About Me
In the beginning
When I was a little kid, I used something like play dough a lot, and I built tiny models of animals and such. I was pretty good for my age.
Later it was models of monsters and humans, maybe heroes, can’t remember exactly.
I don’t remember when I started drawing, it was also early.
The earliest things I remember drawing is robots, it was at school and I competed with a friend to draw the worst killer robots. Typical healthy child behavior. I think I had seen Terminator already, which says something about my parents’ attitude towards children and adult movies…
Also, I had seen Alien, which taught me to keep my eyes closed when things on the screen got too scary.
I don’t blame my parents. Those movies are classics. And I’m neither a killer robot nor a murderous alien today so obviously movies don’t affect children negatively.
I would never let my toddlers watch Alien though…
Anyway, there were killer robots, then monsters and stick figures fighting them. Aliens who infiltrated Earth. That kinda stuff.
I read newspaper comics and albums (mostly belgian comics) and eventually I started drawing comic strips, with morbid humor. Always someone killing someone else in an exaggerated way, like pushing them into a pool with sharks or something. Very funny when you’re six to seven years old.
When I got a little older I started drawing an adventure series. All the people were stick figures (with oval bodies instead of lines), but my drawing of the environments advanced a lot during the time I drew it.
Before I stopped, the series’ environments had perspective and depth and the monsters looked much more detailed. But the main character was still a stick figure.
The early years
The day came when my brother played video games and I watched, and of course I thought it was amazing and great fun.
I soon started playing games myself. Super mario, Megaman, Castlevania, Wrecking Crew, Snake Rattle and Roll, and a whole lot more.
And when I eventually played The Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past on the SNES I had found love.
Since then I’ve been a Zelda fan and am of course playing the latest on the Nintendo Switch, Tears Of The Kingdom.
But perhaps even more significant was the day my brother got a computer, an Amiga (600 I think, irrelevant really), on which he started learning how to program games.
Also on the computer was an early and nimble drawing program called Deluxe Paint IV, I started using it to make pixel art, but also eventually graphics for the games my brother programmed.
A long time during my youth that’s what we did. We created MegaSune, Fighters and Sven Dragonkiller to name the biggest, coolest projects.
None of them were ever finished, but the last two were very playable, with multiplayer, many levels and lots of functionality.
It was inevitable that we had to move to PC sooner or later, and we continued there. Started lots of small projects that never became full games. That’s how it was for a long time, Amiga or PC.
I wanted to become a cartoonist after discovering manga (which allowed me to draw people better than as stick figures!) and went to Serieskolan (comics school) in Malmö after high school.
I would still like to be a cartoonist and have pretty detailed scripts, stories and characters for that, but if everyday life and time allows it, I’ll see.
The awakening
One day in the Nintendo Wii U era, Nintendo started a project that allowed all developers, big and small, to borrow a developer kit and make games in javascript for their online store.
Me and my brother got excited. But he demanded that for us to even try this, I had to learn how to program javascript, so that he wouldn’t alone have to do all the coding.
I was afraid to do it because I assumed I didn’t at all have the right mindset to be good at programming, it seemed so complex and frustrating to fix bugs, and I just didn’t think I would have the patience.
But in order to give this a chance, I agreed. And my brother started teaching me the basics of html and css, then to use canvas in javascript.
It’s probably the best thing I’ve ever done.
Nothing else gives me the same satisfaction that programming does. There is something about the immediate result, where drawing, and even more so, drawing comics, has to be completed in its entirety to give the satisfaction of the finished image/comic, coding feels rewarding for each new feature that’s added.
It’s hard to explain, feelings are abstract, and it might very well be that I don’t really know why I think programming is so much fun.
A game was eventually made. Not exactly the most amazing game, but still a finished game, released on one of Nintendo’s consoles.
A dream I never thought could come true, so much that I hardly dared dream it, had come true.
The game is called Guac’ A Mole. It’s about using the Wii U controller to spin a planet from which moles come out, so that asteroids that keep crashing down towards the planet hit them in the head. That’s it.
Not an advanced story, not an advanced game, but rather pretty if I’m allowed to say so as the game’s graphics producer.
On the left is a link to the game’s website, which I built most of the visuals for once upon a time. My brother took care of the boot strap code and the image gallery.
The game was released in 2015 and the website was built before release that year.
We started another game project for Wii U that same summer.
But, the Wii U was one of Nintendo’s less successful consoles and we felt that our game couldn’t release before Wii U was replaced. And we hadn’t by far earned back the cost of keeping the developer kit and getting an age rating (only in Europe, and not even for all European countries).
We felt that it wasn’t worth the time or money to release another game on the Wii U.
It was an expensive experiment, but we gained a lot from it in terms of experience. And I had learned to program, which I might never would have otherwise.
Life goes on
We started a new game project at last, around 2016, using javascript, but for PC.
Over the years it’s become clear to us that javascript isn’t graphically fast enough for the game we are developing, and it’s on a pause because we’ve realized that we need to remake it in some other language.
I’ve been reluctant to learn a new programming language for a long time as I’m very fond of the simplicity of rendering graphics on canvas in javascript, and I’m afraid of the feeling of starting over in a way.
But finally, the feeling that I had to do something to get me moving in the direction I wanted instead of rotating on the spot, won.
And today I’m doing this. I’ve learned C# via distance courses, and now I’m trying to get better at html and css to be able to make my own website.
Now, using all my new skills in my spare time will be a lot of fun, but I hope to be able to make a living on the thing I like doing the most in a near future.
Maybe it will be hard to get a programmer job, but it’s gonna be a lot funnier looking for that kinda work than just store and cleaning jobs.
