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To who ever may read this I hope I don't bore you. If so please do something more enjoyable with your time than read my thoughts.

But if you have gotten this far let me continue.

When I was a kid I loved Saturday morning cartoons. I loved "The Amazing Spider-Man", "The Incredible Hulk", "Robotech", "Dungeons and Dragons", "Transformers", "He-Man", and the list goes on and on and on.

As a kid I never thought about being an artist for a living but I did like to draw. Mainly dudes with weapons all over them and a wolf head. Something along those lines.

At 13 years old I really got into comics. Especially The Amazing Spider-Man. I thought I wanted to be a cartoonist because I never thought I could draw comics because I wasn't good enough. Also another interesting fact of my life was that no one ever in the history of Brian Lindahl had ever made a dime as an artist. In fact bless my parents hearts they discouraged the idea of making a living as an artist. But they too had never seen any one make a living doing as such so they were directing me out of wonderfully misguided love.

During and after high school I had every miserable job one could think of from washing dung out of the inside of cattle trailers, washing dishes, busing tables, sacking groceries, cleaning toilets, checking customers, moving furniture, and eventually winding up on the kill floor of a meat slaughtering house. I decided I need some college.

Now fast forward to college. I was working full time, married and paying my own way though college.
But I was flunking every class I was taking. I sucked. At everything. I was a slow reader and test taker. I couldn't even type. But the worst thing was I really was trying my hardest. So as a waiter that was about to flunk out of college I was discovering at 21 that I am pretty much a failure at the game of life. However, God bless my first semester English teach who recognized something wrong with my writing. He sent me to a learning Rehab Center. I didn't even know such things existed. I discovered I had a learning disability. I don't even remember what they called it but I got a doctors note that allowed me more time for test taking.

So while everyone else was wrapping up there essays in less than three hours I was getting 6 hrs. and taking that whole time to finish. But things started turning around and I actually became an A student. Senior year I asked the head of the art department what type of work I should look for and he told me, "Become a teacher or go get a job at Wal-Mart because you will never make a living as an artist."

OK... I was a bit stunned.

The same dang thing my parents said but now coming from a guy with some authority. Was I cursed. I definately felt so.

Fortunately I began self-teaching my self HTML, Javascript, Perl and ASP. I got jobs as a web programmer and hated almost every minute of it. So I turned my back on programming and Vowed.... "I will make it as a comic book artist or die trying." My wife pleasantly nods. O....K....

She landed a job and I began working on a submission to Marvel. I got my six pages sent off and got a nice xerox note back that said keep trying. So now I had better get serious about finding job. Unfortunely the Dot Coms fell along with the Twin towers. All my college skills were useless and no one was hiring artist with no experience.

But during college I got some experience with video lighting and I began freelancing as a Gaffer for video companies. It wasn't great money or steady. But I felt like I was part of a bigger industry that I enjoyed working at more.

Now comes the nice twist. My wife became pregnant.

But we were excited. However I was now more than ever ready to find some real steady work. Before that baby came.

Now time for a Miracle. I got called in for a two day shoot working with a really big ad agency. During the shoot some scraggley dude was chilling by the snack bar. He looked like any of the other grunts so we began chatting. We hit it off. He was a neat guy. To my surprise he was also the head writer for the entire ad agency. Now I had had no experiance at all with ad agency work but I asked if he would mind me coming by and showing him some of my art work.

OK. The meeting went like this. He opened my art portfolio from college and as serious as ever said... "This is crap." He turned the page,"more crap." Turned the page again,"more crap." So on and so on. Literally I was frightened, nervous and I think about to cry. But at the back of my portfolio, in a pocket I had those darn six pages I sent to Marvel. Now though they weren't good enough for Marvel he recongized that they were good enough for ad comps and storyboards.

Within a few weeks I was on staff. Praise the Lord!

I will have to give you the second half later...