Cuthbert is, by its very definition, a massive project to take on.

See?

It’s big and over-complicated and… that’s sort of the point. I wouldn’t want to water it down. But it can be daunting and, after I’ve spent all day coding at work, it can be tough to summon the energy to do so much more coding.

So, when I started this, I knew if I was actually going to finish it, if I was going to resist the siren-song of Netflix, jammies and an early night, I was going to need some powerful motivation.

Fortunately, I’m Scottish.

Why’s that fortunate? you ask, not understanding that I can’t hear you and that’s not how blogs work. Well, impudent reader, I’ll tell you. First of all, I have a fantastic tolerance for deep-fried foods of any description.

Behold, Valhalla! _{DollarPhotoClub}

Secondly, no Scottish person can ignore something they’ve invested money in. It’s biologically impossible. It cannot be done.

I knew, if I put some money into Cuthbert – money that could have otherwise been spent on important life essentials: rent, Irn-Bru – I’d feel obligated to push through the hard times, ignore Netflix when it winked its inveigling eye. I’d be duty-bound to get stuff done.

I mean, I’d have given up perfectly good Irn-Bru.

I knew if I hired an illustrator to create artwork while I built the game, I would actually build the game.

And it wouldn’t look like this.

That’s where L. Whyte came in.

L. Whyte is: a) absolutely bloody amazing, b) one of my oldest friends, and c) absolutely bloody amazing. (It deserves to be mentioned more than once.)

She’s an enviably talented artist (check out Nursery Crimes if you’re a fan of short films, puppets, and nursery rhyme characters committing acts of unspeakable comedic violence), and I begged her, quite shamelessly, to come on board to help with Cuthbert. I can’t tell you how pleased I am she agreed.

Eventually.

Knowing me, knowing the status of my Netflix account (active and halfway through Brooklyn Nine-Nine), she said no at first. She didn’t want to create a lot of artwork for a project I would eventually give up on, where I needed her to create artwork so I wouldn’t give up on it.

It’s one of the strangest stalemates we’ve ever drawn, and we once had an argument about the best cat in Cats The Musical.

It’s this one, obviously. He has a neckerchief. _{DollarPhotoClub}

Eventually, some combination of begging, weeping, and that neat ‘make it rain’ trick rappers do (surprisingly not as effective with twenty pence pieces) worked and she agreed to create the best artwork any game has ever had ever.

Not speaking from any sort of bias, of course.

I wanted to showcase what she’s done so far. L.’s unique style so perfectly sets the tone for Cuthbert and encompasses what I want it to be: good, silly fun. With sea monsters.

It never ceases to amaze me how she can take some strange half-thought I’ve scribbled to her in an email at two in the morning (I’m pretty sure I once gave the brief ‘like a less sexy Aladdin’) and somehow create these incredible, fully-formed characters. I don’t know how she does it. Unless she’s secretly a witch.

Either way, thanks to her and her tireless work creating beautiful characters and artwork you just want to reach out and touch, as the fingerprint smears on my laptop can attest to, I have never procrastinated again.

Uh, writing blog posts instead of coding doesn’t count as procrastination, right?