I'm almost six months in at this new tattoo studio. I get a little more flush in my niche every day. I'm more focused and I have more direction nowadays. Things aren't perfect, but it would be boring if it was.
I took on a second job. Not out of greed, boredom or anything like that. This one is a labour of love:
I got my first professional gig in the creative industries when I helped to develop a shareware Mac video game in the 90s. I got involved as the lead artist. I was 13. It was a Puyo Puyo clone. It was amazing! I loved the game, I loved working on it and I became fast friends with it's creator and programmer, who was thousands of miles away in California. We never met and, to this day, we have still never communicated outside of text. Never met, never called, never Facetimed or Skyped. Yet we have been friends for twenty years. We worked on different iterations of this game on and off until around the year 2000.
In the meantime, life happened. I became a tattooist and my friend became a high profile programmer at an internationally acclaimed videogame developer and publisher *coughcough*Blizzard*cough*. I watched him get married and have three children from another continent.
This winter, my friend asked me if I wanted to make a new version of the same game for Apple TV. I didn't have time for it, but how could I say no? I don't just owe it to my friend, but to the game itself and its loyal fans.
We've been working on this feverishly in between our full time careers and home lives for the last few months. We've been pulling 60 to 80 hour weeks, with no days off since, often working until the wee hours after our regular day jobs... and we are hurtling towards our first release.
Wish us luck please!
