I decided that if I was to do this, I would have to do it right. I wanted to be attached to what I was doing, because that is when I put out my best effort. If you actually like what you are doing you give it your best. Just ask my mentor Lou. He is a fabulous man who is living his dream and doing an awesome job because he LOVES what he is doing.

Now if only I can get a job that I really like [sigh]. What sucks even more is that I live in NYC and the jobs are getting sadly scarce. But I digress. If you actually read my weekly columns (yes, they are columns and not rants because the only things that I will rant about are not having a job or a puppy. I don't believe in forcing my opinion down someones throat, because it hurts too many feelings. I wonder if my saying that constitutes as a rant?) you will notice I go off on what people like to call supertangents. Anyway, back to the story.

I wanted to have another go at the comicstrip angle. I decided to try doing a strip about my first love -- Science Fiction. Or more, appropriately, the Space Opera. For those of you who do not know or are unfamiliar with that phrase (I realize some people who may see this do not speak English as their first language), a Space Opera is an epic adventure which doesn't have alot of scientific fact to explain the technology. Most of the races tend to be humanoid and weaponry consists of swords and sometimes magic. Examples of these are Star Wars, to a lesser degree Star Trek (please don't crucify me), and some video RPGs such as Xenogears, FFVII and FFVIII. They usually have a story which involves some evil mysterious force and there is some romance and world-saving involved....

You get the picture. I decided I wanted to illustrate a story comic-book-style that followed the Space Opera guidelines to a degree.

For the past few months I have been writing a sci-fi roleplaying game. For those of you who are too trapped in the world of computer games and console systems, I will just tell you it wasn't a videogame. I actually am writing an old-school dice-and-character RPG. I created races and worlds and worked on some rules. Now, this game did stem from a thought on an old videogame RPG I wanted to make. I had a base story with two main characters and a plot.

So as I proceeded further with creating the Sci Fi RPG book I began creating more characters and wanted to see how it might play as a comicstrip. Lois and I started talking about it and she offered to script it for me if I ever drew it. I called her bluff and bought a bunch of comic boards. I started drawing the characters and began the project. I know that right now it will be slow, but as I work past the first intros I hope I can make it interesting. I am hoping that my overall art style improves and this feeling of slight insecurity annd uncertainty goes away.