Leeland P. Gaming, PhD, was fed up with the current state of the higher education system. He wanted to create a utopian place for learning for future generations. In 19-ought-9 he founded Gaming College, his dream for future generations. Gaming College quickly prospered and in 19-eleventy-2 Gaming College became Gaming University.

Okay, that was nice fluff. Anyway, Gaming U. is really an idea that just sort of hit me in the Fall of '99. I had just lost my job as Quality Assurance Analyst at Dynamix (part of Sierra, a computer game company) due to a big corporate layoff. The head honchos at Dynamix were nice enough to provide all of us layoff victims with healthy compensation packages so I had plenty of time to find another job. Job hunting can be kind of boring as there are long period where you just can't find anything.

During those long periods, I spent a lot of time online. I had a bunch of sites that I visited on an almost daily basis to keep up on the world of the internet, games, and computers. One of the sites that I visited regularly was Penny Arcade, an online comic about gamers and the gaming industry. I had originally discovered them when working for Dynamix on Tribes and they did a strip about the game. One day while visiting their site I say a banner add for PvP, another online comic strip. From there I discovered Big Panda and the world of online comic strips suddenly opened up to me. Some of my favorite strips can be found in my Links.

When I was a little kid, I wanted to grow up to be a comic artist. I know, that sounds so trite, but it's true. I let that dream go long ago to pursue other goals (like grade school). Since then, I've wanted to be a comic book artist, a special effects artist, a video game developer, a web designer, and to own my own company. All of a sudden I was back to square one. I had just graduated the Summer before, so I didn't have any more school to worry about, and I had just lost my dream job at Dynamix. My slate was wiped clean and so I came full circle.

I decided to just start my own comic strip, in part to allow a creative outlet for myself, and to keep up my digital art skills. The concept for the strip just came to me, as did about two months worth of stories, in a flash. I had been playing with the idea for my own company for quite a while, but this gave me an excuse to do something with it, so I reserved my own URL, Outer-Ring.com, and used it to host my new strip.

And that's where I am now.

I'm not getting paid for this strip, so I don't devote a lot of time to it (about 10 hours a week, including other site maintenance). Hopefully, some time in the near future I'll be able to earn some income from it so I can afford to spend some more quality time on it. My drawing style is constantly being worked on, so expect the artwork to continue getting better as time goes on.

For those who are wondering, I draw the strip by hand on my computer. I use Corel PhotoPaint and my Wacom Intuos pad and pen to create Byron, Bridget, and all their friends. I convert the strips to 4-bit (16 color) GIFs for B&W strips, 7-bit (128 color) GIFs for color strips, to keep the file size down and make it easier to download. Most of the graphics and images were created using Corel Draw and PhotoPaint.

I hope you enjoy my little strip. If you do, let me know! Fire off an e-mail to trentd@outer-ring.com to rant, rave, or tell me where to stick my strip (hopefully, in a newspaper!).

Thanks for stopping by!

-Trent D.