Just thought I’d post a sneak peek sketch of an upcoming character, Hel:
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Prince Fancy Feet Chapter 1: The Early Years
on December 15, 2012 at 9:03 pmPosted In: Prince Fancy Feet
So, I asked my wife, who does not consider herself an artist to draw me something. This is what she came up with. I think we should make it a weekly comic.
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Why I Owe My Artistic Career to an Evangelical Christian
on December 4, 2012 at 11:14 pmPosted In: blog
The Neverhood — ©Dreamworks Interactive — from Wikipedia
So, I’m going to depart a little bit from my usual format of posting drawings and a short comment or two, and take a moment to do the blogging thing. Just give me a moment to explain the title. In the mid 90′s, a claymation point and click adventure game called The Neverhood made me want to be an animator. I loved the character design, and to this day I still think it’s one of the most creative games I’ve ever played. One of those rare gems that elevated games to something more than entertainment and convinced (me at least), that video games could be art. Years later, I realized The Neverhood was actually a (not at all thinly veiled) retelling of the biblical Genesis story. While I admit I never connected with it on that level, it’s clear there is so much love in this game–love that went into crafting, designing and building it–that I think whatever underlying message its creators had, it made me want to make things. Somewhere I have a tape of teenage me and a friend of mine attempting to create stop motion animation, and I remember ours was a creation story also.
Anyone who knows me will tell you that that is pretty funny. I’m a pretty secular-minded rationalist guy, and yet my favorite video game of all time is a creation myth. And here’s the thing. The artist who created The Neverhood, as well as Earthworm Jim, Catscratch and a slew of graphic novels–he really sincerely believes in Creationism. He is unapologetically right-wing, Republican and a very passionately believing Christian. And while I am none of those things, I have to thank Doug Tennapel.
If he hadn’t created a game so influential to me, I would never have went to college for animation, never strived to create a whole little alternate world on paper, and maybe most importantly, if I had never decided on creating cool things as a career, I would never have met my wife, and I would never have had my son. If you had a DeLorean and you traveled back to about 1997, when I discovered The Neverhood, you could literally change the entire course of my life. And you could do it without being creeped out by Crispin Glover.
So, anyways, all that being said, thanks Doug.
And Merry Christmas.
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