We bring you the first comic in a three part Christmas story:

Expanding into the realm of actual, coherent narrative is scary, and doing so by maneuvering away from a model that has been proven to convey our simple ideas with some degree of accuracy, makes it a leap of faith. I am not a traditionalist, nor am I of the Christian affliction. I insisted that we take this opportunity to create a Christmas story because it is an arena riddled with fascinating concepts and rich visual imagery. Why shouldn’t we grab a slice of the magical pie?

You may have noticed the overhauling I have dispensed to the FoM-site. I do not have any kind of formal schooling in webdesign, so when I practice it I reverse engineer the existing code to get a feel for the underlaying shape and function. I then begin from scratch, using the knowledge i have obtained, and build something that i think will serve a specific purpose. There is a lot of macgyvering in the course of this process; utilizing existing functions and ideas, and reshaping them to fit my purpose. The whole thing is reminiscent of the way Morgoth used vile sorcery and torture to twist elves, the purest form of life on Arda, into the brutally gruesome orcs, a creature who existed solely to serve a single, evil purpose.

If you spend most of your day trying desperately to create something, i recommend that you take a look at Elizabeth Gilbert’s talk on nurturing creativitly. It is a refreshingly friendly perspective on a subject that deserves attention.

Tune in next Monday night to catch the next part of our story.

- SF