I’ve been planning on giving a few courses on writing, and I thought it might be fun to advertise it in a clever way. This is a postcard I plan on coloring and releasing out in my neighborhood. It will offer a challenge: write the shortest story possible about this scene. The shorter, the better!

I call this “Horror as a matter of perspective”. The winner will be chosen by those attending!

More details when it’s near completion.

Some of you hardcores might remember that when I wrote Bible Stories, I also offered people the opportunity to be illustrated in the book. Most of these artpieces are actually poorly made copies of famous artwork.

Originally, I was going to put my own version of the 10 commandments, but I never really came up with anything that clever, and leaving it blank seemed smarter to me…

In my quest to ape Tintin, I created a similar character to Tintin’s Capt. Haddock. Maxwell is scottish, and was part of the Roya lAirforce during the first world war. Although he was too old to join, he bought his own plane and fought unofficially. He was part of only a few missions, but you would think he had won the war singlehandedly.

Jovial, but also mistrustful, Maxwell is a father figure to Fontaine, who was orphaned at a young age .

I’m sure most of you by now are familiar with my tendancy to do self inserts. Detective Fontaine is no exception. He’s very clearly based on Tintin, but rather than be Belgium, the character is actually from Luxenburg (although his true origins are a mystery). The small country was a fascinating place, and like it’s french counterpart, it was also controlled by the Nazis for a while.

Because so many of the adventures are set in Europe before the outbreak of WW2, it gives me a great opportunity to showcase some of the lesser known characters from that time.

Before drawing any comics, it’s important to have reference images. In this case, I was practicing drawing cars made in the 20’s, including the 1919 Cleveland, a classic old car.

You might remember seeing the first comic, but this second one was never fully published… until now! If I can get over 5 likes, I will publish the script for the remaining episodes if any of you are curious to know what happens!

The belgium comic, Tintin, had a huge influence on me. If you’re familiar with the style called “linge claire” (or clear lines, in english), then you may have recognized it in my own art. It is primarily about trying to draw something in a realistic way with as few lines as possible. The artist Herge was a pionere in this style, and his comics were a huge influence on me.

As many of you know, I love history, and the very first adventure for this series is entitled “The Lost Treasure of the Tsar”. It takes place in the 1920’s, a few years following the Russian Revolution. It’s a historical fact that when the “White Emigres”, the wealthy oligarchs that had escaped Russia, had also managed to sneak away all of their gold reserves, estimated to be worth around 50 billion dollars (or 1500 tons). It was never recovered.

The adventure is a historical fiction tale about the search for the gold, from various factions, including both fascists and communists!

Only two of these were ever made, but as you can see, JL and I had a pretty good grasp on the art style we wanted, as well as the characters. The series was heavily pun based (Skeptic-Al and his sideckick Miss-Tick). What I find funny is that many atheists were very uncomfortable with the idea of including magic in a series about skepticism. I get the objection, but sometimes you need to be a little creative if you want to make a point! Besides, this was written for believers, not for the faithless!

There’s always going to be a part of me that wishes this would have taken off. Who knows, maybe some day, it’ll bounce back!

A few years ago, I wanted to experiment with video game content. My original concept was to make a videogame feel more like a TV show. When I play games, I always turn the Heads Up Display (or HUD) off, and try to have as realistic an experience as possible. A friend who sometimes watches me play suggested I try recording it. I was unhappy with the first result, but then after a few attempts, I came up with these: short episodic gameplay sequences.

The challenbge was usually in finding a way to hide all the HUD elements (which wasn’t always easy), combined with more interesting camera angles. Each episode has hundreds of edits, from zoom-ins, to tracking shots, and of course, deleting menus, maps, or any gameplay mistakes I make.

Like most of my projects, there wasn’t much in the way of general interest. The HUDless audience is still small, and I don’t think the concept has any legs. Of course, I tend to be a little early when it comes to these things, so if ever the genre becomes big, I could see myself doing a few more of these.