…creating another world, an alien aquarium world, an old-fashioned picture book world of stories and characters that seem to live inside a theme park. They wanted a world that little kids “could play inside." Bigger kids could keep it as "virtual zoo." Adults would find a world to watch, "an office with a view."

Upstairs, they already had $40,000 worth of work-generating equipment and two great resumes at their disposal. Downstairs, they had a mortgage to pay.

In their little 12-month experiment, Joe and Susan ended up spending only $2,000 on a CD burner and another $3,300 to have 1,000 DVDs made and packaged.

That sounds pretty painless unless you consider they were trying to do something nobody had before, in a down market with only their carefully calculated savings to live off for a year.

Which is what Joe and Susan have done. It is now Month 12. The month they're promoting their "Wonderlens: Aquarium of the Aliens" DVD.

From: A world unto themselves
A San Clemente couple hire themselves, without pay, for a year and create the animation DVD of their dreams.

By AMY WILSON
The Orange County Register