When God breaks a window...

...sometimes he installs beautiful new stained glass and curtains.

Recently, my friend the Manhunter from Mars (his online musings are on the blogroll at left) tried to get me into a game called Spore. It appears to be some sort of weird hybrid of avatar-creation, Pokemon, and Myspace--you create creatures, attempt to evolve them, and can visit other worlds to see what the rest of the Spore community is up to. Sounds like fun, no? It did to me, too, but since I barely have time to eat, I couldn't imagine getting hooked on yet another addicting video game.

However, what he did not tell me is the story of Ken Walters, one of the digital artists Electronic Arts (or "EA" for short) put to work on this new game. Walters was an engineer in the UK before he was in a terrible accident--a forklift driver crushed him into a wall, fracturing his spine. He was wheelchair bound, without work, and living off the state for almost twenty years, and had two heart attacks during that time (as if the initial injury wasn't enough).

It would have been even more depressing to add a stroke to the list of things that have plagued and depressed him over the last two decades, had it not been for the stroke's bizaare blessing-in-disguise. After recovering from it, he began to doodle. A self-proclaimed non-artist in school, Walters was suddenly drawing. A lot. His doctors encouraged him, saying that sometimes the brain can be partially "rewired" after a stroke, unveiling previously hidden talents.

His doodles grew to digital imagery, and he began selling art on the internet. He even developed his own software, which he used to beef up his portfolio, before EA (the video game giant responsible for just about every good sports-oriented game on the market) snapped him up to create creatures for the Spore game for a cool 30,000 pounds British Sterling. (And counting, he has a share of the merchandising for the game.)

You can find the original story here.