Sometimes a father looks for a way to bridge the gap between himself and his son. When I think back to the differences between Pat (my dad) and myself I have to smile. He was a big burly football player type of guy and I was a theater kid and into art. Our common ground was the family business. We worked on the road for over a decade off and on from my high school years until he finally passed away in 2000. I’ll never forget those years.
Now I look at Ayden, the Bookbinder’s Apprentice, and wonder what our common ground will be. While he is kind and says he likes this book or that book, he is not really into the process which I am driven by. He is into video games, both as a player and most recently as a developer. Ayden has starting teaching himself several programming languages and is working in the Unity environment to learn how games work and how to make them.
Last night he has a fantastic idea to make a bookbinding video game, akin to Surgeon Simulator, where you operate the hands on the screen and in the case of the bookbinder game, make or repair a book. I started mulling the idea around in my head and connected a novel I have been working on, Legend of the Bonefolder, and wondered with this wasn’t a perfect marriage of ideas. A great story behind why you are repairing the book or making one with a bit of lore and adventure mixed into the game play.
I also starting pondering that gap and wondered if this wasn’t our bridge. I’m looking forward to exploring this with Ayden and the convergence of our two passions.
Over the next few weeks I’ll be developing the game story & play strategy concepts. I have a book I’ve been working on that may feed directly into the games story aspect. When we start developing the game. I believe we will be working in Unity.
Something many of you might not know about me is I went to school for computer animation and motion design. I also worked as a graphic and motion designer in the greater Seattle area & Redmond for over a decade…so I have some experience and background on getting this project off the ground and developed. See, I’m not just another pretty face!