LuisCastanon.com

Adam Phillips

January 2007

Q:

Hi Adam, thanks for sitting down and chatting it up for a few mins.
Let’s make this quick and painless… so before we get to the meat of the interview how about you make yourself known to those of us who have just now gotten around to owning a computer with a Flash plugin.

A:

Thanks for inviting me over! This is all very romantic.. what’s with the scented candles dude? OK so I’ve been animating as a career since 1993. Before that I was working on a farm driving tractors and throwing dirt at around. I heard that Disney were taking on trainees so I applied by sending them a bunch of my best drawings. I got the job and spent the next 11 years there. I had discovered Flash in early 2000 so I began creating stupid little shorts and sending them to friends over ICQ. One of those friends helped me set up a little portfolio website and I started to teach myself how to use Dreamweaver. I had heard of Newgrounds before, but I got an email from a stranger once who suggested I submit something there. I submitted a few of my earlier movies first to gauge the reaction which was pretty good, and I became addicted to reading the reviews.
So I finished ‘Bitey of Brackenwood’ and submitted, which turns out to have been the real starting point. Nowadays, each time I make a movie, I make it with Newgrounds in mind.

Q:

I’ve noticed that you are one of those artists who isnt the hermit type, you like sharing your insights and discoveries with the rest of the Flash scene as you try and make sense out of this Macromedia Flash thing like the rest of us. What do you get out of it and most importantly, what are some of the things you’ve been involved with for those of us hungry for knowledge.

A:

When I was learning Flash, I had a very difficult time finding quality tutorials and resources. I’m not saying they weren’t out there somewhere, but I couldn’t find em. I could see at a glance that Flash was capable of professional, feature-quality animation.. therefore I wanted to learn specifically from an animation stand-point so that I could apply my 2D experience. Unfortunately I couldn’t find any sites that taught frame-by-frame Flash animation to beginners, but I managed to fumble through with the help of two Disney colleagues who were also just starting out with Flash: Kevin Peaty and Bernard Derriman.
Together the three of us shared new techniques and helped each other out with critiques, insults and suggestions. Every week we’d go into Bernard’s, Kevin’s or my office and watch the latest. So I guess to answer your question, I do have some secrets, but I generally like to share what I know because it benefits everyone. If I locked all of my secrets up, I’d probably get a false and smug sense of how talented I am and never improve. So in a way, by sharing what I know, I’m forcing myself to improve with each new project - - and just between you and me, encouraging others to tell me all their secrets :P
Re: stuff I’ve been involved with.. lately I haven’t really been involved in much besides my own site and a little bit of freelance work. The freelance work I do generally comes from all over the world, but just lately I’ve been doing a bit of work for a Flash studio in Sydney called FunnyAzHell (same people that Kevin Peaty was involved with early in his Flash days). They treat their animators like people, so I’m happy to keep doing stuff with them. A while back I did some work on Chiko game which was handled by FunnyAzHell Animation.

Q:

You recently wrapped up the 30 shorts in 30 days campaign on your site, what in the world would compell someone to go through that fast-paced, masochistic torture of an idea? Were you in search of working on your Flash-making muscles or were you under house arrest again?

A:

Yeah, partly working on my Flash making and storytelling muscles, but it was mostly an attempt to increase site traffic.
I suppose therefore, my main motivation was money (OHNOES!!!!).. perhaps more accurately, the motivation was survival.
Working from home is awesome until the freelance jobs dry up, the bank balance falls away and the bills start piling up.
Despite the experiment failing miserably, at least now at the end we have 30 great little shorts that’ll live forever. It was the most fun I’ve ever had on a project because every day was a different thing. Each night three or four new ideas would come to me as I was dropping off to sleep and I’d laugh myself awake. Wrote them down on a notepad near the bed and started on the best one each morning.
It was a strange thing that I was never short of ideas and even now, there are about 20 fresh ideas still waiting on that notepad. Probably will do another 30 days in the near future. They’ve recently been picked up by a mobile channel in the US, so you may start seeing them on phones and TV. I’ll announce more about that when I can :)

Q:

Can you take anything away from it, now having completed that chapter of your Flash career?

A:

Most definitely.. I thought I worked fast before, but I’m still discovering new ways of speeding up my workflow. Those 30 shorts were exciting to work on, not just for the variety in stories but also the new techniques I developed. I guess to an employer or client, it’s an impressive thing to say “here’s 30 shorts I did in 30 days”.

Q:

So on to something totally unrelated but probably the most important question of the interview, what did you have for breakfast this morning?
What do you like to do when youre not sitting behind a computer?

A:

Breakfast? Ah now there’s a blast from the past. I haven’t had breakfast for a long time because I usually wake up and it’s closer to lunch. I go to bed between 3 and 5am, sleep until around 9 - 11 then start work at around midday. Today before I started work, I had eggs on toast. I usually drink around 5 or 6 cups of coffee a day.. I know, that’s bad (but it feels so right!) As for what I’m doing when I’m not behind a computer.. since the age of about 4 or 5 I’ve been obsessed with projectile weapons like airguns, slingshots, crossbows, blowguns, trebuchets, etc. Most of those are illegal in Australia so I like to design and build my own little toys. And the more silent, the better.. so I’m not interested in owning a real gun. I’m not into killing things or blowing things up, but there’s something about putting a piece of lead shot into hardwood that makes me smile. I usually wear a rubber band or two on my wrist cos they’re a great projectile in the right hands.. perfectly legal too. I also have a small collection of lovely blades.

Q:

Hmm interesting. Okay time to jump to something totally different, yay!
This is one of those kooky animatoresque questions only a fellow animator would ask but do you ever find yourself sitting in front of the tube on sunday morning and unconciously analyzing the mechanics of the cartoon you are watching? You having worked professionally in the animation field, are you forever haunted by that sort of unconcious analysis into anything animated?

A:

Yeah absolutely.. sometimes I find I’ve watched half a movie or TV show and I have no idea what’s going on, simply because I’m not following the story at all. Just criticising or admiring the techniques like composition, scene layouts, colour, narrative, animation, etc. I need to watch Brad Bird’s work several times, but it usually happens the other way round with his stuff.. i.e. I get swept up in the story and then watch it again and again to see how he did it. When it comes to storytelling, I think that guy’s an absolute fucking legend and probably my biggest influence today. I’m also a fan of Hayao Miyazaki.. but contrary to what many people think, he’s not one of my main influences. The primary reason I like Miyazaki’s work is because we obviously share a love of forests and lush greenery. I also like to create new creatures so I guess his inventiveness in that aspect is appealing to me. He also knows how special effects should be done in animation (particularly water surfaces).. which is something I can’t say for Disney.

Q:

Last question, you frequent in festivals and other cool events. Do you have any events in 2007 you know you’ll be in attendance or even things that you’ve been to this year that you can pass on to us and say: ‘Yeah definately gotoAndAttend(”this”);’ its worth it. By the way i apoligize for the worst possible flash related pun embeded in that question…. im going to go wash myself with soap after this.

A:

I like to attend any festival in which I’m a finalist because giving an acceptance speech by email feels horrible. I’d much rather be there to soak up the adulation (if any). I don’t have any concrete plans for 2007, but I would like to go to Annecy again.. and this time I plan on kicking Bernard Derriman’s arse (we were competing at Annecy 2006 and he won). There are a couple of other festivals/events that I’m thinking of attending, but it usually comes down to how much money I have at the time and/or whether or not anyone will help me pay :) Gah.. Flash pun! Here’s a towel… clean yourself up!

MindChamber

March 2007

Q:

Time for a very LATE episode of Artist of the Month, but better late than never, so off we go! The first question I’ve always wanted to ask you is what the significance of MindChamber is? Do have a sort of personal/symbolic connection to the character and/or alias?

A:

The name originally came about when I finally decided to create a site. On Newgrounds I went by the moniker, ‘OrtizAnimationZ’ it was a horrible name. Long and ugly. So I decided to have one of those cool compound words that meant two completely different things.
The word Chamber was stuck in my head because of Pico vs. the Uber Kids ‘One in the chamber’ was a phrase used in the intro. So then I thought long and hard what could this chamber contain that is essentially impossible to… well contain! First thing that came to mind was the containment unit in Ghostbusters. So originally it was gonna be something spectral. Like GhostChamber. Then I thought about how cool it would be if it meant a part of the brain that is yet uncharted. As section that defines you beyond your DNA. You can never contain that, or a mind for that matter. So I was like hmm Damn.. Mind.. Chamber. I looked at it like this section of myself that I was able to contain for myself. And it’s all held within the mindchamber. Haha. Sounds wack. Then later I started coming up with these stories in my head about how someone was actually able to contain this part of someone within this chamber. Which later became a very involved story of a robot that actually possesses a mind-chamber containing the mind of someone very important. I have this huge epic and convoluted story swirling around in my head about mindchamber. One day I will be in the position to tell it properly.

Q:

Hmm… well that answer was definately more than I or anyone could have bargained for… what a basketcase! But who cares! On to the next question…
You are amongst the first generation of NG Flash animators in the scene; I think you even pre-date me… what inspired you to pick Flash up?
Flash back in the day wasn�t as mainstream as it is today, was there something or other that lured you in?

A:

Before flash, I was enamored with Adobe after effects. I was scanning all sorts of junk, tying to make these little mini stories with it. I thought, wow, this is the shit. Then I got an internship at a web company called UBO. They first introduced me to Flash. I was floored. I was able to do what I did in aftereffects, but it was much easier to do. I did little interstitials in flash for them, but I knew even then flash was the next big push in animation. I keep telling them, ‘Damn we need to make movies with this stuff’. It was there when I was introduced to Newgrounds. I knew right away Newgrounds had the right idea. So on my off time I started doing flashes that I knew I would submit to NG.

Q:

Cool, thats very visionary-like of you… so lets fast forwarding to 2007, now that you’ve been in the scene this long, what’s your take on how the scene has changed over the years? in general and/or in Newgrounds?

A:

Flash has finally been taken seriously. Big time pros are now snooping around to get their 15 minutes. Major studios use it for broadcast animation. It isn’t the ‘fun for all’ type of entertainment it used to be. Big businesses are sticking their smelly hands into the pot. On the plus side more and more artists are finally getting the recognition they deserve, on the downside, kids are getting lazier and greedier by the minute. The gleam in their eyes are slowly being replaced by money signs, and I fear the market could get saturated like TV.

Q:

One of the changes that has always disturbed me is the fact that as more animators sprung up and claimed their fame (guilty parties to remain nameless) they have become more closed and defensive about integrating with the community almost afraid that their secret recipe will be exposed or something… yet you’ve always been very open and accommodating to your forum goers and NG enthusiasts in general, aren’t you concerned about being bitten by your generosity in the long run? What could you possibly get out of it?

A:

Man.. Shiiit.. I get bit in the ass all the time. I’ve had little faggots ask me how a certain thing is done in flash, only to tell me later on, ‘Welp, thanks for your help. I’ll see ya at the top�. But that’s just the way it is. It’s almost worth it when I see someone do something incredible and tip their hats to me for helping them out. There’s no such thing as ‘talent’, only skill. Skills can be learned. So refusing to help someone in fear of losing your secrets is selfish and stupid; because obviously that person learned it from somewhere themselves.

Q:

You’ve been involved in a fair number of games as of late, some that have already released and some that are probably still on your frying pan…this is a cliche’ question but which do you enjoy more, animating for games or for animated shorts and why?

A:

Making flash for games is like crack. You hit it fast and hard, and there’s a huge High. Not only are you animating your characters, you are letting others control them. Controlling characters you created is incredibly engaging and addictive. Creating games that have any replay value have a longer lasting effect than movies. Making a flash movie takes a bit more time, you have to weave a story, make convincing characters, and you must keep the viewer engaged, using only visuals and sound. Flash games are a lot of fun to create; flash movies are a lot more personally satisfying.

Q:

In other news, Newgrounds is on the heels of a major redesign launch. How do you feel about it as the launch date looms. Do you think it’s gonna be a faithful representation of the core ideas you all originally had for it when you were in brainstorm mode? Don’t worry Tom never visits my site! He’ll never read this.

A:

Definitely, there’s a lot of love and thought being put into the redesign. The big plus being that we are fans of the site ourselves, so we know what people want to see, and most likely it’s what we want to see as well.

Q:

Well Tom sure is taking his sweet time, if he didn’t constantly side track himself it’d have been done already… ok well Flash-crap aside, what else do you like to do besides Flash, do you paint, ballet, basket weave, all of the above?

A:

I love to read about robotics, (as if that ain’t too obvious) Hmm, aside from being avid gamer, I like to hit the bag to relieve stress.
Remixing soundtracks are a lot of fun.
I Plan to save up for a decent DV camera so I can get out there and do some short films. That’s about it.

Q:

On that same thought, name one thing your internet admirers hardcore fans probably do not know about you.
I once again assure you that nobody reads these things so let it all out!

A:

I love to cry at movies. :) I cried like a bitch at the end of Gladiator, one of my favorite movies. When Maximus hit the ground, I was bawlin’ like a baby.

Q:

Alright well I’m spent, and there’s only one more question left and of course it’s always the most important one. Which would you rather do if you were faced with this situation: Piss out a marble or shit out a cinder block?

A:

I take big dumps, so I would assume shittin out a cinder block� No explanation necessary….

AMEN.

END OF INTERVIEW LOL.

PsychoGoldfish

April 2007

Q:

Okay so this month the AOTM isnt as late as last month so im IMPROVING… anyway this month we feature PsychoGoldfish. On with the interview…
As is typical with any start of these interviews, the first question is cliche but people need to be roped in so bear with it… Who are you? Why should we care about you, and what did you have for breakfast today?

A:

I’m Josh Tuttle, founder, CEO and Supreme Commander of Psycho Goldfish Creative Media. In other words, I have a crappy website that I run by myself. You probably shouldn’t care about me, since I probably don’t give a crap about you either. For breakfast, I just drank a half pot of coffee. Then about an hour later I enjoyed a nice long piss.

Q:

Urine talk and shitting out cinderblocks always increases traffic here so i’ll leave that in the interview. So with the formalities out of the way, lets just cut to the chase. You keep busy pretty well or you make it seem that way anyway, what are you currently up to these days?

A:

Some of the stuff I’m doing is a bit hush-hush, but let’s just say I’m doing some work for Newgrounds, and developing some kick-ass technology for the next generation of Psycho Goldfish games. Aside from that I’m also involved in developing a few websites, and preforming a TOTALLY INTENTIONAL reconstruction of Radiogrounds.com that has nothing to do with the site being deleted. Just the other day Edmund McMillen (aka “that Gish guy”) sent me some stuff and informed me I was coding his next game, so I’ve got that going on. I’m also training for the 2008 Olympics because I heard they are adding thumb wrestling.

Q:

You are such a name-dropper… well since you started it I may as well take advantage…. I interviewed your pal MindChamber last month about what his take on the mainstreaming of Flash. I figure for the sake of getting the point of view from a developer’s side I would run it by you…what do you make of the current flash scene both from an enthusiasts point of view and from a business opportunity? On the one hand I can sort of sympathize with MC’s view that its making a new breed of artists that create ‘disposable’ content rather than things that push the scene to the next level. On the other hand, one could say that MC is just being a sourpuss because there is more economic gain from the flash gaming scene than the animation. Thoughts?

A:

I think there is truth in both schools of thought. Certainly there is a lot of cookie-cutter development going on where people release essential the same things that are popular at the time with a few minor differences and it results in a pretty good source of traffic and income. But I feel that flash is just an extension of the independent game industry, which has ALWAYS been saturated with unoriginal clones that sell in bulk due to low price tags and ease of availability. No developers are really getting any great wealth with this type of product, it’s basically just a job.

Of course, there are always those few guys who do this stuff because they are passionate about it, and they end up presenting us with new ideas and experiences that keep raising the bar. I’ve seen teams of 2 or 3 guys making games in flash that feel really produced, and a lot of individuals are coming up with new game mechanics that are really creating a new niche for web-based gaming. With multiplayer games becoming more and more common in flash I think we’ll start seeing even more originality, and I would predict a few big success stories as well. I think the reason a lot of old school flash guys are so cynical is that they have paid a lot of dues, and only a few of us have truly been discovered by the mainstream industry. It doesn’t help that every 14 year old and his dog has flash these days and they are all cocky because they’ve had one game that was popular for a week or so, but they’ll soon realize they are just flavors of the week
This just in… PsychoGoldfish’s comments anger 14yr olds.
and start growing into their own just like we all did. As for economic gain… I would agree that animators tend to get shafted. And programmer can do a game all on their own, and people will play it even if the art sucks. But I think the teams that have a talented animator like Mindchamber, ultimately make a better product that has a longer life. We did Alloy together years ago, and I still get all sorts of traffic and feedback from that.

Q:

Well great, now that you’ve dissed a large portion of my traffic nobody will be left to read the rest of this… but while we are on the subject of diss…. a few months ago Webgame Magazine became the epicenter of the whole LordBling scandal. Now that time has passed do you have any further followup on what became of that?

A:

Not really. At the time I predicted nothing would really come out of that whole ordeal and that it would blow over. The only reason I even published the article was because I knew nobody would even know it happened otherwise. There’s a lot of politics involved in running big-time sites, and everyone involved kind of had to put their own opinions aside. I have the luxury of not being ‘big time’, so I didn’t really have any bridges to burn.

Q:

Ah the perks of being a nobody… but enough with soap opera-like questions…. a few flash devs have made the crossover from flash to mainstream gaming ie consoles. Do you see that as a possible evolution? Regardless of that, if you could have one game that you’ve made ported over to a console of your choice which console and game would it be and why?

A:

I think there is a definite possibility for that sort of transition, but only for the developers that are truly passionate about doing it. Tom Fulp has always been the poster child for passionate flash developers. He’s a huge gamer, and he has all these ideas about games HE wants to play.
Hopefully Tom never finds out that I plugged his game
That sort of passion is what gets the Alien Hominids of the world out there, and it’s actually far more important than the actual skill you need to program and draw a game. Programmers and artists are a dime a dozen… visionaries are a rare breed.
Personally, I don’t think any of my games warrant the transition. I make casual games that people can pick up and play with little learning curve, and can play for minutes or hours. I could certainly see these games as downloads ala X-Box Live Arcade, but I wouldn’t even try selling something that small on a store shelf. Now, that said, some of the stuff on the ol’ to-do list could find a home on a console. We have some big plans for Alloy, and a few interested parties, so you never know.

Q:

Cool, well I havent had a cliche question in awhile so here goes….. you’re one of the few developers that can make games and supply your own art if the need for it arises… do you prefer to do it yourself or do you prefer having someone else haggle with the art end of it? Seems like it would be an obvious answer for the latter… but some people find it more laborous to actually ‘manage’ someone else…

A:

Yeah it’s a very fine line and it all depends on the project and the partner. Some games you can just build without needing art, some art you can just do without a specific format. In those cases it’s not so bad because you can get your contributions done without pause. Where I tend to get frustrated is projects that require work from someone else or they can’t progress. I get to work on whatever I want all day long, but most of the people I work with have other responsibilities that limit how much they can do with me. So while I wait for that, I start something new to kill the time, then I become the guy who’s slowing things down.

I love doing solo projects. I’m a huge control freak, so when I envision something a certain way, it’s easy for me to just make it and be satisfied. Of course, my artistic skills are a bit limited in some areas, so the overall quality is never quite as good as it could be, and I put twice as many hours into the games as I would otherwise. But sometimes that’s what you gotta do. I think the best benefit of being able to do both sides of development is that when you are in a team, you have a much easier time communicating with your partners, and understanding their input and ideas. I love working with guys that can contribute to the idea pool because a lot of the time they will think of something kick ass that I just never would have thought of.

Q:

Alright final question, as a fellow alcohol enthusiast this is of particular interest to me… Do you have any more alcohol related games ‘brewing’ in the near future? (oh god that was such a lame play on words but im leaving it in.) Nobody makes it this far in the interview. Also what is your favorite beer?

A:

Let’s just say dr0kn day is coming up… May 24th-ish. There are at least a half dozen alcohol inspired concepts right now, and I expect at least one or 2 to come to life. My favorite beer is Rickard’s Red, but you can’t get that here in Colorado at all, so I’ve been getting by with Molson Canadian and keeping my inner hoser happy. I’d also like to make one last closing remark: (penis)

AMEN.