Posted in My Kids

My 11 year old son has a job with Nintendo!  I know you think I am making this up, but even though it is not a paying job, he does indeed have a job...

Where to begin to tell this story?  About a year ago my son started making Sprite Comics and posting them on the forums at Nintendo.  They were called Kingdom Zelda.  The idea was what would happen if his favorite character from Kingdom Hearts met his favorite character from Zelda and the 2 had adventures together.  I knew he was writing them and each time he would complete one he would show them to me.  I was amazed with his creativity and abitity.  One day about 6 months ago he had called me into his room to show me his latest Comic.  I was watching him flip through the various pages to get to the comic.  I saw some post that said something like "Wow, you rock!  I love your comics!  Your the best!"  I asked him what that was?  "Oh, that's my fan page he replied" nonchalantly.  "FAN PAGE?  What do you mean FAN PAGE?"  I ask.  "Well it's the place where my fans can discuss my comics."  He replies...Okay, I am a stay at home Mom, I homeschool my kids, I am with them 24/7.  How did my 11 year old get a fan club without me realizing it?  LOL  I continued to quiz him on the comics and found out that his 1st comic which was 6 months old at the time now had over 5000 hits!  It's a whole new world out there Mom and Dad! 

You can click here to read some of his Kingdom Zelda Comics.

Okay, so how did this all end up where we are today?  Well, he cotinued to write Kingdom Zelda for a few months.  Then there was some crazy mixup and his Comics got moved around on the Nintendo Boards until no one could find them.  (Imagine if you woke up tommorrow and HSB had moved your blog to Blogspot and you had no way to tell people where you had been moved to.  He was pretty devasted!)  But he picked himself up and started writing a new  Comic.  Soon, he found that the thing he most loves to do is design Sprites.  What are Sprites you ask?  Here is an example of one of the Sprite Sheets my son has made:

Click to view his latest Sprite Sheet.   This is what he makes and then posts so others can use the different poses.  The picture on the left is a screen shot that Nintendo gives him to work from. 

Basically, my son designs these pixel by pixel in MS Paint.  He starts by drawing it MUCH larger than they end up. Then he fills in the color one pixel at a time.  When he gets it how he wants it he reduces it to the correct size and then save it.  Then he keeps altering them to make different poses and adding diffrenet expressions and items. (Like buckets, swords, capes, etc.) 

Recently my son found out that Nintendo has a small team of people who design Sprites for other users on Nintendo forums.  He decided he would like to be on this team.  He asked me if he could apply.  I told him he could, but to not be disappointed if it didn't happen.  He emailed the person in charge of the group and they responded that he would need to submit samples of his work. (How crazy is that, my 11 year old had "work" to submit!"  LOL)   He did and...they added him to the team!  WOW!!  So now when people request Sprites from Nintendo forums they forward request to my son and he makes the Sprites. Each person on the team has a specialty and my sons specialty is Original Design.  Isn't that crazy?  My son is really very non-chalant about the whole thing.  The other day I was telling him that I was going to have to write this down to include in his College transcripts in the future.  He looked at me like I didn't have a clue and said "It really isn't a big deal, Mom."  I think we have a generation gap at our house!