What’s a Billablog? And what’s a platypus anyway? And why is it playful? Well, hold on – one question at a time! Billablog is (I hope) a clever combination of the words blog and billabong – an Australian word meaning (usually stagnant) pond or lake, and the habitat of the platypus! And a platypus is a rather strange Australian mammal that looks like it is part beaver, part otter, and part duck – truly one of the oddest creatures in God’s creation. I chose the platypus for several reasons – but partially because it reminded me of myself – a hodge-podge of skills and interests that look like they were glued together as part of a grade-school science project. And why is the platypus playful? Well, I’m going to have to give you a little personal background here (don’t go away – I promise to keep it short). My name is Brian, and I want to make games. And kid’s media. And lots of other stuff. Fun stuff. Thus the Playful Platypus.
Platypi
I didn’t start out wanting to make movies and games though. After all, I’m a software engineer (22 years of C/C++ experience, the last 16 of which have been focused on high performance military visual simulation). I am not an artist – I nearly flunked art in seventh grade when I was told to express my feelings and I drew a battleship. But life can take some odd turns, and over the years I have collected a wonderful family – an incredible wife, and four amazing, extraordinary kids – three boys and a girl. Our oldest boy Paul is currently a teenager, and would be considered to have mild Asperger’s Syndrome. But when he was two, he was pretty severely autistic. My wife and I took him to a speech pathologist, and she told us she thought he had autism, and handed us a brochure that told us to just get used to the fact that our son would never finish high school, go to college, get married, etc. At first we were devastated, but then I think it made me mad. Mad that someone would have the nerve to label my son like that. Just write off the rest of his life as a tragedy. So my wife (who is the hero of this story) started learning everything she could about therapy for autism, training volunteers to work with him, etc.
And so, over the years, I have learned to watch for ways that I can help with the process. When he was little, I did stuff like putting all of his Bible Verses he was trying to learn into PowerPoint, so he could read and hear them, as well as record himself saying them (he taught himself to read – but he still couldn’t talk very well). Later it involved teaching him math for a whole year – drawing up elaborate problems (that used algebra!) involving dinosaurs for him to solve, just so he could learn his addition, subtraction and multiplication facts. And for the past couple years, I have been helping him with his interests in animation and film-making. Along the way we had three other kids, with our two youngest boys being autistic as well. And I’ve picked up other skills and interests to help them too – horses, puppets, Cub Scouts, etc. And along the way, I’ve also discovered that I really enjoy some of these things too.
So anyway – enough history. Playful Platypus is simply the company that our family started to do these things we enjoy – things like producing kids media - web video, games, animation – fun stuff! And we’re learning as we go – that’s what this blog is about actually. It’s just a place to share what we’re doing – so if you’d like to learn with us, welcome aboard. And if you are already experienced in this business, and know how hard it is, and just want to watch out of morbid curiosity – I guess that’s OK too. :-)
- Brian