The short-lived multimedia production and design company I founded before accidentally getting into the wine business when a friend’s family lost their vineyard contract and offered us a couple tons of Pinot Noir grapes in exchange for some finished wine. At Ning, we mostly worked on our own odd projects but also occasionally helped friends build websites.
Favorite projects were The Slimy Green Trail, an animated cop show set in the avocado groves of inland San Diego County; Boog The Cute L’il Booger, a spoof of animated children’s shows that was a collaboration with a film school friend; and Rat Race, a comic strip about Bob Marley’s time in the US as a terrible forklift driver.
In case you were wondering, the name Ning came from my then-infant son, whose favorite expression of anger was a clear, loud “Ning!” The Empire part is because we were overly-ambitious, as evidenced by the below splash page for our website.
