Over the past couple of weeks, I added a few more photos on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/fallingpianogames/) of things I've drawn/designed when I was a kid. I thought I'd explain the context of some of them. First up is a drawing I made in Pre-U seminar, when I was a student participant and pretty bored. I even managed to get most of my schoolmates who were also attending to sign on it. The picture itself isn't supposed to mean anything - I just drew whatever came to mind.

That was done in June 1992. I liked the style of the drawing, so I followed it up with a second drawing in December 1992, this time inspired by our History Society trip to Turkey and Israel. Unfortunately, I took so long to complete the drawing (I think it was done almost a year later!) that I hardly got any signatures on it, as I lost touch with many of the other people on the trip (who weren't that close to me to begin with). Nonetheless, I like the strong image of Israel in the middle of the drawing.

In 1992, I also did a water colour of a hypothetical World War III scene, with American M1 Abrams tanks advancing, supported by an A-10A Thunderbolt II Close Air Support jet. 

I later used this as the cover art for my first card game, Tactical Armoured Combat.

Sometime when I started working, I made another random doodle on a notepad. I must have been in some kind of seminar or workshop, as the paper indicated that I was at a local hotel. I drew my watch, my car keys, and my favourite phone at the time (and one I still fondly think of), the Nokia 6131. There was something cool about flipping a clamshell phone open before answering it. Unfortunately the clamshell design had a fatal flaw - if not held securely in your hand, the powerful flipping open action could actually cause the phone to spin out of control and fly out of your hand. That's exactly what happened to mine, and the screen glass cracked as a result. Needless to say, I was very upset.

One year, our church decided that it needed a larger space to hold worship services. As such, we rented Max Pavilion (Hall 10) of the Singapore Expo and ended up holding our weekly services there for almost five years. Before the move, to commemorate this event, the church held a T-shirt design contest. My entry didn't win, but I have to say I enjoyed myself immensely designing it. I guess if you can't please others, you should still try to please yourself!

Finally, for our wedding in January 2005, we went with a Lord of the Rings theme. At the time of the wedding planning, we were between The Two Towers and The Return of the King. In fact, the third show came out in December 2004, just a month before the wedding, so everybody was still in "the mood" when it came around. My wife and I dressed up as Arwen and Aragorn (who else!) for the dinner, and a close group of friends and relatives joined us to dress up as well. My best man, a good old friend of mine, even sportingly did his MC duties that evening in a Boromir outfit. In keeping with the theme, we sent out wedding invites to our guests with Middle-Earth fonts and named our dinner dishes according to what you'd expect at a feast in Lothlorien. We even included a "map" of how to get to the dinner location, the Hyatt Hotel along Scotts Road. The map was my favourite part of the wedding invite - we made many copies of them on parchment-like art paper, and even went as far as to soak each and every piece in a bucket of tea, crumpled them, straightened them out again, and dried them in the sun, to give them a "weathered parchment" look. 

We figured, if you're gonna put so much work into your wedding planning, you might as well have some fun while you're at it. And make some great memories in the process:

Ok, that's all for now. Will be sharing more about a computer game I designed in 1993, in a later post. Farewell from Middle-Earth, friends!

Having fun playtesting our new game with friends. Scheming and plotting our way to victory!