2013, Jan. – June

I’m deciding to share monthly posts again! It’s a little bit difficult to reboot though, since I don’t want to just leave the last six months out. So here’s a review:

 

Game Development Redirect

My bro and I worked hard on what we could to start launch our Kickstarter campaign for Skylands of Darmanis (game project) in February. We were hoping to have funding in March to continue with production. We were looking at getting an office in Downtown Carrollton and letting raised funds pay a small amount of money to get to continue the game development, paying ourselves $8 or $10 per hour to guarantee a game release to potential fans.  Sadly, we couldn’t get the word out to much of any of our target audience and found ourselves shamefully under-budget by the end of the crowd funding deadline.

Since then, we’ve picked up more regular paid hours at KBO and game development has taken a major turn. My brother felt the whole experience was “gut-wrenchingly” stressful.  He let me know pretty quick after the unsuccessful campaign that he was done and not interested in doing anything productive with games for now.  I still really enjoy it and want to work at something though.

I thought I might try to get some experience in the industry by joining a team of veterans. I put my best foot forward, trying to pick up an animator job for a little game project called “Hero-U“, made by Corey and Lori Cole: creators of a series that was my first inspiration for making games back when I was a kid (that series was called “Quest for Glory“). The Hero-U team found a couple animators with with 20+ years of experience (or something like that) though, never responding to my 5 or 6 emails. Here’s my custom-arranged portfolio I made for them to consider: Hero-U Portfolio.

Meanwhile, I started a string of experimental game projects as a means for learning GML (“C#-ish”) coding. I plan on sharing a mini-demo once a month; that is, once I get something playable… just to show progress and start to build a community around a game that I’m calling “Minion Heroes” so far. I’ve been making casual progress week to week, probably enough to finish and sell something in a year or so for $2.99. At any rate, it’s fun to have something to do in a coffee shop for 2 hours every Saturday before my shift starts at KBO. Maybe it’ll all pay off when I have a game-release-badge on my nerd belt.

 

Un-pausing the Music

Switching to another belt, music had obviously been slowed by all of the focus on Skylands of Darmanis this past year. Now that things have changed so much with my bro and I no longer working on a project, music has slowly been resurfacing as the main fun project I get to work on with other creative and talented people. Jess and I sorta released a couple of songs that we finished up in time for Mother’s Day this year (“Breath Returns” and a cover of Phillip Phillip’s “Home”):

 

Moving forward from here, we thought about switching from “Ananias” to “Crude Canvas”, the name my brother Andrew (D.Cure) and I have recorded stuff under before. Focusing on “Ananias” would mean finding 2-3 musicians that we can become a tight band with… then doing shows and finishing the album. The “Crude Canvas” route would likely mean a season of more freedom to write with lots of people and dabble in different sounds and genres. I’ve really enjoyed writing under “Crude Canvas” with Andrew and would like to think that bringing in more musicians and vocalists would broaden and improve the idea behind the Crude Canvas name, but that’s just an idea right now. Maybe we’ll just do both and let it be two separate things.

Since I’ve been writing more-regularly lately, I’ve also been fiddling with the idea of releasing a solo album called “Demos”, “Scratch Tracks” or something, to be able to share some songs that don’t necessarily fit in either of the Ananias or Crude Canvas camps. I’m big on cataloging and sharing my progress… which is why I like to blog. More so, I covet feedback and opportunities to grow and hopefully offer something through the community aspect of creativity.

 

Another Shot at Parenthood

We’ve been resisting the urge to get really excited about new news in our life. Last time Jess was pregnant, as most know, we had a miscarriage. The extreme excitement in contrast to the sudden and intense heartbreak is something we don’t want to set ourselves up for again. We’ve been slowly telling friends and family that we’re expecting again… which we are REALLY excited about, but without putting so much public hype behind it that it could multiply the potential pain if, in the unexpected case, we have another miscarriage. Please pray with us for a healthy baby and pregnancy.

Baby DeCuir is expected at the beginning of Feb., 2014! We recently got to have the ultrasound and hear a heartbeat, which was awesome to experience again.
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I’m looking forward to picking up my monthly posts again. Check back in July!

 

 

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