So... The game begins anew!

I've accepted a position with Solutions IQ in Redmond, Washington working on computer graphics in their newly formed games division. They are a work for hire studio and they don't have any issues with "owning" my time, thoughts, and ambitions when I'm not at work. This means I feel comfortable again working on projects that are important to me. Caster will get back into swing soon, but I have one other project to do before then. My next project is code named Lovely Day. It will be a short prototype for a 2D/3D animated soccer game based on the characters from July Film's "My Little World" animated film. It will be on the XBOX 360 using XNA and the Flat Red Ball Engine (FRB). The reason this is trumping Caster is that I have a more urgent feeling about it than I do for Caster. Also, it will be short and it will be nice having another little something done before jumping back hard core into Caster.

When I put Caster on hold, I decided to start doing some other projects that I wouldn't be afraid to lose to EA. Yes, the odds of the EA legal department caring anything about what I did were extremely small... but they did refuse to grant me an exception for my work when I asked for one, so I didn't want to take any chances. I did the following:

• Created one level of a side scrolling Ninja game for XBOX 360 and Windows using XNA and FRB. I did the game design, the character art, the animation, and the audio work. My friend Victor Chelaru of FRB fame did the programming and our friend Leo did some awesome Background and tile art. A couple of the animations can be seen here and here.
• Created a match 3 game in Flash with the same core game mechanic as Chuzzle.
• Created a painting game in Flash based on the "Romeo and Juliet Sealed with a Kiss" animated film.
• Started working on a XBOX 360 demo with Ryan Petrie (hurri) for the Spark Arts Festival that will be held this October. We worked together on Isosurfer for Pilgrimage 2005 and decided to go at it again.
  
• Got a Nintendo DS homebrew setup up and going. Compiled and ran some stuff. It was very cool.
  
• Did a lot of interpersonal and business networking.

Looking back on it, abandoning Caster wasn't all that bad. It was an opportunity to get out there and try out some other things that I would not have otherwise. As a result, I also got much more proficient in two other programming languages, C# and Action Script. This in turn beefed up my resume and helped me land the job that I have now. So there you have it, I took my lemons and made lemonade.

Whereas freedom to do whatever you like in life, animation, game development, etc. is ideal, there is a lot to be said for the creativity in how you handle restrictions on your work. Sometimes, the results of having the restrictions are better than if you had all the freedom you desired.

For my closing remarks on this post, I want to give huge props to the people at EA Salt Lake. They've done a great job maintaining the quality of life that we had while we were Headgate Studios. Great things are happening at that studio and lots of exciting projects coming down the pipe for them. I highly recommend the studio for anyone looking to get in the games industry. Honestly, instead of being excited about the new position in Redmond, all I've been feeling is sadness about leaving my good friends at work. It's really been a great place to work.