Bob and his girls took the boys and I out golfing today. It was the first time for my boys, and I just took pictures. Bob gave the boys some great instructions which helped them a lot. Gage is like me and over-thought the whole process—I have no doubt he’ll eventually golf great if his mind and body can come together. Caleb on the other hand was a natural; great form, and even dressed right for the occasion. This is wonderful for Caleb since he finally found a passion for a mainstream sport.

Ever since my late teens I’ve wanted to create a comic based on the many odd situations my friends and I had playing D&D. Yes. …I played D&D. The real problem was that I had no real medium that I was talented in enough to create the comic. My only real skill artistically was in photography, but that wouldn’t work.

Eventually I learned CG animation using Lightwave 3D and later got the idea to do the comic with it called Hack-N-Slash. It’s about a warrior named Thadian Hackmar—nicknamed Hack—and his rogue companion Slash. In 2005 I began creating a journal of ideas for the comic and started modeling some of the characters. What at first was just a bunch of funny stand-alone panels quickly grew into ideas for a full-fledged comic book series. However, I soon realized this wasn’t as easy as I assumed.

I began searching for books on webcomics. Early on they were all pretty lame and only addressed the artistic side, not the business side. Then one day while in Texas I came across How to Make a Webcomic by four well-know artists; Scott Kurtz, Kris Straub, Dave Kellett, and Brad Guigar. This book gave the most pointers and insight of any book of any type I’ve ever come across. It details everything from ballooning, to setting up a booth at a convention, to dealing with fans, and much more. I highlight useful pointers in any book I read, and this book was highlighted extensively.

Anyone interested in creating a comic, not just webcomic, should seriously think about this book.

5 out of 5

I finally updated my WordPress to the latest version which allowed me to easily add some much needed features to the site.

I’ve added an ‘Animation‘ and ‘Videos‘ category to the site. The ‘Animation‘ category shows some of the work I’ve done while at Animation Factory. I’ve added a demo reel plus some of my favorite ecards I made.

Also, a while back I made a music video from a collection of clips taken while playing Half-Life 2 multiplayer. It took a long time to make since I only worked on it a bit here and a bit there over a few months. That video is in the new ‘Videos‘ category.