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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Cartooning has always been a real passion of mine. When other kids were reading Spiderman and Batman, I was reading Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes. I had many comic strip collections lined up on my shelves and I would spend hours pouring over the pages examining the illustration techniques and the joke constructions. I would create my own comics as well. Of course none of them were very good and mostly they were rip-offs of much, much better work, but it was good practice for my future career as a famous cartoonist.

In fact, the portfolio I submitted to the Savannah College of Art and Design was pretty much exclusively comics. (Stuff I had done for local papers and newsletters and the like.) It wasn’t until after I was accepted and was preparing to move halfway across the country that I sorta sobered up a bit and came to the realization that I really wasn’t a natural artist, had little in the way of inspiration and probably wouldn’t be able to get a job yet alone support a family on cartooning. It was at that point that I decided to change my focus and give this strange, new thing called “computer animation” a try.

That decision has worked out pretty well for me so far. Eleven years later I have a wonderful career doing what I love in both motion graphics and character animation, and I get to share that love with my students, co-workers and clients. I can count myself among the lucky few who enjoy their jobs and for that, I am grateful.

Even still, I have continued to harbor a strong desire to start a comic strip of my own. My job has me on the computer all day, every day and the notion of actually putting pen to paper to create art is very enticing. At the very same time, I am extremely lazy and in years past simply the thought of having to write and draw a new strip several times a week was enough to make me want to go take a nap. I seriously lacked motivation.

When my daughter was born all of that changed. Having parenthood suddenly thrust upon me was enough to inspire me and with that inspiration came an overwhelming urge create something wonderful and unique for her. I want to invent a world for my daughter to explore filled with amusing characters to befriend and exciting adventures to be had. I want to share with her a literary form that meant so much to me when I was young. I want her to one day bring a book of collected strips into class for show and tell and to hold it up in the front of the room and with a smile on her face say: “My Daddy made this for me.”

And so I start off on this adventure with a few simple words that mean so very much to me:

This story is dedicated to Georgia; the most wonderful source of inspiration in her daddy’s life.

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