Molly Heady-Carroll is a 'Creature Consultant' and co-founder of Arcane Circus, a Netherlands-based game studio. She tours the world lecturing on the art of designing creatures and consulting for a wide variety of clients including the likes of BBC, Netflix, and Universal.
Molly HC on: X | LinkedIn | Check out Zenibeasts |
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Chapters
1:39 Mindful Beginnings
1:46 Teaching Creature Design
3:55 The Passion for Creatures
6:03 Defining a Creature
6:45 Nature's Inspiration
9:20 The Influence of Fiction
11:03 The Pokémon Phenomenon
11:36 Balancing Work and Play
12:35 The Psychology of Pets
15:36 AI and Companionship
16:08 The History of Creature Adoption
17:13 Digital Imaginary Friends
20:38 Turning Obsessions into Careers
21:23 Overcoming Creative Doubts
24:19 Inspiring Young Creators
25:37 The Role of Kayfabe
28:22 The Art of Fear
30:38 Monsters and Childhood Fears
32:28 Analyzing Pokémon Design
34:47 The Evolution of Pokémon
37:41 Monsters from A to Z
56:15 The Chupacabra's Lore
1:00:08 The Symbolism of Bloodsucking
1:01:56 Relatable Creatures in Fiction
1:48:43 California Dreams
1:54:30 Creatures with a Cause
2:03:32 Zenibeasts Unleashed
Transcript
Music:
[0:00] Music
Speaker1:
[0:32] Thing before we do anything else close your eyes entertain me big deep breath in now picture yourself as just an air like you're just consciousness you're not your body and imagine that that spreads out to fill up the entire room and as you do it exhale inhale now imagine that the building is gone and it spreads out across the entire world and now the entire universe okay i'm ready wow so molly tell us about yourself oh
Speaker0:
[1:16] Well my name is molly heady carroll and i'm a creature consultant for games and animation i've worked in the games and animation industry for about 10 years as a freelancer i've worked for among other things night school studios at Universal, BBC, Netflix,
Speaker0:
[1:35] Anarchy Studios, Impact Gameworks, a bunch of different things. I also co-founded Arcane Circus, a game studio in the Netherlands where I live.
Speaker0:
[1:47] And there my pet project is Xenoboest, which is visible in the background here, which is about giant monsters destroying a 90s Saturday morning cartoon city. And besides that, I also give lectures about creature design at universities, studios, and I teach at the Utrecht University of the Arts in Utrecht.
Speaker1:
[2:08] So when you teach a subject like this, yesterday here in the office, we get the chance to see you kind of give your presentation and everything. But how does one teach?
Speaker0:
[2:18] How does one teach?
Speaker1:
[2:19] And how does one teach something like creature design? I mean, it's such a work of the imagination. What are the fundamental skills that make up that?
Speaker0:
[2:28] Oh, that's an interesting question. I mean, I've started, I've spent my entire life learning about, uh, learning about creatures and, um, by proxy, uh, real world animals. I actually wanted to be a zoologist before I got into the art world.
Speaker1:
[2:45] A herpetologist.
Speaker0:
[2:46] A herpetologist, a reptile scientist. Yes, reptiles. Yeah. And the way I like to say it is that I wanted to study animals and now I make up my own for a living. And I've spent my entire life, you know, accumulating knowledge of real world animals and analyzing creatures in media. I was a big monster kid growing up. I'm a big fan of universal monsters and kaiju films and things like that. Teaching is kind of new for me, though. I've been teaching at the HKU as a freelancer for a while, but this is the first year that I'm actually on a contract. And I think a good way to teach is, at least a good approach to take, is to kind of remember the things that were important to me when I was the age of my students because there were there was information I got that just blew my mind at that age and trying to remember where I was at that time I think helps a lot and also um think thinking very consciously about, why I do things a certain way like analyzing my own methods,
Speaker0:
[3:51] so that I can communicate it to students is also very, very important.
Speaker1:
[3:56] I spent some time teaching meteorology to students and I realized when I started teaching that I actually didn't know anything. Like, I couldn't articulate my thoughts. There's so much that you kind of fundamentally understand in your own head, which is the reason why I asked the question, when you're teaching someone else to do something that you just inherently sort of know how to do, like by the time you become an expert or whatever, It's like trying to tell someone the mechanics of how to ride a bicycle. It feels so natural. So for you, when you're trying to put... I assume that a student has an idea that they want to be designing creatures or whatever before they ever step in the door. You're not just picking up.
Speaker0:
[4:36] Well, sometimes no. Sometimes they know they want to work in games, but they, at least with my students at the HKU, because it's game art, Sometimes they know that they want to do games and work in that pipeline, but they don't know exactly where. So when they take a class from me, they kind of give creature design a chance and then they either learn more about the world that they want to work in or they realize this is exactly what I'm interested in. But for me personally, I mean, like I'm really, really passionate about creatures. Like my whole world is just that. If I can talk about creatures, I'm happy kind of thing. And my life is designed around doing that as much as possible kind of thing. But I think really it's sort of like a Trojan horse when I teach where I'm talking about creature design. But, you know, the students I'm talking to, they might not be as passionate about it or maybe they just kind of are curious about it. The really important thing for me is that the students are tapping into being like a really a really honest version of themselves and what they enjoy and figuring out what it is that makes their soul sing and doing that as much as possible because that happens sometimes as well where somebody who isn't focused on creatures is inspired by how passionate I am about the things that I'm interested in and that sparks something in them always makes me happy when that happens What.
Speaker1:
[6:04] In your opinion, your professional opinion, is a creature?
Speaker0:
[6:07] A creature?
Speaker1:
[6:08] Yeah.
Speaker0:
[6:09] A fictional being.
Speaker1:
[6:11] Okay. What about a real creature?
Speaker0:
[6:15] A real creature is a non-fictional being.
Speaker1:
[6:17] All right but so does the word creature inherently mean fictional uh
Speaker0:
[6:22] No i don't think so i think creatures can be real or imagined.
Speaker1:
[6:25] Yeah we went to the zoo earlier yeah you got to see some actual creatures i did yeah one of the things in your lecture that we talked about yesterday was i i asked this specific question about i think mythological creatures and we had gotten into this tangent about how oftentimes these are like sort of a hodgepodge or a mashup of different things.
Speaker1:
[6:45] But when it comes to real life creatures, how do they inspire a design for something that doesn't exist?
Speaker0:
[6:51] The cool thing about being a creature designer is that it is a design process, where you, research, ideate, prototype, you go around and around and around, refining a solution to a problem. The cool thing is that nature has already done this millions of times for millions of very specific circumstances, which is what we call species. So the real world zoology, you can reference, because those are systems that actually work, you know that they function. So looking at nature is useful, because you're able to look at examples of behaviors, anatomy, looks of animals that work that you can then translate into your made-up creature to make them feel believable.
Speaker1:
[7:49] That's so interesting. And you sort of have to kind of get a feel for the laws of physics and how they affect the creature. Like for instance, Godzilla, there's always that debate about something that big's bone structure couldn't be real, that sort of thing, but it still has to move and feel like it exists in a potential world.
Speaker0:
[8:08] Yeah. I mean, if that's the limitations of a project, I mean, you can get a very surreal project. I don't know, like Yellow Submarine, the creatures in that which i really really love they don't have to necessarily apply to the laws of physics as much as a fictional thing but yeah like with a godzilla where oh it wouldn't be able to work i mean as long as it functions for the story like the reality of it is less important to me and more kind of is it fulfilling the requirements of the piece of media more than anything else but yeah nature is a is a huge influence on every artist i think i mean like I can't, if I just did my best to not reference nature, I couldn't come up with anything as mad as an actual species that exists. Like there's parasites that enter sickleback fish and alter their, through hormones, alter their brain behavior so they don't hide from shadows. So they get eaten by birds because they need a warm environment to finish their development process. and then they lay eggs which go in the water with go like that's mental if you came up with that off the top of your head people that's stupid that wouldn't work but it exists in nature.
Speaker1:
[9:21] Lion's mane mushrooms that like infect ants yeah yeah like they explode and the spores spread everywhere inside of the colony so if the ants discover that one of their buddies has been infected they just carry them yeah out way away from the or the the ant hill whatever the fuck they live in the ant hive where they make the honey these guys are laughing at me but yeah it's it's amazing there's so many cool things in nature that are just like mind-blowing as you said you couldn't come up with anything crazier if you tried yeah even if you do like yeah it's interesting you can only kind of draw from what you've experienced in a way yeah or it or you'll find that you've had some parallel thought and then you discover later like oh that oh well i guess the big guy upstairs thought of that one before me yeah that kind of Some
Speaker0:
[10:16] Creature designers really obsess about every element of their creature existing in having some kind of real-world parallel in order to make it feel believable. But personally, I think that's kind of skipping the point, which is you're referencing nature because it's a system that you know functions, that you can maybe mix up into an interesting way, mix this behavior with this particular environmental factor, this and that. I think it's more that there is room to you know like be creative or have things that maybe uh wouldn't function in reality but are interesting for the particular uh piece of media so um yeah i don't i don't find it necessarily like it's not like you're always just drawing from nature
Speaker0:
[10:59] it's just a huge influence and it's infinite did.
Speaker1:
[11:04] You uh did you guys have neopets in europe
Speaker0:
[11:06] Yeah i played neopets when i was younger yeah total dweeb i was into that i was really really i was well i played it i was a dweeb for pokemon pokemon was huge for me when i was growing up oh is still thank you still are still is yeah if.
Speaker1:
[11:22] You if you're uh following molly on like linkedin it's just pokemon shit the amount of events that you go to this is kind of a subject change but is it is like how the like when do you ever get shit
Speaker0:
[11:35] Done all.
Speaker1:
[11:36] The all this teaching and creature designing you're doing is like it seems like you just travel around and buy Pokemon cards.
Speaker0:
[11:42] I mean, that is a thing that I do. I do a lot of work while I'm traveling. I like getting out my surface and doing my freelance work or working on my cartoons and stuff like that on the road. I feel the most to myself when I'm making art while traveling to some exotic place. I enjoy that hugely.
Speaker1:
[12:00] The first day that you were here, welcome to Denmark, by the way. Have you enjoyed your stay so far?
Speaker0:
[12:06] I have. It's been lovely.
Speaker1:
[12:08] But I had kind of cut you off in the middle of the conversation because I was like, let's save this for the podcast. One of them was we were talking about Pokemon and Digimon and now I've just thought of Neopets just now, but stuff like that. There's so many different franchises that have tried to capture this idea of having these little friends that you can have this relationship with in a digital or cardboard world or whatever it happens to be. What is it about humans?
Speaker1:
[12:36] In your opinion, that drives that sort of thing? Why is that so popular?
Speaker0:
[12:40] I mean, pets are popular with people. A Pokémon is essentially like having a pet like a dog that's loyal to you. Everybody loves dogs, so that's kind of a factor. So you have the most cool creature that's designed to appeal to exactly the type of person you are, and it's your best friend. That's very appealing to a person. That is an interesting question though. Why do humans enjoy the company of other animals i guess it reminds us that we're we're a living thing on this planet that shares it with all these other creatures i mean i i feel tremendous joy from connecting with animals like i get this really deep um enjoyment out of that like i have two pet leopard geckos called spot and dot that i've had for 20 years which is very very old for leopard geckos i've had them since i was 10 and i've taken a lot of effort to socialize them i'm also very lucky that they're very very friendly and i find it really wonderful when they connect with me like they communicate with me um leopard geckos are able to recognize human faces so when they see me they know it's me so they light up and they look me right in the face and they'll like blink at me or they'll wink at me to kind of get my attention and when they want to come out of their tank they look at me, make sure they've got my attention, and then they go like this.
Speaker0:
[14:04] And if I put my hand in the tank, they climb on my hand so that they're talking to me, then they're telling me what they want. And I get such joy from that with animals or like, like today at the zoo where there's tigers and you slow blink at them, which is a cat greeting and they do it back. It's just wonderful. You know, like you're, you're talking to this animal. I find that really, really enjoyable.
Speaker1:
[14:26] Yeah. That's something that gets talked about a lot now with you know assistant artificial intelligence things siri you name it have you seen the movie her with joaquin phoenix i
Speaker0:
[14:38] Have not no.
Speaker1:
[14:38] I'm gonna spoil a bit of it for all of you so in the film joaquin phoenix's character is a professional greeting card writer or like letter writer basically like he the the world has lost the art form of you know a personalized note so So people pay him to write, you know, happy anniversary letters, love letters, et cetera. And he gets an upgrade to his operating system. And it is this totally personalized, like down to your preference of voice, et cetera. And it's, you know, basically made exactly for him. And of course, he falls in love with it. And then as it develops into a more and more sentient AI, eventually it goes beyond him. And it breaks his heart and all that. But I felt the same way about my Blaziken. And it's interesting.
Speaker1:
[15:33] This fills this need for companionship for a lot of young people.
Speaker0:
[15:37] For sure, yeah.
Speaker1:
[15:39] And it's beautiful, but it's also kind of strange because it's the first time over the last, I don't know, 100 years or so, really, in media. When would you think was the first example of a company or a franchise that made creatures for people to kind of adopt, like Chia pets or?
Speaker0:
[16:02] Oh, well, I mean, I think there's, I think there's a.
Speaker1:
[16:05] Not real, not real life pets though. They've got to be like.
Speaker0:
[16:09] No, I, I, I, yeah, I think, I think, yeah, I think Chia pets count as something like that. I think you can go far back as to as long as human beings have been making art. Mm-hmm. Like I saw, I've seen sculptures of either fictional creatures or animals, you know, that are thousands of years old. And having that object that kind of captures the spirit of an animal, it's like a totem. There's a spiritual connection being made there. I don't think this is a recent thing. I think it's just a modern expression of something that human beings have sought out through their art, as long as we've been making art. Mm-hmm.
Speaker1:
[16:52] So who was your first digital or otherwise friend that you did you make it yourself? Was this something in a game?
Speaker0:
[17:00] First, I say it would have been a piece of media. I'm trying to think, like, what's a really early example?
Speaker1:
[17:07] Those NFT friends.
Speaker0:
[17:09] Not that. I'm not that young, unfortunately. Let me think. I know. I know what it was. Very early one. There was a game in the 1990s called Creatures. Okay. And it had these little, I still like, maybe if I went back to it now, it would have dated. I don't know. But for the time, it was incredible what they managed to do. They had these little things called norns. And they're sort of like these sort of elf looking things with big eyes and pointy ears. And in the world, you are a hand.
Speaker0:
[17:38] And you can go, there's a whole world and you can move through the world, but only so far. You need the norn to walk in order to get through the world. And you you pick an egg you hatch it and then at first it uh speaks gibberish and you can teach it english you can teach it commands you can breed norns with other norns and they're they have an entire genetic system in place so if you mix them then they then the offspring will be like a connection with actual genetic like compilations there was a modding scene so you had people making like uh mermaid norns that were able to move through water and if they were out of water they die so then you could breed them with normal norns and then they'd be amphibious and i got obsessed with that i think the first time i used a um a digital program which was a paint shop pro was to make artwork and trade like go over sprite artwork of norns to sort of like imagine what mine would look like i wasn't able to code when i was little otherwise i would have totally been like making my own but that was a massive obsession for me when i was younger like that really, triggered something for me, I found it really great.
Speaker1:
[18:49] But why did you need why did you need that the norns or the the imaginary friend i remember i had like a legit imaginary
Speaker0:
[18:57] Friend oh right right his.
Speaker1:
[18:58] Name was devon right and he left to go to college coincidentally right around the same time that uh the steve from blue's clues left to go to college oh i don't know why it just happened at the same time and i don't know were you an introvert were you uh
Speaker0:
[19:15] Shy no i was i was very much leave me alone all right that's the type of child that i was i wanted to be let just change i don't know i think i like i think i like people more than i used to okay um but yeah i just i'd very much want to do my own thing and uh much preferred the uh the company of animals over people i think when i was younger um which i think i i love people but But I do really, really enjoy connecting with animals still. But yeah, I didn't have an imaginary friend, I think Norns were a really early obsession with an imaginary creature that I can remember, like a real hyperfixation. But I'd also hyperfixate over animals in general. The earliest hyperfixation I can remember is frogs, and just thinking frogs were the coolest thing ever, and anything with a frog on it, I wanted it. Which that would and then it was dinosaurs and then it was reptiles and now it's just kind of kept its inks kind of.
Speaker1:
[20:18] Thing maybe you're also a creature yourself maybe i am you were uh when you were born you were like a mollywog for a while and you graduated up to yeah whatever it's
Speaker0:
[20:27] Just a skin suit i'm actually a reptoid.
Speaker1:
[20:29] That would be pretty cool can you can you do the thing where you blink sideways and everything can you lick your eyelid no
Speaker0:
[20:35] I can't do that um maybe i'm not a reptoid after all.
Speaker1:
[20:39] So you somehow managed to turn this into a career yeah all that weird obsession there are so many great examples that we talked to the first time that we met in cologne about boris karloff and all these people hr giger who designed incredible monsters yeah throughout time history uh i'm obsessed with star trek so i could go on down that route for a long time but Star Wars, or at least the Mandalorian was one of the examples in your lecture too. It's so cool how there are all of these examples of people who have these strange, weird-esque, and I'm sitting in a video game company.
Speaker1:
[21:20] You have just this weird fixation, and it becomes a reality. Yeah. But even still, it's incredibly daunting, I think, for young people to pursue their interests.
Speaker0:
[21:30] Yeah, for sure.
Speaker1:
[21:30] And I remember you had some big, long spiel about that at one point.
Speaker0:
[21:34] Oh, did I? Yeah.
Speaker1:
[21:36] It was like one of my earliest impressions of you is like, man, she's really feels passionate about this whole inspiring young people to follow their dreams and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker0:
[21:44] I really do. Yeah. Like I remember, I mean, I wasn't, I wasn't ever like super hardcore discouraged and that didn't affect me, but I did experience a little bit of sort of like friction and had to sort of fight against it a lot, which, you know, I have Will of Steel, so I get through that, but it was exhausting and unnecessary kind of thing. I remember specifically in high school once I was drawing trolls and somebody saying girls aren't supposed to draw stuff like that and just being like, fuck you. But also when I came into the games industry initially, I started studying at the HKU in 2010. And at the time, stylized artists in the games industry were not super a thing. It was more expected going into the industry that you work digitally, you work in a very polished way, and you do a lot of high fantasy or realistic, gritty sort of war and things like that. And actually, initially, when I decided I'm going to pivot into art, I thought maybe games wasn't a good place for me because I worked traditionally. I like working in very loose, crazy styles and working very stylized and experimental. example.
Speaker0:
[22:57] But I played Psychonauts in 2005 and I really, really loved that game a lot. And you can unlock concept art in it. So I would go around and do that and I would just look at Scott C's concept art.
Speaker0:
[23:14] And I thought, oh, like, is there a place for me in the games industry? I thought, well, if Scott C can make a career in the games industry, then so can eye and that gave me courage to go for it I'm very happy that I got to tell him I got to tell him this and he's just the sweetest guy he's the kind of guy who says gee whiz unironically he's just so adorable and positive and sweet but yeah going into going into college and studying game art there was pushback from well-intended people who were concerned that I'd have trouble finding a career, who would say in order to get a job you need to do more work more like this and i mean they're probably right if i did if i did realistic fantasy stuff i'd probably have an easier job working in the games industry but it wouldn't be um it wouldn't be me you know i'd be i'd be faking, and that you can't keep up a life like that but also the students were also like people would get angry that i wanted to make games like actually get angry
Speaker0:
[24:16] at the idea of me working in games which I don't really understand. I guess they just don't like things that are different or something. I don't know. But yeah, the idea, it was very confronting for whatever reason. The idea that they had this idea of what they're supposed to be, and then there's somebody who's not that. So they just kind of lash out at it. So I got a lot of that, which was not very nice. They shouldn't have done that.
Speaker0:
[24:39] And yeah, I don't, I don't, and if there's other people who are starting out that are experiencing that kind of pushback, it's like, it's so unnecessary. Like, try to nourish people being themselves, because everybody's got their own creative voice and their own perspective and their own things that they find important to say through their work. And they should be encouraged to do that, because nobody else is going to do it.
Speaker1:
[25:09] So, you and I and old CC Hyper, that bastard who keeps killing me every time I go on stage or anything in public, but we were talking about how Back in the day, let's say from 1999 back, the entire business of professional
Speaker1:
[25:33] wrestling was under what we call kayfabe, which is this old carny term. But it's essentially like pretending something is real even though it's not and never, ever, ever admitting it to the crowd. And so you would have this sort of system in place that if people wanted to be involved in that business, they'd either have to be grandfathered in or know somebody. It's a family thing or or they'd have to be kind of broken in so the the tradition was you show up yeah i want to be a wrestler okay and then they have someone kick the shit out of you send you on your way take your money and then but they never they don't tell you oh by the way it's all fake and then over the years that has really changed and here in uh here in denmark especially when i first started working with uh i'm a junior referee over at body slam in my part time but
Speaker1:
[26:24] They have this completely different way of looking at things where they're like they don't even charge you money to train they're just like uh wrestling is hard enough like you the last thing that you want to do is discourage someone who wants to do it just give them the chance to figure out if they're any good at it and then it'll come over time and now in this world where like everyone obviously knows like it's a it's a work it's a show i don't know there's something there's a whole nother rich layer of storytelling once the audience does know that the fourth wall is exists and to to kind of tie that back into this whole monsters and creatures thing what when when does a uh like a monster become terrifying and even though you know it's not there why why does that invoke such a response in people oh
Speaker0:
[27:16] That's a good question let me think i mean i guess it's it it um i guess it would be that it that it triggers um, it triggers a concern in somebody i don't know how else to put it.
Speaker1:
[27:32] It's like when david copperfield you know makes an elephant disappear and you know he didn't do it yeah there's that moment the suspension of disbelief that happens
Speaker0:
[27:39] I mean there's different things that people that people fear you know like they can fear the unknown they can fear aggression they can fear like the threat of aggression and not knowing where it's coming from or their own their own grief or there's all sorts of different types of fear so I guess a creature would then trigger a similar emotional reaction in an audience how does it go about that I mean, so many ways i mean there's there's lots of examples of scary creatures in in media i think the first i watched so many horror movies growing up and horror
Speaker0:
[28:19] movies i probably shouldn't have watched as well which.
Speaker1:
[28:22] Was the one that fucked you up the most
Speaker0:
[28:24] Uh the thing and i saw it when i was in my 20s before that i had never been scared by a horror movie ever um i and part of that i think is also because i have artist parents and i was and um i was very interested and particularly my dad was also interested in how movies were made so I always understood that movies were not real and I would be told things like look the the blood here is with a squib and that's like a bag that explodes so it looks like blood and things like that with the exception of psychologically horrifying scenes in films like I remember watching things like Robocop and things like Texas Chainsaw Massacre and stuff like that but the the table scene would always get skipped and the opening scene where the guy gets shot would get skipped. And I find that, I think that was quite interesting of my parents to do that because they knew what my limits were and what I was able to separate as this isn't reality.
Speaker0:
[29:26] But anything that was psychological, they understood and very well that that would be confusing for a child and would be scary. So the thing being the first movie that scared me i guess it was sort of like the i mean the image was really horrible and yeah the the um the like chest scene you know the one where he's trying to bring them back to life and then the chest opens up and then eats the guy's arms i maybe it was because it surprised me so much and just the idea of that happening to you is really horrible but yeah like i was like takes a chance on massacre and i'm like six nothing but like the thing at like 20 made me feel scared the.
Speaker1:
[30:04] Thing has like i mean it's like the second best metamorphosis scene probably i think in in any movie for me american werewolf in london that's that's
Speaker0:
[30:12] Number one that's a good one i mean that.
Speaker1:
[30:13] Shit's fucking crazy it's all practical Um, yeah, it's just, there's something so weird about this fascination that we have with these things that we know aren't real, but for whatever reason, they like hack into our brain chemistry in a way, and you dial it in to be just, just the right amount of exhilarating, but not actually causing you to piss your pants over.
Speaker0:
[30:35] The thing is though, that sometimes things that aren't meant to be scary about the thing.
Speaker1:
[30:39] Oh,
Speaker0:
[30:39] Sometimes things that aren't scary also trigger of fear response so it's a very personal thing it's also you know like some kids would watch horror movie and have nightmares forever and another one wouldn't but a really early thing i yeah non-horror stuff scared me more i can remember examples of that more like um, when i was like five uh thomas the tank engine i would run out of the room when it was the ending because the credits would roll and then right when it showed the last credit his eyes would move and that really freaked me out for some reason i'd have to leave the room because i didn't want to.
Speaker1:
[31:16] See it i was like mortally terrified of alf right right because he ate cats and right who would eat a cat what a fucking i hated him i was sitting in a restaurant and like a television in the corner came on with elf and i had to leave right like eight years old like too old to be crying like a baby over a puppet on tv but still but it's there's something about that particular thing and it he's designed to be liked and lovable and yet for whatever reason i had this crazy aversion to him so yeah it also affects people in different ways to go back to uh neopets and digimans and pokemon let's just stick to the like the original 150 because at least then i can participate in the conversation. What's the best Pokemon and what's the worst Pokemon? And why? As a creature designer. And I don't mean in your deck.
Speaker0:
[32:14] As a creature designer? You're making me put my creature design hat on.
Speaker1:
[32:20] What do you think this is, lady?
Speaker0:
[32:23] I mean, I guess it would have to be Pikachu since they chose it as the mascot
Speaker0:
[32:27] and has the most broad appeal.
Speaker1:
[32:28] That's exactly why I asked.
Speaker0:
[32:30] I mean, I guess it would have to be... I mean because I need to take my personal opinion out of it because I think Mewtwo is the coolest Pokemon personally from the original 151. He's the most human of them. He's cool. He looks cool and he's psychic and psychic was my favorite type but I'd need to trust Pokemon's team that they chose Pikachu for a reason. They were going to make Clefairy the mascot at first because of the kawaii appeal, but then they thought that it would sort of be coded to female for Western audiences. So they went with something that was appealing to both boys and girls and went for Pikachu in the end. And I guess that's like the bright colors and the attitude of the character and things like that is very appealing to young children, like energetic and cute and um like a fun friend and stuff like that so.
Speaker1:
[33:33] As a as a marketing person right i do think about is this is this because pikachu is the right one for the brand or did they just pick one and roll with it
Speaker0:
[33:44] No they were very careful i wonder.
Speaker1:
[33:46] Though but i tell me your side of the story
Speaker0:
[33:49] Well from the research that i've done they were they they were picking something that had the most kind of broad appeal and Clefairy was originally the choice and then when they looked into western tastes then they chose Pikachu. Another reason is because you can catch it quite early in the game. That was also a factor that influenced that decision. But yeah, I mean, Pokemon is the biggest media franchise in the world ever so they must be doing something right i think the creative choices that they made you can you can learn a lot from them by looking at what they did worst design though either the original ones i mean seal's pretty stupid but like, it would need to be like from a creature design hash i guess it would be is there a pokemon from the original set that doesn't feel like it's typing i'm
Speaker0:
[34:45] trying to think about that which is Is there one like that? Because then that's not good because then it's not communicating it's sort of like core idea well enough. Was there one in the originals that felt like this should be a different type? Why is it this type?
Speaker1:
[35:01] Well as you i'm referencing like my my brain reference for pokemon is like the the selection menu from pokemon stadium 64. So somewhere around the like almost to the end section before you get to the legendary types or i guess somewhat there's there's like aerodactyl and the caboodle or whatever the fuck it's called and it just feels like they started running out of shit like it feels like oh i don't know what are we gonna do this what does this one do he shoots fucking tribe force shit out of his face call him porygon he's a duck and he's made of crystals i don't know it but whereas in the beginning it seems a bit more meticulous right well yeah early on the list it's like you know we got our fire type or plant type or whatever the hell and and they're all sort of clearly even in the show early on when when ash breaks out the pokedex and he scans a pokemon it would say like pikachu a mouse type pokemon you know and but it doesn't say when you hit diglett it doesn't say a mole type pokemon so it becomes more and more abstract kind of as they go i don't know what order they designed them in no
Speaker0:
[36:14] They they designed them very much out of order and i'm gonna have to cheat because i i'm ashamed that i don't know her name off the top of my head.
Speaker1:
[36:22] Hey nando hit us with a couple of those fat cervezas garcon yes thank you wait you're over there you're not even dead
Speaker0:
[36:37] So the process, firstly, a lot of, there were designs in Gold and Silver that were meant to be in Red and Blue that didn't work like baby Pokemon they wanted to do initially. But the, yeah, the designs were done totally out of order because Ken Sugimori was first designing Pokemon and he was basing it a lot on particularly Kaiju, like Rhyhorn, Rhydon, looked very Godzilla-like and stuff like that. But there were limits to how far he could push the designs, and they felt like they were all getting a little bit too samey and a little bit too boyish and stuff like that. So they brought an artist in who is named Atsuko Nishida, and she designed Pikachu, Bulbasaur, Charmander, Squirtle, and a lot of other very iconic Pokémon. That's a super interesting thing, that they started with the end evolutions
Speaker0:
[37:36] of the starters and then she designed the starters and then they figured it out from there. So things were totally designed out of order and they designed with in mind, we want to have a potential friend for all sorts of different types of kids because we want everybody to be able to enjoy this and make friends through this game that we've made.
Speaker1:
[37:55] To make money.
Speaker0:
[37:57] Yeah. It's very easy to be cynical about Pokemon, but I am happy that at least the biggest media franchise that's ever existed came from a place where they wanted to make a game that connects people together. At least the core of that entire IP is something positive. That's quite heartening that there is money to be made about something that ultimately has a good kind of message. I think that is nice. But I mean, yeah, it is a big moneymaker as well.
Speaker1:
[38:24] And it's interesting how like, I mean, I think Nintendo has always been less so in the last maybe five or six years really, but like prior to that and still to a certain degree they've always been about bringing people as a group together or improving your life quality in some way yeah i mean i used to do like yoga on the we fit back in the good times that was fun or playing you know like the party game tradition it's just something that other others have tried and in some cases been somewhat successful but there's just nothing like getting a group of seven-year-olds over for a sleepover getting hopped up on some soda pop, smashing some potato chips and some pizza, and then playing Mario Party all night or something like that, or Mario Kart, or Crash Team Racing if we want to get out of Nintendo.
Speaker0:
[39:12] Yeah.
Speaker1:
[39:13] But there's always that agenda of getting people up and moving in together.
Speaker0:
[39:17] Yeah, I really like that a lot. And this is a little bit of a tangent from Creatures.
Speaker1:
[39:21] But I've got- Tangents are fine, by the way.
Speaker0:
[39:23] Excellent.
Speaker1:
[39:23] We've got all day.
Speaker0:
[39:24] Oh good, okay, because.
Speaker1:
[39:24] I go- We've got to tell Chadnor's girlfriend says he hasn't come home.
Speaker0:
[39:29] But I've gotten really fascinated with games that inspire you to be a better person in real life in recent years. I've been playing, I've realized that a lot of the games that I'm playing do that.
Speaker1:
[39:41] Like Vampire in the Masquerade.
Speaker0:
[39:44] Things like Ring Fit Adventure. Do you know that game for the Switch? Nope. It's an RPG with an exercise ring where like you physically run through the world and then your moves are like exercise moves like squats or yoga positions and things like that. It's a game to to encourage exercise because I think going to the gym is boring. Really? And this game makes it really, really fun. And you know, you're fighting enemies and there's like a super giga-chad dragon that you're trying to defeat and stuff like that. I like that game a lot.
Speaker1:
[40:14] Speaking of exercise and dragons, you were telling me how you did some form of kung-fu that involved wearing... Okay.
Speaker0:
[40:22] Tell me about that. Yeah, I haven't done it for very long, but I do lion dance, which I started doing it because I grew up near Zeydijk in Chinatown in Amsterdam. So I'd see Chinese celebrations just because it was happening in my neighborhood. So that got me familiar with lion dancing, which happens at Chinese New Year.
Speaker1:
[40:46] Lion dancing or lion?
Speaker0:
[40:47] Lion.
Speaker1:
[40:48] Lion dancing, I'm familiar with.
Speaker0:
[40:51] Yeah, people think I say limedance when I say that I do this.
Speaker1:
[40:55] Are you sure you're not from Alabama?
Speaker0:
[40:59] I'm doubting it more and more. What was i saying yeah so i started out um i'd go when it was when the lion dance was happening to draw the dancers kind of like when i go to the zoo to draw but then drawing like these creatures i believe it's a very neat thing to do i.
Speaker1:
[41:20] Got those cool pictures of like yeah the genius at work and you're like staring at a tiger for like an uncomfortable if that tiger was a person he would have been like bro stop
Speaker0:
[41:29] Looking at me what is your new yeah resting art phase um so i started with that and then eventually i got into contact with um uh with uh le cop moon kung fu school in amsterdam i found out i found out via via that these were the people who were doing the lion dance and um the sifu there uh told me that you can you can do lion dance classes we do do them But I highly recommend you also do Kung Fu lessons as well.
Speaker0:
[41:59] And the reason for that is that Kung Fu Practitioning publicly, if you're not familiar with sort of like the methods behind it and everything, it's kind of not interesting for general audiences to watch. So Lion Dance was developed as a kind of subsect of Kung Fu. The moves that you're doing when you're in the costume and the strength necessary to do that and the teamwork necessary and everything is all sort of like connected to to kung fu but then it's applied in a way that's really entertaining for general audiences to watch and it also means that the kung fu school has something that they can do every year and get money for who's um traditionally businesses hang a cabbage outside of their place of business so that means that the lion comes he goes through the goes to the restaurant and like scares everybody and stuff and then it bows in front of the in front of the business and blesses it and then it jumps up which is like the guy getting on the shoulders and eats the cabbage and inside of it is a red envelope full of money which is like payment for um doing the lion dance in front of the business and like drawing attention to it so it's funny that it's like this like ancient tradition that's actually based on sort of entertaining people and it's great fun i'm uh i'm not nearly as good as it as uh i would like to be but I hope to get better and my Sifu, Manlung, is a very very good teacher, a very friendly and welcoming person. I'm enjoying learning from him a lot.
Speaker1:
[43:25] Yeah, so I mean from this lion dancing, do you feel like you could kick my ass in a fistfight?
Speaker0:
[43:34] Oh i don't know about that i'm.
Speaker1:
[43:36] Just wondering because it was so interesting because you first showed it to me i'm like okay i think i've seen some form of this at least before but when you described it as a as a martial art i had never even considered i was like oh yeah of course this
Speaker0:
[43:46] Is yeah of course.
Speaker1:
[43:47] It is but is it is it practical do you
Speaker0:
[43:49] Oh yeah do.
Speaker1:
[43:51] You spar do you
Speaker0:
[43:52] You don't you don't spar necessarily um i i think the biggest thing well firstly i haven't been doing it for very long and you've been in the military so i'm pretty sure you could kill me if you wanted to, no no no because you because you can't or because you don't want to next question okay, but um crap what was i talking about lost my train of thought well we were talking oh yeah the practicality yeah well i mean the reason why i did it is because um i like having something to do to work out because i feel good when i'm in shape um makes me feel good about myself i'm also Really? Oh, yeah. I'm also a little bit kind of uncoordinated as well, like I'm a bit clumsy and stuff like that. And I felt like doing some kind of dance would be good for that. So I'm more kind of in touch with my body and things like that. And also it's pretending to be a monster. Like that's the most me way to work out there could possibly ever be. It's like puppetry, but then you're like the armature of the puppet. But your body becomes its neck, and you have to behave like it and think like it and walk like it and stuff, and it's very good for educating me as an animator as well.
Speaker1:
[45:10] No, it does make a lot of sense because you're sort of creating the illusion of, I mean, in real life, right? You're all doing the lion dance, and you've got the thing on, and you're creating with syncopated people the illusion of a creature. Body moving and all that sort of thing so i bet that would be very informative to be on like the inside as a moving part and yeah as if you were part of the creature's skeleton or something
Speaker0:
[45:37] Yeah for sure and another thing that i enjoy about it is um it helps me a lot with like um i don't like um watching recordings of myself or listening to recordings of myself like i'm not going to listen back to this podcast for example because i just can't really and that means that um so i find it difficult to kind of like perceive how I'm coming across as well and when you're line dancing you have to like you have to because it's you you're in that moment you've got like 10 kilos of like a head in a sweaty costume that you're holding up with your arms with your legs bent pulling the string to make the the ears flap and the eyes blink, and opening and closing the mouth and you're a neck and four limbs in that moment and you need to look at recordings of yourself and you need to project outwards to the audience in order to perform well and to have good energy and see what works and things like that.
Speaker1:
[46:35] Same with wrestling right right you're very i mean the the sport has virtually nothing to do with the wrestling itself it's about the crowd right isn't the sport is can you entertain this crowd right with these tools these are the limitations it's
Speaker0:
[46:50] Very like that indeed so i think that's also something that i like about is is that it's really forcing me in a way that's i'm kind of comfortable with to sort of project outwards and kind of think about how i'm being perceived which is something that i'm trying to work on more and more.
Speaker1:
[47:06] Yeah i i think that's something that i like had to force myself to get over because when i first started podcasting i mean i was doing everything like i was doing all my own editing and distribution uh and therefore i would have to listen to hours and hours and hours of my own fucking voice and i got desensitized to it after a while and i really thought it was a actually a good practice and i'm sure that there will be things in this one that i look back at and i say like oh i wish i had done this differently or ask that question but um forcing oneself into that sort of self-analytical uncomfortable space often yields results i would say so uh for instance like i say like a lot and i noticed that and i can't unhear like like like like and now the people listening won't be able to unhear it as well uh and when i first heard that it bothered the shit out of me and then over time i kind of grew more comfortable with it this is just sort of how i speak but you know like robert de niro he never watches his own films that's insane i can't imagine you seriously never do you look back at your old work do you or is it just your own voice yeah
Speaker0:
[48:19] I wonder about that as well i mean people who don't perceive themselves at all maybe like i remember after i um co-developed a mobile game called crap i'm broke i couldn't just i just couldn't look at the game for a year i mean for one thing I was absolutely sick of looking at it because of testing it and all that kind of thing. And all I could see was the things that we weren't able to do and stuff like that. But after a year, only at that point, I was actually able to play it and kind of experience it as close to a player as I probably could and kind of appreciate what we'd managed to pull off with that game. So maybe it's like that as well for people like that, where maybe in time, if they look back at older stuff, they can look back on it. Who knows when it's sort of less roll or something.
Speaker1:
[49:04] Even with Kung Fu, if you were to go back and see yourself from the outside performing, then you can make corrections and steer yourself.
Speaker0:
[49:13] Definitely.
Speaker1:
[49:14] But you just don't.
Speaker0:
[49:16] Oh, in Lion Dance, I do. I record myself basically every lesson. And the Sifu will also, if I have the camera rolling, will also do it so I can compare as well. And I mean, yeah, he's like third generation Kung Fu teacher. So I mean, I'm never obviously I'm never going to be as good as him because this is his life kind of thing. You might. I'm not going to do it. It's his life like for three generations you know like i've.
Speaker1:
[49:45] Seen enough fights between people who want you know i've dedicated my entire life to this particular way and then you know it doesn't actually at the end of the day it's like well karate is better than taekwondo or whatever you know
Speaker0:
[49:58] Right well he's he's very very good also he's very very strong like that's that's the main thing that um when i when i perform i wish i could move faster and more like energetic and stuff but you got to be so strong to be able to like whip this thing around super quick and like jump up and down and all this stuff because it's heavy and you have to like hold it with your two arms and also your legs are constantly bent when you're doing it as well so you have to have a lot of lower like lower body strength and like low center of gravity and stuff but i've got pretty strong legs so that's already and i'm and i'm pretty like sturdily built so i'm i'm i have an advantage at least with that like i have the right build for doing it but i absolutely need to do it more and get stronger and all of that yeah.
Speaker1:
[50:45] Uh i mean the dutch are known for kickboxing right like some of the best kickboxers in the world
Speaker0:
[50:51] Come out oh are they i don't know yeah all right yeah.
Speaker1:
[50:54] It's it's pretty interesting like i don't know why it's i think it's just availability of training, that's obviously a huge part of it, but also like being tall.
Speaker0:
[51:05] Yeah, I was gonna say long legs. Right, like for sure.
Speaker1:
[51:08] It makes a huge difference. And so, I mean, I can think of several great wrestlers also who came out with another one, like Malachi Black comes to mind. But is there like a strong culture there you feel in in martial arts
Speaker0:
[51:21] Um i mean it's it's relatively uh new to me there are several there are several kung fu schools and there's clearly there's clearly a community i mean and it's a very lovely community as well like really like fun people like, it's it's interesting where it's sort of like people who are very very disciplined and dedicated but also really laid back and making jokes and stuff like that. There was an odd moment I had where backstage waiting for the cue to perform publicly, there were these two teenage boys who a lot of the students, their parents are black belts and they've practiced it their entire lives. And then there's me at like 31 like coming in like hello I'm starting doing this now but um there were these two teenage boys and you know how teenage boys will just kind of randomly start fighting each other it's just kind of a thing that they do like they start sort of like, roughhousing randomly it's like a.
Speaker1:
[52:24] Bit rough and
Speaker0:
[52:25] Tumble yeah exactly and it was funny because they started doing that but they're also kung fu experts so one of them like like tried to kung fu kicked the other one in the dick and he like dodged it. I thought that was really funny where like they're they're really really good at this sport but they're also still just little boys acting like little boys. I thought that was very very amusing.
Speaker1:
[52:46] Let's uh let's tie this somehow back into monsters and creatures and stuff. Actually Nando will you run to Mr. Schreiber's desk and grab the book off the top of it? Oh we'll get to that. But uh you're you're doing i think a really excellent job but i feel like this is more recent for you of like kind of self-promoting the idea of being a creature consultant
Speaker0:
[53:09] Yeah this is.
Speaker1:
[53:10] New so when you consult a creature like what do you say to it when do you when
Speaker0:
[53:17] I sit it on the on on the sofa and ask what its problems are.
Speaker1:
[53:20] Yeah psychoanalyzing thank you nindo Look that shit up. So, yep, we'll get to that in a minute.
Speaker0:
[53:28] All right. Well, I mean, with creature consultancy and looking at creature designs that people do, I mean, sometimes it can involve actually drawing and coming up with concepts and tapping into my kind of mental library of animal knowledge and making something that fits. Sometimes it's looking at something that already exists and seeing how it could be improved. And my philosophy about creature design is that creatures are vessels for meaning that are meant to communicate something. And usually it's a core theme that a piece of work is trying to express.
Speaker0:
[54:12] It can also manifest in different ways, like it's meant to communicate a specific game mechanic or specific way of interacting with a creature in the case of a game. Like, just from the looks and the behavior, for example, it may need to be clear that this is a creature that is very dangerous at mid-range but has no long-range capabilities. And there's things that you can put into the design and the behavior and the fictional biology even of a creature that communicates that. But really, the most important thing is that there's getting down to what is what is the the creative problem that this creature is intended to solve and is it doing is it doing that in the best way that it could.
Speaker1:
[54:59] It's one of the things i really appreciated about your your lecture yesterday was the the insistence on like it's not about the creature itself it's about the story you're trying to tell and whether it's a set piece or a character or whatever like that all matters and that should be where you come from and i very much resonate with that i think that that's something that people in all different mediums could kind of take a take a look at and see like am i obsessing over the wrong thing or am i am i putting all my eggs in the wrong basket
Speaker0:
[55:27] Absolutely and it's also if you have a point to what it is that you're making if you have a core theme and a thing that you're trying to communicate okay, that's a proverbial hook that you can hang your hat on. Because when do you know if I draw this and I draw that, which one's better? You need just taste. You can't just go by taste. Like, I have terrible taste. I can't go by that. So there needs to be criteria for when is this successful. And the only way you can do that is by what is this trying to fulfill? What is the creative problem? And when you define that, then you have a criteria by which you can measure the different potential solutions when you're concept sketching and refining and things like that.
Speaker1:
[56:16] Let's go uh let's go to the book here all right you've you're still i don't know when we're actually going to air this but you're still kick-starting this
Speaker0:
[56:24] Yeah that's so at the so do you want to hold it up sure so this is uh monsters from a to z and it's a book of sketches that i did while i was in tokyo and they are blind contour drawings of monsters from all over the world and these drawings were done without looking at the paper i just on the trains in tokyo i would think very hard about the monster and then draw it, look at what I had, and then tie it together using markers. And then this is a collection of the drawings with the name of the monster, the country it comes from, a little description and a quote. And currently this is on pre-registration on Kickstarter. And if I'm able to find enough interest, then I want to do a crowdfunding campaign to publish this and turn it into a real book this.
Speaker1:
[57:15] Copy you've donated to
Speaker0:
[57:16] Yes yes i have.
Speaker1:
[57:19] So i wanted to talk about the chupacabra i had no idea that jupacabras were puerto rican
Speaker0:
[57:25] Indeed yeah i didn't know that either until i was researching the book so.
Speaker1:
[57:29] As you're you say you drew them all blindly right you're not looking at them did you already you obviously had some reference to like what they look like
Speaker0:
[57:38] Yeah i tapped into my own mental library yeah and.
Speaker1:
[57:43] It was just to go through the entire alphabet
Speaker0:
[57:45] Yeah i did a couple for fun and then decided i'll do one for each letter of the alphabet so i thought of i mean i wrote a list of yeah mr tomnis the fawn yeah yeah um.
Speaker1:
[57:58] But the chupacabra when i was a kid my brother and i i mean we didn't grow up very far well we were close enough to Mexico to believe that we could find a chupacabra if we really were looking it's not that close but I had no idea that they originated in Puerto Rico
Speaker0:
[58:16] From what I understood from the research and I will say that, I'm sure that there's things just because I'm not from, I'm not from certain cultures and I made an effort to do as broad a variety of cultures as possible so there may be things that are incorrect and I'm happy to hear this but from what I understood from the research that I did was that there was a movie that came out in Puerto Rico and, the monster in it looked a lot like a chupacabra and then coincidentally people started seeing them kind of like how in the 1950s in the States there were movies that came out about aliens and then when people would be attacked by aliens they would look exactly like the monsters in those movies that had and come out and you can track it. Funny that, funny coincidence. So Chupacabra seems to be a similar kind of case.
Speaker1:
[59:06] Hmm, Chupacabras are interesting because, okay. To get away from what monsters look like, all that sort of thing, the thing that makes them sinister or whatever is always interesting. Blood sucking. For some reason, people, like human beings, we just don't like shit that sucks blood.
Speaker0:
[59:29] It's just off.
Speaker1:
[59:30] Why is that so off-putting to us?
Speaker0:
[59:32] It's our life source. It's something that we need to live being taken away from us. And there's other ones as well like um uh they go by other names but there's ekeks in this which is from the philippines these sort of vampiric bird people and they eat um embryos out of pregnant women it's also a very nasty idea yeah.
Speaker1:
[59:57] There's so many things that are
Speaker0:
[59:58] Vampiric yeah and uh chinese hopping vampires who suck chi out of people as
Speaker0:
[1:00:05] well it's also a thing spirit vampires yeah that's.
Speaker1:
[1:00:08] Something interesting that uh i read this book called the empath survival god and it talked a lot about and i've heard this phrase used other elsewhere so it's not just i forget the author's name it's not just her but this idea of energy vampires this is someone you could meet in this room right now like somebody who just sucks the fun out of the room whatever some particular not fun person that kind of thing but that that concept of someone else draining or something else draining life force
Speaker0:
[1:00:40] Yeah is.
Speaker1:
[1:00:42] Very pervasive throughout human
Speaker0:
[1:00:44] Experience yeah and fiction and folklore i guess it's kind of connected to um like the taking away of bodily autonomy which i think is one of the reasons why the thing is so awful where it looks like you and it was you but it isn't anymore it's like really irritating like there's something really frightening but also annoying about like that's me you bastard one.
Speaker1:
[1:01:07] Of the interesting things about what makes the thing in the thing i'm trying one of the interesting things about it is the fact that it it's what what makes it scary is that it changes yeah people don't like change that's the whole fucking thing about it is it's virtually that's
Speaker0:
[1:01:28] An interesting like but it's change against your will right nobody likes that.
Speaker1:
[1:01:31] Nobody likes an unexpected hindrance to their
Speaker0:
[1:01:34] Plans that's what that's connected to.
Speaker1:
[1:01:36] You have this this thing that looks like you and acts like you and suddenly it's I mean, does it piss you off like an ex-girlfriend? What happened? What changed?
Speaker0:
[1:01:45] Yeah, I think that's an interesting one, a kind of relatable psychology behind
Speaker0:
[1:01:51] a creature, be it a scary one or a not scary one, that has a lot of real world parallels. I think that's a good one. Like Pokémon, for example, it's all about friendship and the Pokémon is loyal to its trainer.
Speaker1:
[1:02:03] You drink every time we say Pokémon.
Speaker0:
[1:02:06] And the Pokémon's fighting for its trainer, and that's like it's um it doesn't it's doing everything it can because it doesn't want to let its trainer down and there's nothing more relatable than that not wanting to let the people you love down so i mean it's simple like you understand where they're coming from, you know what i mean yeah.
Speaker1:
[1:02:30] I know what you mean
Speaker0:
[1:02:31] Like the gill man like stealing the girl because he just wants to be loved like who doesn't want to just be loved pepe love you it's relatable He's going about it the wrong way, much like the Gill Man, but you understand where they're coming from. And maybe that's also the thing with horror as well. You have to have a lot of real world parallels for the thing that makes it scary. And then it's sort of like a general idea that is not pleasant, and then people are able to... Maybe they have an experience that's connected to it, and then they think of that, and then And that's what makes them feel upset because they have this automatic emotional reaction to it. Maybe that's the key.
Speaker1:
[1:03:14] So Pepe is going around it the wrong way, as you say.
Speaker0:
[1:03:16] Yes.
Speaker1:
[1:03:17] What's the right way? If not, go on the Pepe Le Pew route.
Speaker0:
[1:03:23] I don't know. Contribute constructively to a relationship? I don't know.
Speaker1:
[1:03:28] I don't know. He was a weird... That is the American stereotype of French people, unfortunately.
Speaker0:
[1:03:34] Do you know when I heard in France, Pepe Le Pew is Italian?
Speaker1:
[1:03:40] No fucking way. Look at that. Is that true? Fact check. No fucking way. That's too good to be true. Ouroboros! This is a good one.
Speaker0:
[1:03:53] Yeah, the snake eating its own tail. A lot of parallels in life to that as well.
Speaker1:
[1:03:58] Why do you say that?
Speaker0:
[1:04:00] Infinite cycles. There's a lot of infinite cycles. Life and death and repetitive days and months and years and self-destruction connections as well, where it's eating itself as well, where, and frivolity, like getting stuck and making the same mistakes over and over again. There's a lot of parallels.
Speaker1:
[1:04:24] The myth of Sisyphus.
Speaker0:
[1:04:25] Yeah.
Speaker1:
[1:04:25] You ever read Camus?
Speaker0:
[1:04:27] I have not.
Speaker1:
[1:04:28] I mean, actually, it's probably good. I like Camus, but Camus is like literature for depressed people. So if you haven't had to read the myth of Sisyphus, you're probably doing pretty well.
Speaker0:
[1:04:38] All right. I am aware of the myth.
Speaker1:
[1:04:41] Right. Well, the book itself as an essay it's not him telling the story of this it's like uh the few the futility of of suicide and self-destruction right uh kind of writ large by this you know french algerian philosopher in the middle of the 20th century kind of thing it's i don't know it's a very good book or at least a collection actually of several different essays oh right but yeah the the cycle of it all and the way that we sort of self-perpetuate into different repeating problems but the solution to the problem is the hair of the dog that bit you well damn now i gotta go back in there slay that dragon again sort of thing do you think that you could uh like on the spot come up with another 27 monsters a to z there aren't these oh
Speaker0:
[1:05:37] Probably i mean certain letters are a little bit difficult.
Speaker1:
[1:05:40] Let's start with something easy like j j jabber walkie the jabber walkie yeah this is from the from the looking glass the
Speaker0:
[1:05:50] Looking glass indeed just brillig in the and the i don't remember i used to be able to quote it which was brillig and the riley toves the jarring gimbal in the wave I used to be able to quote the whole thing once upon a time. Yeah, Jabberwocky's weird. It's got a weird face. It looks like a really, really angry shaved rabbit or something in a jacket.
Speaker1:
[1:06:12] I just remember the dancing troupe, the Jabberwocky's, they all wore the blank white masks.
Speaker0:
[1:06:16] Oh, right.
Speaker1:
[1:06:17] Yeah. So, let's say another letter.
Speaker0:
[1:06:22] Um, I guess, um, Quetzalcoatl. That's a thing, though, when I was doing this, I didn't want to use, um, God.
Speaker1:
[1:06:30] Quetzalcoatl is like a...
Speaker0:
[1:06:32] The feathered serpent from the Aztecs. I purposely, though, when I made this, I didn't want to use gods, even gods from religions that aren't practiced anymore. It just kind of felt like, I don't know, like, am I going to put Jesus in? Like, it's like, oh, funny creature.
Speaker1:
[1:06:50] It's not a monster.
Speaker0:
[1:06:52] Or is he... Dun dun dun! Bad Molly. Sorry.
Speaker1:
[1:07:00] No, you're good.
Speaker0:
[1:07:01] Depends on your perspective. But I intentionally didn't want to include gods from existing religions as... ...monsters. I thought that was a bit... ...a bit odd, but yeah, that's the first one that comes to mind. What's the best Greek monster? Best Greek monster? You mean my favorite?
Speaker1:
[1:07:19] Yeah. Because mythology designs the best
Speaker0:
[1:07:24] Creatures i really have a soft spot for minotaurs i don't know why i just think they're neat i think it's cool why i'm not sure they're just cool, but i i i have no explanation for that the the myth is interesting and the the live in the labyrinth and the it's dark and spooky and it's like human but not i've always had a soft spot for them there's better ones that i think are cool like hydras are really cool and the concept of that we're cutting off the head and then to appear and the cleverness of trying to trying to, put wax in the stump so it doesn't grow back and also anything that's in a harry house movie as well like um medusa and cyclops i love the cyclops and harry has this super cool design but yeah for whatever reason the sort of half human half animal aspect of the minotaur i thought that was really cool and interesting same.
Speaker1:
[1:08:23] With the fawn we talked about fawn i thought it was an interesting one where you like the book is literally called monsters and you included angels you included fawns like things that i wouldn't have thought of at all in terms of like this is monster that it could be.
Speaker0:
[1:08:36] Yeah, I tried to vary it and keep it interesting.
Speaker1:
[1:08:39] So we talked about the definition of the word creature, but what about the word monster? What does that mean?
Speaker0:
[1:08:43] That's an interesting one. I've thought about that myself as well. I think monsters are connected to fear responses, while creatures not necessarily. I think monsters are used in art history to represent fears of humanity, while creatures don't necessarily have to be frightening. They can be like an alien being from a planet in a video game or something and are just completely benign.
Speaker1:
[1:09:16] Something... Preferably more like modern maybe the last 20-30 years um can you give an example of a like a monster in a film that sort of captures that idea
Speaker0:
[1:09:29] Of a of a creature or a monster.
Speaker1:
[1:09:32] Well okay so you said that the monsters are specifically designed for like the fear response right can you can you give an example
Speaker0:
[1:09:40] A jean jacket from nope nope oh god nobody watched that movie did you see that nope yeah that one and it's like who's on first nope um is a sci-fi movie that completely reimagines the idea of an alien it's really cool there's spoilers if you haven't seen nope please watch i'm going to ruin it for you now though please watch it and if assuming you have watched it which you probably haven't pokemon pokemon it does this really so then they pass out I'm drinking so much. It does this interesting thing where it's set in the desert and things are going missing and stuff like that and they're seeing a shape in the sky. And then it turns out that the alien is the UFO. So it looks like a UFO, but then it sort of folds out and then it's sort of like a deep sea creature that's able to fold in and look like a UFO and then fold out. It's like this big weird jellyfish angel thing in the sky.
Speaker1:
[1:10:42] They did that also in Star Trek The Next Generation.
Speaker0:
[1:10:45] Did they? Oh, interesting.
Speaker1:
[1:10:47] There's this episode where one of them is in pain because her Maid is off drifting in space somewhere,
Speaker0:
[1:10:54] But very similar. Oh, right. Oh, and I need to check that out then. I really need to explore Next Generation more. I haven't done it nearly as much as I should.
Speaker1:
[1:11:00] I will marathon the whole thing with you.
Speaker0:
[1:11:02] All right. For sure. Anytime.
Speaker1:
[1:11:04] Anytime.
Speaker0:
[1:11:05] And they did some cool things with this creature, like they thought a lot about tropes involving people who have spotted UFOs. Like, why are the pictures always blurry? This creature has a sort of like, it affects electronics so that they don't work properly so the way they end up filming it at the end is with a with a um non-digital camera so like like filming it in the sky and it sucks things up just like ufos but that's it eating them i i really i get really freaked out by people being eaten alive in media that really really fucks with me and big eyes as well freak me out and there's this awful scene where this like whole group you.
Speaker1:
[1:11:45] Hung out with tigers for like 30 minutes
Speaker0:
[1:11:48] They were freaking me out i must say the way they were the mad look in their eyes but yeah there's this horrible scene that really like got under my skin where there's a whole crowd of people that it sucks up and it like shows them inside of the monster and they're all screaming you like hear them screaming as it's flying through the air oh it's horrible horrible that's another movie that scared me like sometimes i just think about it like oh i want to think about something else awful. That affected me because it's tapping into something I personally find very freaky. But it was also doing something that at least I hadn't seen done before with the trope of the UFO. I thought that was really, really cool how it did that and how it played with that. And also that, you assume that it's an alien because it's a UFO and it looks so weird, but it's also based on deep sea animals which do exist on earth so you start questioning is it an alien or is it from this planet like so many interesting things this film.
Speaker1:
[1:12:49] Did if we end up discovering that a another alien species has dna then i mean it's alien to this world perhaps but we are still connected somehow maybe we don't know i mean the transpermia idea uh yeah i said it um no it's it's very interesting and you think you think about how The fact that an octopus and you have anything in common. Yeah. But at some point down the line, we're all cousins. Yeah. Every time I eat a mushroom, I think about, like, this is even closer to me than a tree is.
Speaker0:
[1:13:26] Yeah.
Speaker1:
[1:13:27] Like, this is more like me than it is like a tree by a long shot.
Speaker0:
[1:13:30] Yeah.
Speaker1:
[1:13:31] It's so weird. Like, the diversity of, like, we were talking about that a little bit at the beginning of the conversation. But just all these different creatures that are kind of referencing nature. And there's so many fucking examples. They're just wacky ass.
Speaker0:
[1:13:44] Yeah.
Speaker1:
[1:13:44] Stuff that really exists out there.
Speaker0:
[1:13:46] Yeah. Millions of species that have existed, exist, and will exist, all designed to function within a very, very specific selection of factors. It's wild.
Speaker1:
[1:13:59] What about the Babadook?
Speaker0:
[1:14:01] Well, the Babadook.
Speaker1:
[1:14:02] It's one of my favorite fear response monsters.
Speaker0:
[1:14:04] That's a really cool one, yeah, for sure. I feel like it was kind of based on Dr. Caligari with the hat and stuff like that and this sort of crazy style. That's why I reckon they were maybe that's what they were referencing with that but yeah that's cool it's got some good imagery in it that.
Speaker1:
[1:14:19] It was one of those movies that the first time that I watched it I didn't think much of it I was just like okay that was like a weird monster movie and then like the second time I watched it I'm like there's something more to this but it's very easily you can very easily project your own insecurities onto that monster so there's the great scene towards the end of the film spoilers again where the mother is just telling the school headmaster or whatever like you realize that all of these events have taken place in like two weeks and she's like we had some things we need to sort out and that's about it that's the whole story to the rest of the world but like that every single person goes through that sort of like this is my private struggle that no one is i have my this monster locked up in my basement that i have to feet every once in a while, this sort of thing. Another good example was It Follows. We talked about Disaster Piece.
Speaker0:
[1:15:11] Oh yeah.
Speaker1:
[1:15:12] Yeah, great composer, but that monster is also, it just assumes the body of another person and walks towards you that's it and it just keeps a beeline on people that's enough to inspire fear but why is that why is that so terrifying
Speaker0:
[1:15:29] Yeah there's also kind of like um human monsters i watched um the 1923 hunchback of notre dame in amsterdam last week or the week before it was being it's you have the pate chujinski theater which is voted the most beautiful theater in the world and the entire stage is an instrument it's a it's one of a handful of um of very old uh types of organs that were played live to music and um aaron i think hawthorne is his name um is a organ player one of the few people in the world who can play this instrument who tours to Amsterdam on occasion.
Speaker1:
[1:16:14] Remind me to introduce you to Tony Manfredonia after this.
Speaker0:
[1:16:17] Oh, okay. Go ahead. But yeah, so Aaron comes to Amsterdam on occasion to perform improvised music to silent horror movies as they were intended to be performed. And I saw Hunchback of Notre Dame recently. And Hunchback is included as one of the classic universal monsters. Really? But he's a human. So he's a human monster. I mean you could say that's kind of ableist you know he's you know like a deformed person he's being considered a monster but um yeah monsters appear in different ways and human monsters are probably the scariest ones of all because those actually exist you know.
Speaker1:
[1:16:58] You said the thing was the movie that scared you the most. I think uh if I really think about it it was the Amityville horror. My mom and i watched the amityville horror the original uh like the day that we moved into a new house oh great i was like too young to see this it fucked me up for the rest of my life even still i like not very comfortable in a new place right but the monster in the film you never see it except for this one shot that's just like a split second and you see like a silhouette in the window and that's it and if you freeze frame on it it's not scary at all but it fucking Something wrecked me when I was a film.
Speaker0:
[1:17:39] Funny that certain films were able to do that just like how Psycho ruined showers forever and Jules ruined the beach forever. Yeah.
Speaker1:
[1:17:46] Psycho is a great example. Hitchcock was very interesting in his, I mean, you were talking about human monsters, serial killers are, they exist.
Speaker0:
[1:17:54] Exactly.
Speaker1:
[1:17:55] We have sociopaths around us right now. Some of them might be watching this and trying to figure out what our location might be and when they can whack us. So let's make sure we go on LinkedIn and Twitter and post it all. No, but that's like the most scary thing in the world because that's a real-life monster.
Speaker0:
[1:18:14] Yeah.
Speaker1:
[1:18:14] Charles Manson, real-life monster.
Speaker0:
[1:18:16] Indeed.
Speaker1:
[1:18:16] Ted Bundy, real-life monster.
Speaker0:
[1:18:18] And yeah, fictional monsters, creature monsters, I don't know how else to put it. But yeah, that's where they become, they're a metaphor for real fears and real meaning. They're vessels for meaning. That's always how I approach creatures and monsters. And I think watching a lot of universal horror growing up as a kind of weird kid also kind of affected my perspective on monsters and creatures. Like, while I've been here, there's been a lot of emphasis on scary monsters. But I'm actually a really big fan of sympathetic monsters. Probably, like, I connect to the monsters. I feel for Frankenstein's monster, who didn't ask to be born, is doing his best to sort of, you know, like, function, but also isn't equipped to understand the world around him and everybody's getting angry with him and wants to destroy him while he's just doing his best to sort of find a way to fit in.
Speaker0:
[1:19:18] Or the Gill Man, also the same thing, you know, like they're invading his place and bringing in all this stuff when he's he was just minding his own business living here and now there's all these people here messing up his territory and um yeah like i think also for example the the um the director of frankenstein uh was a closeted homosexual and i think once you know that that really sort of opens up the kind of the meaning that was being expressed through these monsters, where, you know, it's like, it's the only reason they're monsters is because the environment around them has deemed them so. And I think a lot of that comes through in the way that these films were made and the types of people who were making these films. There were also a lot of, in early Hollywood horror movies, a lot of the people working in them were Jews who'd escaped from Nazi Germany, for example, and gone to America to get away from real monsters.
Speaker0:
[1:20:20] And I think that influences is how I approach creature design and monster design as well. Like, for example, a lot of Monster Hunter comes up a lot when I'm teaching students, because designs in those games are beautiful. They're really, really cool. They're well animated, well researched. They have fictional zoology, excellent examples. And students ask me occasionally what I think of Monster Hunter. But the thing is that I played a Monster Hunter game on the PSP, which was my first experience.
Speaker0:
[1:20:51] And I was told in the game that I needed weapons so because I'm a starter I should go and I should attack these herbivores next to this lake and then when I was there it said because you're not very strong go for one of the babies it's like okay so I started attacking the baby and these are just like these beautiful animals in their natural habitat and I'm coming along they're minding their own business they're not threatening me they could have at least put and also they're like attacking our village or there's too many of them and it's destroyed something no i just came in and started killing the babies and then the adults started coming and trying to protect the babies and i just thought to myself they're not the monsters i am i just feel like an asshole when i play monster hunter and it's a shame because mechanically and i find it the gameplay really interesting and the designs are beautiful but i just can't i just can't get past that like with it yeah.
Speaker1:
[1:21:47] I mean a phrase a word that keeps coming to my mind as we talk about this is like xenophobia itself is like the definition of a monster right like uh it's throughout history many times like the a monster is simply a perspective frankenstein himself right was not he didn't have any bad intentions frankenstein's monster i should say had no bad intentions he was just trying to get along with his life everyone rejects him and so many people can empathize with that because i feel like everyone has probably felt that way at some point in their life and they have it they're a psycho so that you probably shouldn't trust them i've
Speaker0:
[1:22:26] Actually heard a theory that um the reason why sci-fi movies were so popular in the 50s in america was because of xenophobia this idea of an outer an outer force from another place coming and taking over being a real anxiety which is why it resonated with audiences so much.
Speaker1:
[1:22:44] Western and northern europe there's a lot to discuss but as an as an american i feel like that people don't really fully appreciate how absolutely terrified of russia we were during that time and it's so apparent in our fiction like red dawn as far as i understood that was like real life like that could have been a documentary at a certain point uh that i came here and met like dimitri and all those guys i'm pretty sure we're all just the same you know yeah but it we were so fucking scared like but my grandparents were like the duck and cover generation right every every school desk was made out of steel um not that it would have saved you but yeah at least the illusion right yeah um but that yeah it's just this absolute fear of the unknown and this other thing that's always looming outside of it it's like lovecraftian horror almost but irl lovecraft was uh another one of my favorite examples in the same ways uh like hitchcock we were talking about because he would do a lot less description, you know, than you would think is necessary. And the vagueness is what makes it so terrifying.
Speaker0:
[1:23:57] He also focuses a lot on the experience invoked by the monster, which I think is a wise use of the medium of literature. Because if you're describing what's there, why not have a picture, you know? But the feeling invoked through words, it's like poetry. That's something that can only be done through words. like the visual imagery in a person's mind i think that's a very very intelligent use of literature for horror for sure or.
Speaker1:
[1:24:29] In anything but speaking of xenophobia you really like xenomorphs
Speaker0:
[1:24:34] I do yeah so.
Speaker1:
[1:24:36] Why are they the best of the best
Speaker0:
[1:24:39] There's a lot of they're an excellent case study in good creature design and i bring them up a lot because they're they're such a great example to pull out as a clear example for students for things. And I think the thing that I love so much about them is that they very, very clearly, from their design to the scenes that they're involved in to even their fictional life cycle, is connected to the themes of Alien. And the specific theming of Alien differs per film, but in the original film there's multiple interpretations, but I think a very strong theme in the original film is the taking away of bodily autonomy.
Speaker0:
[1:25:31] When you look at the way that aliens are designed, there's a lot of rape imagery in it. There was a lot of rape imagery in H.R. Giger's art in general, which is why he was an absolutely perfect fit. His art was already invoking themes similar to the film. So the penis-shaped head and the the facehugger like cage and wrapping around the throat, like the prison mint and choking and things like that. The fact that it injects itself into your body and also the fact that the final form takes on genetic material of its host. So when a xenomorph gestates inside of a human, it's humanoid. But if it gestates inside of a dog, say, then it's more kind of dog-like on all four legs and things like that, which is also kind of like taking away a part of a part of somebody without their permission and identity theft.
Speaker1:
[1:26:27] Yeah I'll sue that
Speaker0:
[1:26:29] Motherfucker it's.
Speaker1:
[1:26:31] A criminal offense
Speaker0:
[1:26:32] I had a I had a creature design teacher in Los Angeles and his interpretation of of alien was he brought it up a lot as a great example and he said that he particularly noticed that men find the alien really scary and his theory was because xenomorphs create a situation that most cis men cannot experience, which is being raped and having to give birth to your rapist's baby. And that's something that normally cis men would be not able to experience. But when the alien exists, then you can go through this extremely awful experience that you thought you were immune to. And I thought that was a really interesting interpretation of the film. But yeah, there's a lot of things that are just very, very well done about Xenomorphs. They're so iconic. There's a reason why 70s... How long are we long? Like 70s, 80s, 90s? 50 years, Jesus Christ. Like 40, 50 years later.
Speaker1:
[1:27:37] Some of them have you.
Speaker0:
[1:27:40] It's still an IP that's around. They're still making games about it, they're still making comics about it, and there's a reason for that. You know like it invokes a lot um it really captures the imagination of the audience.
Speaker1:
[1:27:54] It's just fantastic
Speaker0:
[1:27:55] I have a big alien queen in my house when.
Speaker1:
[1:27:57] I was visiting uh horsham i got to hang out with some of the guys from creative assembly and we're talking about the design of alien isolation and all that i'm like what a great game what a fucking truly fantastic game because it's the perfect monster there's just one of them and it's always there and you can't kill it yeah and it's gonna get you there's no other way around it and you're just trying to navigate through the narrative one step at a time you know the did you play it what did you ever play that game yes what what uh system did you play it on pc i
Speaker0:
[1:28:27] Played it on pc yeah.
Speaker1:
[1:28:28] So if you played on playstation there was like that thing where the microphone is on the controller oh it was on by default and in that game they put in this thing where if you made noise the controller would hear it and it would alert the alien people did not know this like it was not communicated to the audience that's cool and it's one of the things that i love about game design another another example is amnesia the dark descent we talked about that a bit yesterday but the whole sanity system with the lanterns and all that they just lie to you the designers just lie to you they just get like literally gaslight you where it's like you need to keep this lamp on or have a candle or something so that you never go too long in the dark because then you'll lose your sanity and you're more likely to get attacked but none of it's true that's
Speaker0:
[1:29:15] Great because it's fake anxiety yeah and And it also invokes paranoia in the player as well, whereas false information is great.
Speaker1:
[1:29:24] So much of human experience is people doing irrational, cyclical habits that just ground them and make them feel better. Whatever it is. And it could be, I will not even go into whether or not the effect is real, but it could be a prayer, it could be a mantra, it could be like the little meditation that we did at the beginning of this thing. Whatever it is. Technically kind of useless in a way but for whatever reason that that practice seems to ground people it's for sure a very important part of human nature
Speaker0:
[1:29:56] You know there's an element of pt that i read about that um when you're a bull teaser yeah that when you're playing that game it's connected um when you're playing that game it renders the monster behind you at all times games, so the player never sees it. I love that so much. What a cool thing.
Speaker1:
[1:30:15] It's unnecessary, but it's just good.
Speaker0:
[1:30:17] It's so, like knowing that is just like really awesome in that game. Little details like that really matter when people are making games.
Speaker1:
[1:30:27] So you were born in Ireland. Yes, in Dublin. Dublin. Yeah. All right. What was that like 10, 10-ish years before you moved? So you must have had some experience.
Speaker0:
[1:30:39] Yeah, a little bit um.
Speaker0:
[1:30:42] Yeah i went i went through most of primary school in ireland um most of most of my life i've spent in the netherlands i don't really feel dutch though i don't know like holland has a bit of a weird um relationship with with its foreigners i do like holland because it's it's stable and my family's there the schools are good the health care is good and things like that but i do very much miss the people in Ireland. Something that I really love about Dublin is if you stand in the city and you spend more than about 20 seconds looking at your phone and looking around, someone will come up to you and say, where are you going? Maybe I can help you. And if they don't know, they'll ask somebody, hey, do you know where this street is? And even in the city, while in Amsterdam, I mean, there's a case in a lot of big cities, but it feels like people have blinders on where they're just focused on, what it is that they're doing and they'll just like bump into you and just sort of not say anything as they're going about their business and things like that um so i miss that i miss that about ireland and i'd spend a lot of time outside in ireland like um a lot of my family live in bray which is a coastal town so i'd spend a lot of time like on the pebble beaches or up on bray head in the mountains and things like that which i'm grateful that i was able to do, and again Pokemon related, a lot of time spent on the playground swapping cards and things like that those are some good.
Speaker1:
[1:32:11] Memories Pokemon
Speaker0:
[1:32:13] Pokemon Pokemon and also playing point and click adventures with my dad and my sister some very fond memories of.
Speaker1:
[1:32:23] That that's what I love about point and click games so much is that you can play them as a group and it's so seamless it's not a lot of pressure and you can kind of just like group make decisions and everything. I was a huge fan of the Telltale games.
Speaker0:
[1:32:35] Oh yeah. All of those.
Speaker1:
[1:32:36] Good stuff. Among Us, Walking Dead, Seasons 1 and 2. Even the Game of Thrones one wasn't too bad. And they just nailed it. They knocked it out of the park.
Speaker0:
[1:32:46] It's good stuff, yeah. Something that's really weird about… There's other games that kind of do it, but point-and-click games in particular, when you turn the game off, you're still kind of playing it. You'd be thinking about how to solve a puzzle and then have an aha and then go back and try again. I always find that crazy when a game sort of follows you outside of when you're sitting at the computer playing it. It was wild. I love that about that genre of game in particular.
Speaker1:
[1:33:14] What what does it mean to be irish what
Speaker0:
[1:33:18] Does it mean to be.
Speaker1:
[1:33:18] Irish outside of the obvious to be from ireland or whatever what's the spirit of that what do you carry with you i
Speaker0:
[1:33:25] Think a lot of irish people feel this need to go somewhere else just because historically ireland is very um it's very uh like out of balance and a lot of a lot of problems.
Speaker1:
[1:33:37] We have this joke it's not really a joke because it's an absolute fact that there there are more irish in america than there have ever been in Ireland. There are more Puerto Ricans in America that could possibly inhabit the island of Puerto Rico. We sort of have this spreading across the world aspect.
Speaker0:
[1:33:56] Yeah, and that's kind of a thing that's kind of typically Irish, the sort of need to go somewhere else. Also maybe because it's an island country. I mean, that might also be a factor sort of like similar to small country mentality and things like that. Um it's you also carry a lot of the kind of like the cultural aspects as well like a lot of the music and the writing and the folklore and things like that just.
Speaker1:
[1:34:21] Sad being sad
Speaker0:
[1:34:24] And it's it's it's funny as well because like um something that i had anyway uh growing up there was a lot of superstitions and um i'm not a superstitious person i know that it's just sort of magical thinking but things like um if you see a circle of mushrooms that's a fairy circle and if you go in it you'll be trapped forever in fairy land so don't do that we've.
Speaker1:
[1:34:49] Proven that wrong
Speaker0:
[1:34:50] Twice but still if i see a circle of mushrooms i get a little bit worried about it it's funny that i quite but it's quite fun you know like sort of sometimes when you're in the countryside it does feel like maybe fairies could exist or something like that and it's quite fun to kind of indulge that sort of magical thinking which a lot of irish people do a.
Speaker1:
[1:35:09] Lot of the folks where i'm from were very superstitious i remember like we had this very strict rule about like you know someone hands you an open blade you're not supposed to close it you have to hand it back open
Speaker0:
[1:35:21] Oh if they have a closed.
Speaker1:
[1:35:22] Blade you open it yourself and you close it before you get back to them otherwise it's deathly bad
Speaker0:
[1:35:27] Luck oh i haven't heard that one yeah okay more paranoia for me then thanks.
Speaker1:
[1:35:32] For the next time you need to use a pocket knife, just remember. I just remember but uh no that's interesting i've never been to ireland i might have no way never oh
Speaker0:
[1:35:43] You should you love.
Speaker1:
[1:35:44] It only just recently went to the uk but i grew up my entire life being an irish american right so it's like this pilgrimage it almost feels like it once if i go then it's over with like there's
Speaker0:
[1:35:59] A real separation right so like um i had it once at a I think it was Gamescom or maybe GDC. It was GDC. But I saw that there was an Irish game developer meetup. And I haven't lived in Ireland since I was 10. I don't really know the community there. And I went. And I was a little bit, because of my experience in the Netherlands, which I'll get to shortly, I was a little bit sort of like, am I welcome here? Should I be here? And from that moment, it was you're part of the Irish community. And I love that about Irish culture, that it's like bring it on you're welcome and uh once you're irish you're always irish meanwhile in the netherlands you like you are never dutch if you weren't born there if you're not white and you were born there you're still not dutch in the eyes of dutch people and it's real it's really like that.
Speaker1:
[1:36:53] Sounds like some other country i've visited once
Speaker0:
[1:36:55] It's really it's a real it's a real change in attitude i mean even in even in places like america there is kind of like once you live here you are american and you take on all the values of the culture yes and everything like that if you adopt.
Speaker1:
[1:37:10] The the culture in america like you're like yeah i subscribe to these rules yeah you're in you're fucking american
Speaker0:
[1:37:18] Yeah to.
Speaker1:
[1:37:19] Us or at least in my upbringing
Speaker0:
[1:37:21] Yeah and ireland is similar but the netherlands absolutely not so.
Speaker1:
[1:37:25] Never until i moved to europe did i hear someone say seventh generation immigrant. What does that even mean?
Speaker0:
[1:37:32] Yeah.
Speaker1:
[1:37:33] Yeah.
Speaker0:
[1:37:33] But it does create this odd thing where kind of like I don't really feel at home in any culture, which might also be like why I have this kind of wanderlust or maybe it's because I have that. I don't really know.
Speaker1:
[1:37:44] It's because you're the creature lady.
Speaker0:
[1:37:45] Maybe. I'm just a weirdo. I don't fit in anyway. You're a freak. That's what I'm doing wrong. I see.
Speaker1:
[1:37:53] This is actually an intervention.
Speaker0:
[1:37:55] Oh, damn.
Speaker1:
[1:37:56] Yeah, you've got to chill out with the creature stuff.
Speaker0:
[1:37:59] Oh, bummer. Oh, man. I'll have to be an accountant or something instead. Or draw fantasy digital wood elves and things like that.
Speaker1:
[1:38:10] No, but so that must have been formed. A lot of who you were as a young person and then you moved to an entirely new country
Speaker0:
[1:38:17] Yeah i mean.
Speaker1:
[1:38:18] That from what you described before like your parents sort of had to like reinvent everyone's the whole family's life
Speaker0:
[1:38:23] Yeah your.
Speaker1:
[1:38:24] New place yeah that's fucking crazy
Speaker0:
[1:38:26] Yeah i guess i guess it was the kids are strong you know like kids are just sort of like everything is new and every and they're not kind of it's so just anything happens kids are just kind of like okay at least i was so you just kind of roll with it and yeah I did I am grateful, for the experience because it means that you sort of see the world is my home I don't feel like there's anywhere that I can't go or I'm afraid to go kind of thing, unless it's like a war or something and then there's a reason but just sort of like oh I don't know if I'd get on with the culture it's like I'm sure I could figure it out kind of thing in.
Speaker1:
[1:39:05] General no matter where I've been if you know how to kind of convey gratitude and smile it's pretty much
Speaker0:
[1:39:11] Okay yeah and people are people you know that's a that's a real that's a real important thing to remember you.
Speaker1:
[1:39:17] Just need to say you know thank you two more beers please and like i love you and that's pretty much as far as i
Speaker0:
[1:39:23] Mean in any languages that'll.
Speaker1:
[1:39:25] Get you pretty far
Speaker0:
[1:39:26] Yeah exactly and also for me do you have this yeah and then point at the phone phones make it easier to like in japan do you have this and And then point at the phone.
Speaker1:
[1:39:37] I found it so interesting seeing how you reacted to reading Danish. Because for me as an outsider and also with someone with a background in linguistics, I... I don't speak Danish fluently by any stretch of the imagination, but I figured out how to read it and reason through it very, very quickly as an English speaker. And to me, from the outside looking in, Dutch and Danish are much closer.
Speaker0:
[1:40:07] Right.
Speaker1:
[1:40:07] And yet you were like, I don't fucking know what this means.
Speaker0:
[1:40:09] Well, I think part of that is a trauma from trying to learn Dutch. Because Dutch people would just make fun of me for trying to speak Dutch. Or they just speak English because it's easier kind of thing. But yeah, like the amount of times that I'd say a word slightly wrong and a Dutch person would just start like pointing and laughing really loudly because I said a word a bit funny. It's awful. It's really awful, you know? And so I get very, very nervous when I have to like read or speak a language that I'm not comfortable in. It's like a real, it's a real problem for me with languages.
Speaker1:
[1:40:44] I uh i obviously like i still have somewhat of an accent but i remember the day that i made a conscious effort to change the way that i spoke to be more i don't know clear right generic that kind of thing because i think i was in the seventh grade this girl her name was katherine she was like you know the cutest girl in the seventh grade kind of thing and she she just lit into me one day she's like you sound so redneck and just fucking broke my heart and yeah ever since katherine
Speaker0:
[1:41:17] Yeah if you're watching katherine fuck you.
Speaker1:
[1:41:19] I hope you're doing well
Speaker0:
[1:41:22] I'm allowed to say it yeah i bet that's also a thing like i fear if you have a southern accent the sort of connotations of the accent that must be yeah i never thought of that must be really.
Speaker1:
[1:41:34] It's so interesting the assumptions that people will make. And that's anywhere, it's no matter what, everywhere has their stereotypes and that sort of thing. But like, it's either you know someone hears my accent and i'm afraid that they're going to think that i'm sort of sort of a racist or you know like a maniac in some way or the opposite where it's like they like another white dude in a gas station like walks up and says a remark about another individual to you assuming that you will get a lot you know you agree with them like that kind of thing
Speaker0:
[1:42:02] You know a similar experience that i've had is um if if for example like i'm on a booth at a convention i've had this a couple times in that particular context and i speak dutch people can tell that i'm not dutch because of the way that i speak and they say um like where are you from i'm from ireland and then um some something along the lines of oh wow your dutch is very good like how long have you lived here 20 years like oh and that's a real surprise for them and usually it's just sort of this kind of general sort of like oh well done but sometimes i'd get people who would kind of start talking about oh you know because there's a lot of people who come to this country and all they all they're looking for is is uh welfare and it's like well that's why my family moved to this country so they think that they have like this sort of comfort where they've sort of found found an exception to their assumption it's like and then it's like a gotcha i was on the plane.
Speaker1:
[1:43:01] With this old uh danish guy name was lars now that i think about it i mean he was in his 60s probably you know it was one of those like telling me his whole life story and It was cool, you know, we're drinking wine, we're on an airplane, couldn't have been that. But at a certain point, he started talking about like in his his opinions about immigration and all that kind of thing and not that I have any real opinion about this foreign country that I live in's policies like I'm happy they let immigrants in I am one yeah but he was talking to me as if I weren't one yeah in English yeah I was just like what the hell is going on here like the only difference between me and whoever you're talking about is the tone of my skin yeah that's about it
Speaker0:
[1:43:44] Man like I had that in high school if you're watching karen fuck you this i had a teacher once where.
Speaker1:
[1:43:53] I love you i
Speaker0:
[1:43:55] Don't mean your grandma i mean my horrible horrible dutch teacher i don't care if she knows it because she's what a what a monstrous human being where we had a class in dutch class where we had to read newspapers and she made assumptions that we understood some kind of issue that was going on. And I didn't have the context that she assumed was there. So I asked about it. And she said, well, there's a policy that if people are foreign in the Netherlands, that they are sent back to the country that they came from. And I said, that's terrible. I'm not from this country. Is my family going to be sent back? And she literally said to me in Dutch, no, you'll be okay, you're white. And I mean, I am fully aware that my negative experience in the Netherlands would be significantly worse if I wasn't white. Also from friends that I have who've experienced much, much worse things than me. I'm fully aware of that. So like the xenophobia that I've experienced in what is stereotypically considered a very tolerant country which was very surprising it's just like i i know like if it's this bad for me it must be so much worse for other people and that is so not okay.
Speaker1:
[1:45:16] How based in epic of you
Speaker0:
[1:45:18] Thanks no it's.
Speaker1:
[1:45:22] Good because that's essentially the question i was asking like what is it like to be you know a stranger in a strange land i can only speak from my own experience
Speaker0:
[1:45:30] Same and you know i'm already kind of a weirdo you know so that probably doesn't help as well like maybe i seem like a soft target or something like that but all i know how to be is myself and that's the experience that i've had so but having said that i mean um um in like the the the game industry in the netherlands is honestly a huge reason why i want to stay i feel so welcome there's such a lovely group of people i've never all.
Speaker1:
[1:45:59] Know each other
Speaker0:
[1:45:59] Yeah it's so fucking.
Speaker1:
[1:46:01] Weird like i the you posted a picture of you and i at gamescom and then i woke up the next morning to kai who's also on this podcast he's like i see you met molly I'm like, how the fuck did you know that?
Speaker0:
[1:46:16] We all know each other. Yeah, he messaged me today, actually, and said, like, yeah, he messaged me and said, like, oh, there's such a great load of people. Like, you're going to have a great time. It was really sweet.
Speaker1:
[1:46:26] Are you putting a good word for me?
Speaker0:
[1:46:28] Oh, yeah, of course.
Speaker1:
[1:46:29] Yeah. What did he say?
Speaker0:
[1:46:31] Oh, well, he likes you very much. And I told him that I've heard his name in a positive light a lot while I've been here.
Speaker1:
[1:46:40] I love that motherfucker. He's great.
Speaker0:
[1:46:42] He's so fun.
Speaker1:
[1:46:43] Fantastic podcast. If you're listening to this one, you should go back and listen to the one with Kai Friand also.
Speaker0:
[1:46:48] Um but with with very little exception because i have had some people where again you're never dutch so if if my company is successful some people feel like that doesn't count because i'm not dutch even though the co-founder of arcane circus is dutch it's just not able to help people like that with very very few exceptions i've never felt discriminated against as a foreigner, as a woman as a as a weirdo like outside of college and you know like that kind of thing it's a really lovely community and it's a it's a it's a big reason why i stay to be honest that my family being there because um as long as i'm able to travel a lot and see other places and get a variety of contexts i am very very happy in the netherlands and i will say as cheesy as it sounds i am grateful for every negative experience that i've had the way that i approach things is that if you're if you're happy with who you are now or you're happy with the direction you're going as a person then all the bad things that have happened to you are the best thing that could have ever happened to you i really try to experience life through a lens in that way.
Speaker1:
[1:47:54] It's really funny to hear you say that okay i loved my trip to the netherlands i felt like these are my fucking people the whole time i was there but i was also hanging out with friends the entire time i had like an
Speaker0:
[1:48:05] Agenda and you can't speak dutch as well i've heard some people say that it's great until you can speak dutch and you know what you can overhear what people are talking about i have heard some people say that perhaps.
Speaker1:
[1:48:14] Well that's everywhere it's anywhere you go i know these these dance crews are always talking shit behind my back
Speaker0:
[1:48:21] No there there is no perfect place to live otherwise everybody would live there you know have.
Speaker1:
[1:48:26] You been to southern california it's pretty fucking
Speaker0:
[1:48:29] Awesome the.
Speaker1:
[1:48:30] Weather is great i lived in monterey for
Speaker0:
[1:48:33] Almost a.
Speaker1:
[1:48:33] Year and it was fucking awesome the only thing that sucks about california is
Speaker1:
[1:48:37] that you know it's quite expensive and of course there's, by American standards, high taxes.
Speaker0:
[1:48:44] Right, is that the only reason you don't live there?
Speaker1:
[1:48:50] Let's see if it cost less money i wouldn't pick monterey
Speaker0:
[1:48:56] Yeah well then it's not not so perfect like the.
Speaker1:
[1:48:59] Oh relax the weather is perfect
Speaker0:
[1:49:02] Oh i see like.
Speaker1:
[1:49:04] The climate itself is it's you you it may be rains once twice a year and it's like a little sprinkle and you go about your day it's just awesome it's great it's cozy all right you're never cold you're never warm
Speaker0:
[1:49:18] Yeah but then but then there'll be something else like this i don't know i like i like variety i don't know maybe i just like can't settle or something but i like um i like being in different places and getting different influences it keeps me it keeps me feeling creative you've.
Speaker1:
[1:49:33] Been all over you've been to japan you've been to any other places in asia
Speaker0:
[1:49:37] Japan's the only place i've been to in asia i've been to australia i've been to south america i've been around europe into the states yeah i like traveling a lot how many states oh california okay yeah i haven't seen it for proper i do want to though i'm currently trying to get my driver's license and once i have that i really want to go around america and experience we're going.
Speaker1:
[1:49:58] Mud riding yeah i'm taking you mud
Speaker0:
[1:50:00] Riding i'm gonna die it's.
Speaker1:
[1:50:03] Gonna be the best time
Speaker0:
[1:50:04] Ever that does actually sound really fun yeah that's some.
Speaker1:
[1:50:07] Super redneck shit but you know like i
Speaker0:
[1:50:09] Already i'm here for it yeah.
Speaker1:
[1:50:10] I mentioned because luke also I was interested and I mentioned to my parents, like it would, I'm gonna bring some Europeans and we're gonna take them, do some real serious, we're gonna get drunk on fucking cheap light beer and just race side by sides and ATVs through muddy dark woods.
Speaker0:
[1:50:29] Sounds fun as hell. Get injured, no helmets. I'm here for it, that sounds really fun.
Speaker1:
[1:50:35] All right, let's see. I think the last thing that I really wanted to touch on was to really dig into what ZenniBeasts is and what it means to you.
Speaker0:
[1:50:43] Oh, right.
Speaker1:
[1:50:45] I'm opening the door now for you to sell your product.
Speaker0:
[1:50:49] Oh, right. So ZenniBeasts comes from... I'm a monster kid and I love classic monster movies. Really? And I...
Speaker1:
[1:51:02] We hadn't caught on Pokemon.
Speaker0:
[1:51:03] Yeah. Drink again.
Speaker1:
[1:51:05] And um pokemon have
Speaker0:
[1:51:08] You ever seen the original godzilla movie.
Speaker1:
[1:51:11] Yes yeah i think i've seen them all really i think i've literally seen everything i had this friend who like his parents were fucking rich and he had all all of them so i i if not sat down and watched the entire film i've at least seen footage of everything sweet
Speaker0:
[1:51:28] That's great so a lot of people um when they think of Godzilla. They think of kind of cheesy movies where it's rubber suits fighting each other. But the original film is a deeply dark and meaningful film that's really upsetting and really captures this angst that Japan had at the time about nuclear fallout and where technology was going. And Godzilla is this representation of this social anxiety. Then they released Godzilla Vs. Anguirus, which was a light sequel. It was kind of riding on the success of the initial film. Then they had a break of, I think it was over 10 years actually, but I think it was the 70s where they made King Kong versus Godzilla. And that was playing on, Japan was really, really into wrestling at the time.
Speaker1:
[1:52:22] They're still very much into it.
Speaker0:
[1:52:23] Still indeed. Very much into it. But there was an uptake there and they decided that they would make a film kind of riding the coattails of this trend for wrestling. And it's a very, so it was targeting a younger audience it was goofier it was lower budget and it's really really silly film and i've seen i've seen it yeah it's like the it's just nothing throwing rocks the the.
Speaker1:
[1:52:50] Like bubbles like soap bubbles coming out of the dinosaur's mouth like that sort of thing it's just wow this is
Speaker0:
[1:52:58] And the tree it's a very very stupid.
Speaker1:
[1:53:01] That in uh you know king kong film
Speaker0:
[1:53:04] Yeah the the tree the Yeah, there's a bit where they throw the dinosaur's mouth.
Speaker1:
[1:53:09] They recreated the scene that was originally stupid as fuck and made it really cool.
Speaker0:
[1:53:13] Yeah, indeed. So that film, despite it being very stupid, was at the time the highest grossing domestic film in Japan and kept that for a very, very long time. This was a hugely financially successful film.
Speaker1:
[1:53:30] I bet, because they didn't spend shit on special effects.
Speaker0:
[1:53:33] So Toho, the studio that makes Godzilla movies, is kind of like, okay, fuck this dark shit, we're gonna make stupid movies from now on. And they leaned very heavily into fight sequences and less into using kaiju as a vessel for meaning. And with Xena Beasts, I'm trying to kind of go back to giant monsters representing societal angst, But in the case of the Xena beasts, I want them to represent toxic social behavior, which it's an issue that comes up a lot in modern society and is destroying the world. And in this context, it's literally destroying the world. However, I want to do it in a way that is kind of comical, because I feel like
Speaker0:
[1:54:25] comedy is able to amplify meaning and able to bring across messages in a more powerful way. So it's kind of like Godzilla meets the Simpsons with Xenoboests. That is the attempt. So each of the Xenoboests are designed to kind of be a representation of a particular.
Speaker0:
[1:54:42] Toxic behavior, like toxic masculinity or Peter Pan syndrome, being toxic online, things like that. And um uh the way that the humans kind of deal with the social issues and how the zenobeasts kind of learn from one another is also a thing that i want to play with where the humans kind of try to go about defeating the zenobeasts in the wrong ways where they try to use force or they try to attack the symptom rather than the cause or just sort of pretend it's not there and things like that but um yeah that's kind of that's that's the sort of thing that i want to play with in a it's a very like heavy topic but i want to do it in a way that's fun and silly and um satirical with uh with xenobasts so.
Speaker1:
[1:55:33] Each of them representing you know one of the modern deadly sins if you
Speaker0:
[1:55:38] Will yeah right like.
Speaker1:
[1:55:39] Internet trolling is clearly different than like normal like a normal person's behavior in our life, that kind of thing. Who's this guy
Speaker0:
[1:55:49] That's uh mashabuni.
Speaker1:
[1:55:51] And he represents
Speaker0:
[1:55:52] Toxic masculinity what is.
Speaker1:
[1:55:54] That what does that
Speaker0:
[1:55:56] Mean toxic masculinity for me is um the need to um the goodies, the need to be perceived as strong at the expense of everything else, at the expense of emotional support at the expense of personal care at the expense of feeling like one can be vulnerable. And what I've attempted to do with Mashibuni's design is that it's this big, cool, tough monster with this big, tough face on the chest. But if you look at the little white thing, he's actually got this little tiny head. So he's actually quite vulnerable. And this is all this kind of puffing to sort of distract from the fact that he's actually quite frail. That was the design thinking behind this particular Xenabeast.
Speaker1:
[1:56:46] What do you hope that people take away from that character?
Speaker0:
[1:56:51] Well, I hope that they relate to it, kind of like the Pokémon thing again. Pokémon? Where I want the Xenabeasts to appeal to certain people, and then through the stories that we tell and the messaging in the stories that they learn about, it's okay to be you, just be careful that you don't do it to an extent that it's so extreme that you end up hurting yourself so highlighting the strengths of being that type of person while also um showing showing the dangers that can happen if you take it too far and start hurting yourself and also being okay with certain anxieties that you might have that lead to you presenting yourself in that way that is the thinking anyway behind uh behind the project so.
Speaker1:
[1:57:38] We've got toxic masculinity internet bullying
Speaker0:
[1:57:41] Yeah what.
Speaker1:
[1:57:41] Are the other
Speaker0:
[1:57:42] Two the spreading of false information and Peter Pan syndrome.
Speaker1:
[1:57:45] Big news. All right. I love you. Make sure i don't forget
Speaker0:
[1:57:49] And there may be others in the future because there's an infinite number of issues with society but right now there's four xenobieasts it's.
Speaker1:
[1:57:57] Interesting that you picked these four things though of all these topics in the whole world you could have chosen these are the four so why
Speaker0:
[1:58:04] Those four there were there are other ones that um i'd like to develop in the future if we're able to expand the roster of monsters four were chosen in the beginning because um means you can have four players if you build a game around it. That was the thinking. I also wanted them to be universal issues that transcend culture, is also a thing. Like there was at one point where I was playing with a Zenibis based on colorism, where non-white communities kind of aspire to be white and sort of feel like certain people are better than others because they are more close to white people. And also queer topics were another thing that I explored. But I wanted them to be universal issues that people of any background are able to at least relate to somewhat. Like even women are able to relate to the idea of being perceived as strong and not showing weakness, even though it's an issue that because of the way that society is structured, typically tends to affect men. So that's why these particular issues were chosen, so that they're very distinct from one another and fairly universal, and also uniquely different types of people.
Speaker1:
[1:59:23] So what is what is peter pan syndrome
Speaker0:
[1:59:25] Peter pan syndrome is adults who refuse to take on adult responsibilities and the way that it manifests is indulging in in hobbies and behavior that are typically associated with children so like it can be it can be like playing video games too much um no such thing rip out out today like collectibles not wanting to not wanting to get a job, not wanting to be responsible, not being able to commit to relationships, things like that, like wanting to be a kid forever. I want to be a kid forever. Then you might have Peter Pan syndrome.
Speaker1:
[2:00:04] Why is that bad?
Speaker0:
[2:00:06] Because it means it can be at the expense of a person's ability to be able to function independently. They're dependent then.
Speaker1:
[2:00:13] Oh, we had a really interesting conversation about that the other day. Yeah.
Speaker0:
[2:00:19] I love video games and toys and having fun and all that kind of thing. But if it's at the expense of my ability to function independently, then it becomes a problem.
Speaker1:
[2:00:33] That sounds like toxic masculinity almost.
Speaker0:
[2:00:35] They're very similar, yeah. I mean, it's all of these things.
Speaker1:
[2:00:39] No, I mean the insistence on being independent.
Speaker0:
[2:00:42] Oh, interesting. Oh, like they're opposites. I didn't think of it that way that's an interesting point yeah.
Speaker1:
[2:00:48] Check yourself before you wreck yourself
Speaker0:
[2:00:51] But all of all of the behaviors that the Zen of beasts are meant to kind of satirize and criticize I don't think they're necessarily bad on their own you know like I think they can I think they're they come they're motivated by a good place in many ways but any behavior taken too far is a problem for sure yeah.
Speaker1:
[2:01:13] Hmm. So I assume you met four people at least who one of each represents.
Speaker0:
[2:01:19] Oh, absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker1:
[2:01:20] Let's exclude them from the conversation.
Speaker0:
[2:01:22] Yes, please.
Speaker1:
[2:01:23] Perhaps a fictional character or celebrity or something like that for each one that you feel maybe were there any people or specific events that inspired the creatures and the topics?
Speaker0:
[2:01:35] There are, um, there are kind of like general groups of people that I've looked at for ideas, for stories, or attributes and things like that. For Hagura, who's the cute kaiju that represents Peter Pan syndrome, I looked a lot at Disney adults.
Speaker0:
[2:01:54] And kind of like the behaviors that they typically have and the issues that they might experience. Like um the the the lore and if you go to zenobeasts.com there are origin stories for each of the four zenobeasts available for free now um haggara um are attracted to a theme park set within myopia which is the name of the city that the zenobeasts reside in and that's uh very very heavily based on uh disney and disney kind of obsessing over nostalgia but then taken to an extreme where this sort of Disney-esque company is intentionally sort of like encouraging its adult fan base to be a child at heart so that they use their media as a kind of escapism from their adult life so they keep buying stuff kind of like they're addicted to drugs, like constantly buying these products that make them feel like a child so they forget about being an adult but then it's at the expense of their ability to function as adults um and the haggara, reside in that park and are attracted to it because it's cute and they like cute stuff so there's there's stuff like that in it so.
Speaker1:
[2:03:12] People can go to xenobiefts you might need to spell that z
Speaker0:
[2:03:16] Z e n i b e a s t s dot com zenni beasts dot com and.
Speaker1:
[2:03:25] This is a multimedia franchise so you're working on short animations you're working
Speaker0:
[2:03:30] Yes potentially like.
Speaker1:
[2:03:32] A board game
Speaker0:
[2:03:33] Yeah we're working with the production company in france to um turn develop zenni beasts into among other things an animated series, a board game, a comic, a video game, and many other things. We've got big plans for our big monsters.
Speaker1:
[2:03:48] I wish you the best of luck. Thank you.
Music:
[2:03:53] Music
Speaker1:
[2:04:04] It's going to be a long overdue thank you to Molly. If you can't tell by having listened to that whole thing, yes, that was shot over a year ago, actually. And since then, of course, Zenni Beast has dropped Kaiju Cutie, the cartoon that we're talking about and everything, and it is available for your listening pleasure. This is also on YouTube as a video if you're interested in seeing that version of it, so hop on over there. And, yeah, I'll leave links to all of Molly's various things here in the show notes, and also if you want to support the show go over to end the keep.com hit that patreon button maybe buy me a book it's all going to be on the website and i love you oh wait i gotta thank all the patreon supporters hold on here we go it's uh uh uh shannon and michael fred brad thank you so much for uh donating to the show the music that you're hearing right now is by john of the shred uh check out Scythe Dev Team and all the other things that he does over at his website. I listen to all of his amazing music, it's on every platform, Spotify, all that stuff. I think that this song, OSHAD certified, is going to be put on his Spotify at some point. So you'll be able to see it there and download it and buy it and support everything. I'm running out of words. I love you. God love you. Stay in the keep.
Music:
[2:05:27] Music