The Comic Con Rush (…Back down the rabbit hole)
Today is one year since Kapow Comic Con in London.
My memories of Comic Con are blurry at best. I remember staying up all night in Portishead to finish the beta of Timedancer Episode 2. I remember finishing it and creating the file for the phones and literally grabbing a pile of clothes, shoving it in a bag and driving straight to London to pick up Ari Abraham from Heathrow. We then stayed up until stupid-o-clock in the morning, testing and tweaking before I fell asleep on the sofa. Comic Con itself was incredible. There was a real buzz around our table and it was great to get user feedback for the first time. After the first day, Ari was falling asleep at the desk mid-conversation as we 
continued to tweak Timedancer ready for the second day. By the end of the second day, we were both falling asleep in Byron’s, tired, exhausted and in a sugar coma thanks in no small part to the Cybercandy stand next to ours.
It was crazy and tiring, but so worth it. Plus I got to meet the guys that created Saw and Insidious whilst Ari got to meet a crazy rabbit.
And so, we’re a month or so away from Comic Con 2012 and this year we’re going to dial the pre-Comic Con insanity up to 11. This year (because we didn’t learn our lesson the first time around) we’re launching three projects at Comic Con. These projects include several web sites, three apps and a bunch of supporting materials to tell our stories in different forms so you can get in on the action regardless of the platform and technology you use.
In addition to that, I’ll be juggling a commission which, just for kicks, is also due to be finished exactly the same week.
So, here goes.
If you want to see if we make it alive, grab a Comic Con ticket and come down. We’ll have zombies to meet, swag to giveaway and games for you to play. Plus, Zombies Ate My City users can grab a special achievement just for showing up.
What I’ve learnt… From my mum!
One of the questions that I get asked a lot is how I got into programming, or film, or transmedia… I blame thank my mum.
My cousin had a computer and, at the age of three, I decided I needed one (having already cracked programming the VCR). Seriously. On my fourth birthday, my mum tried to “compromise” by getting me sticky letters which she stuck on the television screen. She couldn’t fool me. After all, which one of us was smart enough to programme the VCR?
I got my first computer at the age of four, for Christmas. It was a Commodore Plus/4. It played games. On cassettes. I remember being hooked on Treasure Island and Icicle Works. I loved it. I was, however, convinced I was going to be a television presenter when I grew up.
Anyway, at some point, the world moved on from games-on-cassette and we upgraded to an Atari ST which was a little more like the computers we have today.
I’m not entirely sure how or why it started, but my mum bought a couple of programming books. I think she reasoned with herself that if I was going to spend hours playing games in front of a screen, I should at least know how it works and where these games came from. It’s sort of like meeting the chicken before you barbecue it, I guess.
My mum and I share a love of puzzles (even now, she’s kicking my ass at games on Windows Phone) and working out how things work, which is where I think it all comes from. Programming is, really, about solving puzzles.
We used to spend hours making the Atari draw shapes with hundreds of lines of code, or speak back lines, or changing the colour of visual elements. I’d forgotten, until quite recently, that this was the first time I programmed anything. We then went on to create simple games, text-based-adventure games. Like those choose-your-own adventure books.
Alongside this, I was obsessed with television and film. But less about watching it, and more about how it worked. So, I got into film making. Nothing spectacular. It started with home videos for holidays and events. I’d take out our camcorder, film it, and then edit it together using two VCRs and a scart cable. Later on, my parents got me a dubbing deck so I could add music on the fly. I then got into writing and filming short films. It was like Super 8, but on SVHS, which sounds like a considerably less exciting film title. Me and my best friend Rob used to make film sets, either in the house, or on the coastal path at the back of the house, with props, make-up, the works. We made a sci-fi film once with aliens, dressing up our siblings for the starring roles.
Anyway, later on we upgraded to a Windows 3.11 machine. Again, we taught ourselves, together. About this time, I got totally hooked on Creatures, an artificial life game. Some people on the internet were making add-on objects for the community to download and so I started to dabble, teaching myself programming and also web design. My mum switched internet providers so that I could get hosting, and within a couple of months Albia 2000 had become one of the top three destinations for Creatures stuff.
Anyway, from there the path seems kind of straight forward in hindsight… I was asked, by the guys that created Creatures, if I’d make a new world for Creatures 2 for them to sell and split the profits. My mum let me turn the back room of the house into an office and so began a production period of six months that wasn’t a million miles away from the schedule I kept for Zombies Ate My City (except swap “juggling other work” for “juggling school” and substitute “coffee and more coffee” for “Ribena and jam tarts”).
When the company that made Creatures went under, my mum drove me up to Cambridge where I picked up some assets from the creators which I used to create a project that got me my place at university. There I worked with Ari Abraham on two projects that combined his writing skills with my programming. Then came, with him, Gridsearch, S’kali, 5:13, The Joshua Tapes, Timedancer, Zombies Ate My City…
It’s strange that everything I am doing now is down to my mum. If she’d have dismissed the curiosity of a three year old, or hadn’t taken it upon herself to learn coding with me, the projects that I’ve been working on over the past couple of years would never have happened, I wouldn’t have met all the great people I’ve met or had the great experiences I’ve had.
My brother and I are quite different in our interests and both of us are making a living doing the things we’ve always wanted to do. We owe that to my mum and my dad for not only supporting us, but also encouraging us in the way we pursued our interests.
And, god knows what I’d be doing for a job if it wasn’t for them.
I saw a careers advisor when I was 16 who was completely against me working in media. In an effort to discourage me, she (ironically) sat me down in front of a computer to do a test to find out what jobs would suit me best. The test results suggested I became a gardener or a funeral director. Anybody that knows me will know that I can’t look after a plant to save my life and I’m not a massive fan of corpses either. Unless they’re reanimated.
How different things could have been.
Happy Mothers Day.
And thank you.
xxxx
Gigs booked…
In a weird coincidence, loads of my favourite bands are touring together this year, which is great. So I’m all booked up.
Booked Train. Bonus support, Matt Nathanson.
Booked Boyce Avenue. Bonus support, Tyler Hilton.
Booked Charlie Simpson. Bonus support, Sam Beeton.
I like the support acts as much as I like the main bands.
Sorted.
Six birds. Three stones.
And chucked a David Ford gig on top for good measure.
I Need An Adventure…
Zombies Ate My City is out. Now what?
It’s been an insane few months. I actually enjoy the long days, evenings and weekends and the general full-on-ness that completing projects like this entail and it’s been well worth it, with over 4,700 downloads in the first few week, and a bunch of great feedback.
But conversations over the last couple of weeks have been…
Somebody else: What have you been up to?
Me: Working on Zombies.
And that’s about it…
No house parties, nights out, random road trips… Nothing… My photos folder for the year has just two folders, and one of those is work related. Shameful. My Foursquare check-ins have consisted of lunch runs to the supermarket and the gym.
So this week I have booked concert tickets for all the bands I want to see this year, planned a few catch-ups, and I’m starting to organise the road trip for later in the year, driving across America.
I need to do something that feels like a bit of an adventure and I’m looking forward to hitting the road and seeing places I’ve never seen before – the more weird and random, the better. And it should begin with a couple of weeks with my best friends on the East coast.
I really can’t wait.
It’s here, Zombies Ate My City launch day!
It’s finally here. This morning we flipped the switch and released Zombies Ate My City to the world. It’s a unique game, combining location hunting, live-action video and action gameplay blended together with a somewhat crazy zombie/sci-fi storyline, written by my equally strange partner in crime.
Here’s the rather peculiar trailer…
You can find out more information about the app at http://www.zombiesatemycity.com or just go ahead and grab the app by clicking the link below…
Or, scan this tag from your Windows Phone…
As always, thanks to all the friends and family that offered suggestions, support, and bugs. And those that simply put up with my sleep-deprived and coffee-induced weirdness.
Now, go hunt some zombies.
I’m off to hunt sleep.
Enjoy.
