The origin of PC Pete both as a comic book character and as a storyline is deeply rooted in my passion for filmmaking. The indie film “Clerks” by Kevin Smith quite literally changed my life when I first saw it in the mid-90s. It’s not that this film was a masterclass in cinematography, far from it. Rather it was fascinating for other reasons. It was released in 1994, around the time the Internet was just starting to take-off, and was shot on 16mm film, not digitally. It was also self financed entirely by Kevin Smith himself, so in that regard, it was quite revolutionary for its time. Robert Rodriguez’s 1992 film “El Mariachi” is another example of a film defying the odds by making it big despite not having the big Hollywood financial backing. I was completely obsessed with this guerilla style of filmmaking where incredible stories can be told for very little budget. Where the filmmaker challenges him or herself to make a good film by utilizing whatever they have readily available. When the new millennium rolled around and digital video tape formats such as miniDV became more standard and available, that’s when I decided to make the jump. No longer did one have to invest even a modest budget of Kevin Smith’s $27,000. All one needed was a $2000-$5000 video camera and cheap $10 miniDV video cassettes (and of course, a good story). Apple’s Final Cut Pro was available in many media schools and iMovie came pre-installed on every Mac of the day. All the elements of cheap and affordable filmmaking were finally in place.

The early 2000s also marked the development of another important piece in the indie filmmaker’s arsenal: Machinima. The word itself is a portmanteau of the words “machine” and “cinema” but was basically a way of making films using video game engines like Unreal Engine and pre-existing game assets such as characters, scene maps and props. Machinima was an interesting way of putting together an animated film without having to learn the ropes in 3D modelling and animation, but had it’s own little quirks: the game characters were very difficult to control and in most cases, did not move or react the way the filmmaker wanted or intended. The Sims is a very good example of this in that often, the characters would go slightly “off script”. I believe that this is the main reason that Machinima did not fully take off as a genre of filmmaking that many had expected. So I eventually abandoned the Machinima world for the daunting world of 3D modelling and animation and all that it entailed. I knew how to write a decent story, but needed a very simple character to model and animate. Enter PC Pete.

If one looks at the overall character design of PC Pete, he couldn’t be more simple. Basically he is two boxes stacked one on top of the other with some typical cartoon styled limbs. I conceptualized and designed PC Pete back in 2012 thru to 2014 using Blender, a free and open source 3D application. I had a bit of experience working with Blender but by no means was I a 3D modelling guru. Modelling the more organic elements such as his hands took a bit more time naturally. Once I was satisfied with his overall look and feel, I proceeded to challenge myself with a similar design but for a female character. Keep in mind that at this point in time, there was no story. All I had was a nameless character. I wanted my female character to be more feminine naturally, so I designed her to be more rounded and curvy. This was the birth of Mandy. She was inspired by the design of the late 90s hot rod pink iMac but very different.

At this point I decided to start writing the story as I didn’t want to get too ahead of myself with character designs if I didn’t have a good story to tell, all the while still pecking away at learning Blender and other 3D animation concepts. The story evolved over the course of several years. I wrote a basic draft, made some modifications, wasn’t happy with something, went back to edit and on and on it went for a few years until sometime in 2018/19 when I finally finished the story. At some point, I got discouraged by just how daunting it was to learn 3D animation considering the fact that it’s taken established animation houses decades to master this craft. So then it all stalled, and everything just sat on the back burner until early January 2023. I always knew that this story would someday see the light of day, I just did not know how and when. It was one of those moments in life where we all get a brief bolt of inspiration and ideation. Coincidentally, at that very moment I thought about my story and character designs while standing in a comic store in downtown Toronto when it finally hit me…why not make PC Pete into a comic book? There was only one problem. I could not draw for the life of me.

I started to think about my options when I remembered a talented former work colleague of mine who had done graphics for me in the past. I looked at his recent portfolio online and knew right away that his skills and art style were perfect for this job. I reached out to him and the rest is history. “PC Pete and the Brood of Clones” as we know it was the direct result of 16 months of hard work but of course, much of the legwork was done by me in prior years. Translating the screenplay into a comic script was something completely new to me as was panel layout and design. Of course, all of the stuff that goes into publishing was also all new to me. This has been such a learning experience for me, and I’m proud to share this work with the world.

w00t, w00t !!

Kayce Konrad, August 2024