My student's in drawing and illustration classes often ask me to give them the "real talk" about life as an illustrator. The short answere is: don't quit your day job. That is a joke.
Here is the long answer.
Over the course of a decade, some of my personal work has been centered around the imaginary world of Wren River, dreamed up in a sketchbook in 2010. Here is a chronology and a few fun details to illuminate the life span of this project.
In 2010 ( back when reading on a tablet seemed like a new frontier) I was invited as an artist/author to work on a multi artist anthology of interactive comics. The project was for a media publisher with a forward thinking young editor looking to enter the digital space. I was an ambitious illustrator full of ideas, myself, and everything else. I was wide eyed (and also very naive). I worked for several months at the drawing board and eventually turned in a fully painted illustrated story. After months of waiting for its release, the entire project was shelved. Everything was stuck in contractual limbo and would never see the light.
Disappointed but not defeated, I returned to the drawing board. The idea of self publishing comics for digital seemed ripe. In a creative fit, I developed a host of new ideas. I drew and outlined a concept for a surreal fantasy world inspired by the Wizard of Oz, Magritte and Fellini films. I did many rounds of character designs and storyboards that eventually became the World of Wren River.
At the time, I didn't know if the project would be a comic, kid's book, game, or interactive. Many years earlier, I had attended a house party in the Berkely and interacted with some of the folks involved with the Cosmic Debris brand (Emily the Strange). Several small conversations at that party made it seem like creating an iconic character was an achievable goal for any graphic artist. (An aside: the late musician Jack Rose did a hypnotic solo guitar performance in a barn at that party).
With dreams of a surrealist mascot in mind, I started searching for collaborators in technology. How hard could it be in the SF bay area, right? In 2011 I met with a small group of frustrated programmers about a possible indie game - but we never got past the planning phase.
By late 2011, through a mutual artist friend, I was connected with Michael Golden who was already creating apps and had his own dreams of creating a digital studio soon to be called NoRobo Studios. Together, with sweat and tears, we built the Wren River Curse: Chapter 1 app over the course of a few years. The app launched in 2014.
In hindsight, the Chapter 1 project suffered from my own generous over ambition as an illustrator. I insisted, probably foolishly, on painting the entire graphic novel by hand, nearly 80 plus pages. A very slow process. The painted panels took more than two years. Including art, animation, programming and testing, the entire App build took nearly 3 years. All this for a Chapter 1 story that could be read through in about ten minutes! Upon launching in 2014, I was disappointed to realize the new frontier of comics reading via tablet had already moved on ... without Wren River. There was already a glut of comics on the web, many for free. Animation and audio seems extraneous in comics. Not to mention the lost time (and as an illustrator, time is money).
The following year, at the initiation of Michael, we collaborated again, this time on a simple mini game. We expanded the team with the help of Artist/Producer Emma Tipping and Illustrator Ian C Wing. The result was a mini game concept called Warlock Secret. I served as Art Director and contributed the world building and story ideas. I loved the experience of collaboration with this group of talented creatives. It proved an intersting venue for world building. In the end the project took about a year. I was very happy with the design and story concepts, but the game play itself was...extremely difficult! I'm no match three champion and I couldn't even pass the first level.
In 2018, I returned to the original ideas from the World of Wren River and scripted a short story called Wren River Tales. My good friend and talented illustrator Ian Wing returned to collaborate and handled all of the art duties with charm and style. Together we published the book as a mini comic zine and tabled the book at a few comics art fests. I'm extrememly proud of the final story and one we will revisit with further tales.
The World of Wren river was created from dreams. Now I use it as a sandbox type space to visit and play with storys and images. The original outlines and ideas have changed slightly throught the years but alwaus retain their core seedling of an idea.
After experiences creating for apps, games, and print I can honestly say that all three are a tremendous labor of love and all three require overlapping skills of creative vision, technical ability, and delusions of greatness.
California, 2020
Contact Email: wrenrivercurse@gmail.com