Making Stuff

Ever since I was a kid, I've always loved making stuff. Creating things was always more fun for me than just playing with things already made by others. Perhaps it was the Lego that my parents bought me from young, which allowed me to make anything my imagination demanded. I didn't need a new toy gun - I would make my own. I didn't need a new spaceship toy - I would make my own. It was natural, then, that in school, I spent a lot of time making my own things. When I was thirteen, I created a basketball card game where a few friends and I each took an NBA team and used dice to simulate matches against one another. Obviously, being the creator of the game, I picked the dominant team of that era for myself, the 1988 Los Angeles Lakers.

Around that time, I also started to draw comics for my class newsletter. The art was, frankly, awful, and the humour even worse. But I think that was about par for a 13 year old. You had to start somewhere, I guess.

When I was 14, I started to bother with colouring, and that made a lot of difference in the quality of the artwork. I began to draw my own full-page war comics in journals that our teachers made us write on a regular basis.

My obsession with Transformers continued, though. 

That same year, Iraq invaded Kuwait and touched off Operation Desert Shield. After several months of military buildup by Coalition Forces, Operation Desert Storm began, the recapture of Kuwait. During those intense few days of fighting, I updated my class with daily hand-drawn battle briefings on our bulletin board wall.

When I was 16, for my GCE "O" level art paper, I had to design a paper-cut art and make it for submission. Given my interest in warfare and military technology, I chose a scene from a theoretical World War III invasion. This is the draft of the design, before being enlarged and made into paper-cut art.

To be continued - Making Games