My initial instinct was to develop Robot Beach as an animated film.  However, when I sat down to write the treatment, one page turned into two, two pages into three and three pages turned into nine.  I realized that I wasn’t looking at an animated short.  I was looking at a series of at least a dozen animated shorts.  And that scared me.

You see, I have a wife, a toddler, and two jobs.  Frankly I am afraid the my days of being able to devote a significant amount of time to creating an animated short may be behind me.  (or at least on extended hiatus) I figure that if I give up my weekends and most of my weeknights, I could produce a one-minute short in roughly three months.  Which means a project like Robot Beach would take me 3 years of very serious heads-down work to complete.  I was torn between my desire to tell a great story and my responsibilities as a husband and parent and clearly the film was not going to win that fight.  I didn’t know what I was going to do.

Coincidentally, around the same time I was listening to a podcast which chronicled the production process of an animated web series.  In one particular episode, the animator confessed that his film was taking far to long to complete and the rigors of a full time job and family life meant that the film would never be completed.  He had decided to instead produce his story as a webcomic.  In this way, he would still be able to tell his story but do so in a much more productive and timely manner.

I was surprised because in that episode he was talking about many of the same issues that I was struggling with myself. But a webcomic?  I had never considered it.   At that same time I was slowly starting to re-discover comic strips on the web and was beginning to fall back in love with a childhood passion of mine. However could I possibly create one myself?  Was I willing to give up on my desire to see Robot Beach animated in order to deliver the story in a manner which was more likely to be completed in a timely and professional manner?

Well, I finally decided that this guy was on to something and so I rolled up my sleeves and got to work.  Over the past six months I have soaked up every podcast and article I could find on the subject of webcomics.  I gave myself roughly two months to get my drawing skills back to a level that I wasn’t completely embarrassed by and I began working to design a website that was clean, professional, and fun.

It took a good bit of time to design the look of the strip and to find the right tone.  And it has taken a while to find a style I like that is also fairly quick and easy to produce.  Yes, it is a bit derivative,  but I am happy with it and I rest easy knowing that my drawing and writing style will continue to develop and get better as the strip goes along.

Most importantly, I am happy that I have found a way to tell this fantastic story that I have been quietly sitting on for two years now.  And I am most excited that I won’t have to sacrifice my job or my wife in the process!

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