My name is Philippe Van Lieu and I am the creator, writer, and drawer of this webcomic series called Moose River. Although technically Moose River has been around since 2004, I “temporarily” paused work on it in 2009… only to basically not touch it for literally one decade, only to start it back up just recently (June 2019). That said, I only started it up, not to make new pages of Moose River as it once was, but because I’m going to use Moose River as a basis for creating “VR comics“… whatever that entails, because no one else has made “VR comics”. So I’m gonna try to figure it out and share my experiments with everyone… and so thank goodness that I have a comic site like Moose River to give me a jump-kick head-start for this!

SO, WHO AM US ANYWAYS?
I’m a professional artist and writer who has been doing art and writing in some form or another my whole life. Some of my artistic endeavors and certain IRL achievements include:

• • 1999-today — The KUDOS! List; a list of references and nods found in Yukito Kishiro’s Battle Angel Alita series. I’m still maintaining it to this day.
• • 1999-2003/today — Pokémon Aaah!; a website where I made fake Pokémon TCG cards. Technically the project is still alive and I make updates on it (albeit on PA.net, not PA.com), but it’s true heyday was during those early years, and I really don’t do much with it right now, other than the random post whenever some cool and relevant Pokémon news surfaces.
• • 2000-2006 — BwowTV and P-Tip Productions; the filmmaking arm of my friends and me. We made several short films and had a local access TV show in Pacifica, CA. We did the YouTube thing before YouTube… I can’t imagine how different things would be if we did this maybe five years later than when we actually did it.
• • 2001-2003 — The Book of Huzzah; my first serious attempt at a regular web comic. Ended due to a lack of focus; I had like three co-current comic ideas running at the same time. You can read some carefully curated pages on the Extra Junk page, although the “Skyhowl Legacy” comics are REALLY bad (though you can see my penchant for worldbuilding).
• • 2001-2012 — attended and graduated San Francisco State University; originally majored in Computer Science, nearly completed it until I had a crisis of faith and switched majors to Technical and Professional Writing, which I graduated with.
• • 2004-2009 — Moose River; you’re looking at it. 200-plus pages of a single narrative story, the most I’ve ever worked on in my life, even though it’s ultimately incomplete. The “Moose River” series also produced several one-shot minicomics, namely:

• Moose River (aka Moose River Deluxe, Moose River #0, 2004), which was my very first ever mini-comic

• Moose River Regular (2004), which was my first attempt to serialize the “Moose River” concept, but it ended due to lack of strong narrative storyline

• Muusu-gawa no Nihon (2006), which was a manga/webcomic parody.

• I produced other minicomics at the time, which you can read on the Extra Junk page.

• • 2013 — Technically earned a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) certificate and gained IRL ESL teaching experience; however the TEFL accrediting company went belly up before giving me my certificate.
• • 2013-2015 — Nothing; I didn’t produce any art or comics during this time, so don’t bother trying to look for any.
• • 2014-today — MindVR; Silicon Valley startup that I helped form. We focus on 3D-360 cinematic virtual reality videos, filmed on a unique (and patent pending) 3D-360 VR camera which I co-developed. Though MindVR I’ve worked on several interesting projects, such as recording various music concerts, and working relationships with famous musicians like Fillmore Slim and Suga-T, founding member of The Click (along with her brothers and cousins E-40, B-Legit, and D-Shot). This has been an amazing period of my artistic career, and so VR is my current and perhaps permanent choice of career.
• • 2019-today — Moose River VR; a way for me to merge my desire to pioneer brand new forms of VR entertainment and art, with my desire to tell deep and engrossing stories. Technically still part of the main Moose River project, however I want to make sure the two remain separate in order ensure that anyone finding out about MRVR don’t feel the need to HAVE to read the original Moose River comics. Like, it will certainly make MRVR more enjoyable, but it won’t be mandatory.

Whelp, that’s what’s going on in my life and what my art brings to the table. I can’t wait to see where this takes me.