the shop

I’d written what became the first chapter of a novel in a 1981 Advanced Composition class, and this entire fantasy concept proceeded to erupt from it without warning. But I was young and married, with young children, and the studio had to pursue more immediately lucrative projects. And so I did pursue them…but after my wife and I had built a successful production business, about every five years, another novel kept coming together. What had been just a single volume (The Fall of Daoradh) soon became a second (The Rise of the Western Kingdom), and even a third (The Watchers’ War). The story just would not let me rest.

So when my wife and I became empty-nesters, I began playing with the idea of producing a comic book or graphic novel, or maybe even tackling a pre-visualization animation. I purchased a 3D printer to create tangible versions of concepts, poured massive amounts of time into screenwriting, 3D character creation, terrain building, and motion-capture animation, not to mention thirty years wielding a camera, editing audio and video, and creating feature-length productions for clients. As the tools caught up to the story, I became convinced that this thing, this wild ride, could actually be produced.

So here I find myself, thirty-plus years down the road, with a finished trilogy, a public Archive of its people, a finished pilot screenplay, and a production bench that has already solved the ugly technical problems. The next work is specific: an animatic of the pilot, a set of physical costumes and props, and a trailer that shows the faces, the VFX, and the places. That is the piece that invites a larger crew and a larger check.

The only question now is, “Will you join me?”