Hi, I’m Brian.

I make Second Coat after work, for an audience that started at exactly one: my daughter.

Where this started

I’ve been writing software since the 1990s. My first job was at a small game studio called PyroTechnix. My first project there was a PC game based on Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, and I built its in-world “3D programming” mini-game, where you collected shapes and recipes and combined them to make things inside the Metaverse. The game was never released. The studio shipped one title, Return to Krondor, and then closed its doors. I still have a printed copy of the Snow Crash design document, and it may be the last one in existence.

These days I lead a team of C++ developers working on aircraft simulation. It’s serious, careful work. Second Coat is the opposite: colorful, a little silly, and made for fun.

60goto10

Second Coat is one of the first projects from 60goto10, my workshop and channel for revisiting the things I loved as a kid, seen again through new eyes and usually built for my daughter. The name is a nod to an old line of BASIC and to something else I’ll explain when the time comes.

Why Second Coat

A coloring book has one big flaw: every page gets one try. You finish a page you love, and then wonder what it would look like in blues instead of reds. A favorite page gets used up on the first day. Or the colors just didn’t come out the way you pictured.

Second Coat fixes that. Snap a photo of a blank page from a book you own, and it cleans, flattens and turns that page into one you can color again and again: every version kept, nothing ever used up. Paint the whole thing purple. Start over. Try it again tomorrow.

Your pages stay yours

Your books and colorings live on your device. There’s no account and no upload to us, and nothing gets shared unless you share it yourself. Please only scan books you own. The artists who drew them deserve it.

Second Coat is an early preview. Things will change, and some may break. Thanks for coloring along.