Way before the book was printed, I would often come back to work on Bobby's Biggest Bubble, in over a 2 decade span. My career made it too difficult to focus on making the story, especially with so much travel. While I did have a laptop with me when travelling, I found it difficult to really work/design under those conditions.
I was an animator/web designer back in 2000 and most of our computer design department was let go after the Internet market bubble broke. Only my friends John Biank, John Kowalczyk, and I remained. I stayed on for about 7-8 months, but the work wasn't the same. Our work room was empty and depressing and the projects became too corporate with less and less design needed. Eventually, I left and started freelancing again in early 2001.
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| Character sheet of the townspeople for Bobby's Biggest Bubble |
Freelance work was good. I first got many small projects from eLance.com. This led to several companies finding and hiring me to animated their websites. I was animating for several Japanese online English teaching courses. The pay was decent, tno deadline pressures and they pretty much let me direct my own work (and others.) This provided me with some spare time and I started to go back to doing the book. Above is the image that I pulled over 11 years later to help create my picture book.
Unfortunately, 9-11 changed my career, as it did with so many other people. The freelance work dried up. I was not getting paid for work completed. I was forced to leave freelancing and go back to working under a steady full-time job.
