Why Does The Wind Blow?

[Martin Hash]

During my 20s, while trying to raise a family, buy a house, car, etc. and get 2 masters degrees, not to mention both my wife and I worked, I tried to start an animation company. I could draw but not fast enough so I planned to create animation using a new-fangled home computer. I bought something called the “Amiga” and spent every free moment programming. Computer animation at that time could only be done on very expensive industrial-grade computers so my programs got some notoriety in the emerging computer animation business. I hired some other programmers and by the age of 30, I was doing it full-time. Unfortunately, though I tried to do animation, selling computer software was the primary business model.

MH3D.JPG

Martin Hash's 3-Dimensional Animation

In 1994 I was inspired to do an animation project, and wrote a series of 4 children’s books, rhyming Dr. Seuss-esque, each with 60+ pages. I put my whole fledgling company’s focus on producing a 3D-rendered videogame based on the first book in the series, “Why Does The Wind Blow?” Everyone was excited worked on it because at the time, we were a pioneer in the field; the whole project was being done on personal computers with software I’d written. When completed there was a hardback children’s book with accompanying CD ROM videogame and video. It was a flop; I’d invested a significant portion of my company’s revenue in the project and little of that came back. Undeterred, still striving for my goal of producing animation, I had a portion of the company do the next book in the series, “Where Do The Birds Go?” We used high school student interns to do the animation, and I’m not trying to blame them but the resulting video sucked. I compiled the book out of the storyboard art, and gave up on finishing the last 2 books.

WDTWB & WDTBG.png

Why Does The Wind Blow?
Where Do The Birds Go?

In mid-December 2022, DALL-E, an A.I. art generator, came out. For about $1 per page, I could ask DALL-E to create pages for the remaining 2 books in my WDTWB series. I would type into the prompt something like, “Children looking out the window at snow rendered in a children’s book style,” and 4 images would come out, all drastically different. I could pick one of those or try again. There’s no consistency from picture to picture but, it’s a children’s book I thought; kids are more mesmerized by the story, colors and creativity than adults who have preconceptions of what art in a children’s book should look like. With that in mind, I created and published to Kindle, “When Do The Flowers Grow?” and “What Makes It Snow?” after 30 years.

WDTFG & WMIS.png

When Do the Flowers Grow?
What Makes It Snow?