RUL Interview: Sinnix from 360 Prophecy

***Greenskull*** · November 17th, 2008

For the first interview in a while, I interviewed a good friend of mine whom I met at X06, Sinnix. Enjoy!

Who are you and what do you do?

My name is Jeff Jenkins and my Xbox Live gamertag is Sinnix. I'm the artist for 360 Prophecy which is a comic published by Microsoft on Xbox.ca and Inside Xbox Canada.

When did you decide that you wanted to make comic strips?

That's kind of a tough question to answer. I didn't really decide to make them as much as Jade asked me to make them. It's a long story but the gist of it is that I lost a contest and instead of a consolation prize Jade put me to work in the comic slave minds of Mississauga. There's an Xbox here though, so it isn't all bad. I hear the next mine over only has a Wii... yuck!

How much work is put into your comics? How long does one usually take?

I always write my comics on Wednesday and draw them on Thursday, that way I can be sure they're ready to go live the following Monday. I try to keep the process as natural as possible and span the writing process over the entire day constantly revising the text until I have something that I think a good percentage of the hardcore gamers will find funny.

After that is finished, the actual production of the comic is a pretty standard affair. I sit down to start working on it around 5PM and I work on it until it's done, hopefully no more than four to six hours. I might have to break for dinner or to put the baby to sleep, but other than that it's fairly basic. On the odd occasion I'll have some issues with the composition and in that case I've had to finish up Saturday mornings.

Sounds like a lot of hard work! How stoked were you to learn that your comics were going to be put on Inside Xbox?

"Stoked" was definitely not the term I would have used to describe the feelings I had when JakenBear approached me with the idea of my comics going on Inside Xbox. Overall it was a pretty nerve racking experience. I'm not allowed to talk about specific numbers, but when the comic moved from only being on Xbox.ca to Inside Xbox my readership expanded dramatically. That first day I received an insane amount of Xbox Live messages and my friends list was full inside of an hour. The positive comments were great and I really appreciated them but I also caught all the flak for the new dashboard advertisements. There were some people that were genuinely upset about Inside Xbox and, because my gamertag was the only one listed in there, they took their frustrations out on me!

Aside from all of that it also introduced some technical challenges. How many webcomics do you know of that are distributed over television? None. Well, except for mine! It's totally uncharted waters! I had to take note from game developers on the best way to enhance readability and what colours work best on CRTs vs. LCDs vs. Plasma! Don't even get me started on standard and high definition! On top of all that, right now I also have to create five files for every comic just to cover all the different places it will show up: online, Inside Xbox, two files for the NXE and one big one for print.

Despite the problems, fame is good. Do you get a lot of friend requests and messages?

I wouldn't say that I get "a lot", but I do receive my fair share. You'll notice that my gamertag is no longer linked to the comic and that cut the random messages down to a manageable level. At any given time I have about ten to twenty unread messages in my Xbox Live inbox and thirty or so friends online.

Yeah smart move. Do you LOVE the attention you get or is it a nuisance?

I don't LOVE then attention, no. I appreciate it and I realize how lucky I am. It's funny, if anything the attention puts pressure on me to do better work. Let's face reality, there are a lot of really good webcomics out there and mine is by no means the best. If people take the time to message me and let me know how much the like what I'm making then it fuels my inner perfectionist to work that much harder for them. I also want to point out though that I don't do this for fame and glory, I do it for fun and fun alone. It's important to me that I create things that people like, but if it ever comes to a point where I'm not having fun anymore than I'll just stop and fade into the night.

It was good times meeting you at X06. Was that the first gaming event you attended?

X06 was awesome, Jade sure knows how to throw a party! Alas, it was not my first gaming event. I used to be Captain of an all-Canadian Counter-Strike clan and we used to throw a massive LAN party in Barrie every year (I live in Ottawa, Barrie is near Toronto). We had all sorts of companies sponsor the event and give out prizes and stuff. Sure, it wasn't huge but it was big enough to be considered an 'event'.

X06 was an interesting time for me because it was my first real interaction with Microsoft and Jade. Jade and I had talked on the phone before and traded a few emails but we were only seven comics in and a lot of the inner workings of Xbox Canada were still hidden to me. That day was certainly a transitional experience.

X06 changed many of our lives. What's your most prized gaming possession?

My gamer-girlfriend. Does she count as a possession? Probably not, eh? (seriously though, she's awesome... and rare.) While I've got some amazing stuff my favourite is actually my Halo 3 Ghost and my Cortana figurine. Now, I know that those aren't rare and anyone can just walk into Toys R Us and buy them but the ones that I have were given to my by fans and that puts their value beyond measure.

You should come to my place with and we can totally play action figures! Although...I have like a shelf full of Halorines (yes, halorines, like figurines. I made it up, deal with it.) Are you a Gamerscore whore?

Not in the slightest. I think it's a great feature but my abysmal 22000G clearly shows that even though I've been gaining gamerscore since the very first day Xbox 360 was released it hasn't been the focus of my playtime. Honestly, I go through games so fast I'm always looking for the next fix after I beat them. I rarely find interest in playing through a game twice, let alone more than that, just to pad my score.

Lucky you, I am addicted to tha chieves! Any words of wisdom for Ready Up Live?

Analyze your competition, figure out what they're doing better than you and beat them at their own game!

Thanks, man!

Any time! Keep up the great work!