Every Frame x Lackadaisy - Interview with Tracy J. Butler & Fable Siegel

0:04 Hi, my name is Tony

0:06 and my name is Taylor and this is a fun little experiment.

0:09 Recently, Lindseay Nuller,

0:11 who runs the animation training company Eat Your Peas,

0:13 asked us if we'd like to interview the team from Lacadis.

0:16 And as fans, we of course said yes.

0:19 In the world of indie animation, They Are the Frontier.

0:21 For those who don't know, Lacadis started as a comic in 2006.

0:25 is about a group of cats, yes, cats, who run a speak easy in St.

0:30 Louis during prohibition.

0:31 In 2020, a Kickstarter to turn that comic

0:34 into a pilot broke its funding goal by 400%.

0:36 The pilot was released in 2023,

0:38 and they turned around and crowdfunded a series of five episodes on Backer Kit,

0:42 which raised $2 million.

0:43 Most recently, they have partnered with indie

0:45 animation studio Glitch to extend that series.

0:48 So, without further ado, please join us by the fire, Fable Seagull, and Tracy J.

0:54 Butler.

0:55 Hey.

0:55 Hi.

0:55 I could tell you the horrors of our business and business model.

0:59 How how to make a cartoon and not die.

1:01 Uh [laughter] how to survive.

1:03 How how to survive burnout for years and years

1:06 and years on a passion project where you're like,

1:08 I'm not quitting, but boy, do I ever want to lie down and sleep for a month.

1:14 In that spirit, I wanted to ask just very

1:16 simply about a sequence that Tracy you started a very

1:20 long time ago to my understanding and it is

1:22 uh three words for you which is old man river.

1:26 Yeah.

1:26 So I had to fight her on on getting that into the pilot.

1:29 I was like this is this is lacadasy to me

1:32 and I want this this pilot to start with a poem

1:36 just to like sort of like right off the bat

1:39 put off people who aren't going to like it anyway.

1:42 [laughter] Okay.

1:42 Okay, so Tracy, I have to ask

1:44 what inspired this poem?

1:45 Because when I initially saw Old Man River, I was like, "Oh,

1:47 is it going to be the song from like uh I think it's Showboat, but it's not.

1:50 It's uh I think it's an original poem.

1:52 So, can you explain it genesis?"

1:54 Yeah, I mean, I was I was looking

1:56 about the Mississippi River and things things like that.

1:58 And I I think Old Man River as a nickname.

2:00 It it just seemed like an odd name for for the river to me.

2:03 And and you know, at the same time,

2:04 I was writing this character who's very much this like like trouidor.

2:08 He thinks of himself like a warrior poet or something like that.

2:11 I'm like, I don't know.

2:12 These things just kind of came together and I am uh continually

2:17 like disappointed in my panel layout for the the original comic for this.

2:22 Uh but I I I think the uh the poem itself is is pretty okay.

2:26 I'm not a poet, but um Rocky is, so I'll blame it on him.

2:30 But um this is her excuse.

2:32 Like she she is in fact an incredible incredible with words.

2:35 remember for the pilot like we had the I was like, "Hey Tracy,

2:39 we need a poem for the uh for this dynamite

2:42 scene and we were coming up with ideas like

2:45 sitting there and then finally you were like I

2:47 just I just need like just give me a night."

2:49 Yeah, we needed uh we needed something Rocky to be saying something while

2:52 he was tossing dynamite around because heaven knows he can't shut his mouth.

2:55 So um [laughter] uh so we we yeah, we came up with another

3:00 poem for the pilot that that he does as well.

3:02 But I think uh yeah,

3:04 this one I feel like just kind of captures

3:06 almost more of Rocky than it does his environment.

3:09 More of his like very quicksotic, you know, uh perspective on things.

3:13 Looking back at this one,

3:14 cuz I hadn't seen this in a few years and I was checking it up again,

3:16 my my first sort of feeling about it was that it does capture his

3:21 Yes.

3:21 his his romanticized view of the thing and what it is that he does and all that.

3:23 I do have to ask all the research in this, I'm assuming,

3:26 is that like based on a real bridge, all this kind of stuff.

3:28 Oh, yeah.

3:29 Yeah, that's the East Bridge in St.

3:30 Louis.

3:30 I think it's been there since the mid mid late 1800s.

3:35 Yeah.

3:35 So it it was actually the symbol of St.

3:38 Louis before the arch.

3:40 Before the arch.

3:40 Yeah.

3:41 And and this was actually a architectural marvel at the time.

3:44 This this um it's still pretty cool.

3:46 Like if you go and check it out like you can walk it.

3:48 Yeah.

3:49 It's it's just a really cool place.

3:50 We actually went out there.

3:51 I had the some of the crew come out around the time

3:54 we started working on the season one material and we all

3:57 like toured and walked all through there and recorded some sound

4:01 on the inside when the the uh the metro runs through there.

4:05 There's like a rail.

4:07 So,

4:06 I'd love to just circle back to um

4:09 something that Fable brought up.

4:10 So, Lacadis is

4:13 a web comic.

4:14 It became a book.

4:16 It was a short film and now it's a series.

4:18 And those are all very distinct different animals.

4:21 Yeah, animals.

4:22 So, just taking this particular sequence,

4:25 the the the old man river sequence from web comic to short film.

4:31 Mhm.

4:31 What are you changing?

4:32 Like what are you keeping?

4:33 Why?

4:34 What are the what are those types of choices being made?

4:37 I think um in part you're considering the audience.

4:41 Uh you know, when you're doing a comic or a web comic,

4:44 your audience goes in expecting to do some reading

4:46 and that sort of thing along with the visuals.

4:49 Uh, with a cartoon, I feel like it's a much more accessible thing

4:52 and you get a maybe a much

4:53 younger audience that's maybe not into reading comics.

4:56 Um, I don't think you want to necessarily bombard them

4:59 with that much verbiage like right off right at the start.

5:02 Um, and that's what we decided we were going to do for better or worse.

5:05 And, you know, we had some of our board

5:06 artists and things going like, I don't know,

5:08 maybe you should cut the poem in half and like maybe maybe recly about this.

5:13 I I instead I want to find ways of making it even more interesting.

5:17 So, Fable wanted to do it and I was like, well,

5:18 I think it's a good intro to just kind

5:21 of explain Rocky's character a little bit and, you know,

5:24 we we got pretty far into into production and we looped

5:28 back around like if we're doing this home at the beginning,

5:32 um, we had already even recorded the audio for it.

5:34 We were just going to like kind of deal

5:36 with it matterofactly in the way that the the comic does.

5:40 There's no visual straightforward version, but

5:44 there's no visual abstraction, but but I decided like

5:47 if we're going to do this, we've got to the visuals have

5:49 to be have to keep people's interest if the poem isn't going to.

5:53 And so, um, I wanted the the visuals

5:55 to really match what was going on in the poem,

5:57 even if even if the poem was just like flying over people's heads

5:59 and they didn't understand what it meant or you know what it was,

6:01 at least the visuals would communicate what the same feel.

6:05 And the advantage of of starting like like taking a second

6:08 look at it like so late in the process of making

6:11 the pilot where sort of like the order of production really

6:14 had this bit being worked on the most towards the end.

6:18 We got really warmed up into the pilot though,

6:20 like working together and like our familiarity

6:23 with all the characters and like how

6:24 they speak and cadances and so taking a second look of it at it

6:28 and doing that like while you know as we were like more warmed

6:31 up and more familiar with everything and our cast was and our crew was.

6:35 Yeah.

6:35 when you're uh when you're like just starting on something like this and uh

6:40 like the first thing you produce is going

6:41 to be a little rough around the edges because you're just not used to your own

6:44 pipeline yet and um and but you know so doing it kind of later

6:48 in the in the production process I think

6:51 saved it from being more of a disaster [laughter]

6:54 um stronger basically that way.

6:56 So

6:58 like we had I think we had at least like three different recordings of the poem.

7:02 We did Michael uh Michael Kovatch was was

7:04 a good sport about recording this numerous times for us.

7:07 Uh

7:07 there's so many words he did not know.

7:09 He's like I don't know how to pronounce that.

7:10 So it's it's very funny when people ask him to riff

7:13 as Rocky or do poetry and he's like I'm [laughter] not the writer.

7:18 Definitely set him up for the process you just described is something

7:22 I've experienced on almost every show I've

7:24 cut animatics on which is basically we

7:26 start production and we're on episode 104.

7:28 Then we go 104 to like 113 and at the end we do 1, two, and three.

7:31 And then every time I watch like a Netflix

7:32 series and I'm like quality for the first

7:34 three episodes and quality on episode four

7:36 and I was like tell that was first production.

7:38 You can kind of tell did they start on episode one or did they loop back

7:42 around and do episode one after doing some

7:43 other mid-season stuff because you know you want

7:46 to put your best foot forward right at the starting gate and you just can't do

7:51 that when you're just learning your own you

7:53 know you're just getting used to the process.

7:54 everybody's getting a handle on the art style and the approach and everything

7:58 and so it helps to not do the first part of your thing first.

8:02 So, we wanted to make sure that we got, you know,

8:05 we captured people with at least the visuals if nothing else.

8:08 And and the poem would come and be an extra,

8:11 you know, bonus if if they were sitting there actually deciphering,

8:14 trying to decipher what Rocky was even talking about here,

8:16 which in which he's just basically complaining about

8:20 the the name of the river being Old Man River.

8:23 [laughter] He's like, "Oh, man River.

8:25 What a crappy name.

8:26 You don't deserve that name.

8:27 You're way more interesting than that." What what considerations were you taking

8:30 into account with regards to like Old Man River is from the comic,

8:34 but then the next sort of section like the rest of it is

8:37 to some degree like a standalone thing

8:39 that is completely outside the like non-cononical.

8:42 There are bits from the comic sprinkled in throughout,

8:45 but the entire rest like what considerations did you take into when you're like,

8:48 "Oh, it's 22 minutes long and it's going to be all new," right?

8:51 Yeah.

8:51 So, we we knew that probably most of the people who would be

8:54 watching it hadn't would not have seen or read the comic at all.

8:58 Um, and so we wanted to make sure that we,

9:01 you know, explained some things up front.

9:04 It's, as Fablet often puts,

9:05 it's like the sampler platter of what Lack of Daisy is.

9:08 It was never meant.

9:09 It's not a traditional pilot episode.

9:11 It's it's really a way of wetting your whistle on the story so

9:14 that you're interested enough to ask questions

9:16 and want more and maybe seek it out.

9:19 Yeah,

9:19 this was interesting.

9:20 You mentioned that this was it differed from a traditional

9:23 pilot and it was more of a samp sampler platter.

9:26 Sorry, I can say words.

9:28 What would you considered a traditional pilot and how that functions

9:31 versus what this is and how this was how this functions?

9:35 Traditional pilot is uh is an episode one usually, you know,

9:39 um where you're going to continue a a story afterwards.

9:42 And this certainly could have done that, but we kind of like breathlessly

9:46 introduced all of these characters and this character

9:49 conflict without really explaining it anything.

9:51 And and so we felt like we had to kind of just like encapsulate all of that,

9:56 the time and place and and the characters and their conflict

9:59 and kind of like get that all in one thing.

10:01 And so that was kind of what we were writing.

10:02 Um, it was also like adapting from the comic,

10:06 like if we had done like a straightforward adaptation of the comic,

10:10 that would have encountered some issues where namely

10:12 like some major antagonists aren't really introduced inside

10:16 of like those first few chapters for it

10:18 to like establish what the greater conflict was.

10:22 Uh, so we had to write something that was wholly original

10:25 that would kind of get to the point a little quicker where okay,

10:28 we have those the two main forces like that are

10:32 the most active typically in the narrative like coming

10:35 together and and really showing those off and showing

10:38 like examples of what to expect from the wider story.

10:41 So, car chase sequences, poetry, music, uh,

10:45 saraphene, like blasting that bar and giggling like

10:48 Yeah, we really wanted to capture being a bit a bit[ __] you know, with the

10:52 right.

10:52 all all of those elements of like the jazz music,

10:55 the confluence of of that, the the rum running

10:57 and and al bootlegging and and the gangster conflict and kind

11:02 of get and and Rocky's bizarre theater kid behavior

11:06 [laughter] and get and kind of get that all like, you know, it's kind of like

11:10 like implosions, you know,

11:12 all all those things like take a while to build up in the original narrative.

11:16 And we basically had to present them like

11:18 as as quickly as possible and as organically as possible.

11:22 And so it required like its own unique script.

11:26 But I did just want to ask one

11:27 last sort of general question about this whole section.

11:29 We worked in animation.

11:30 She's worked animator.

11:31 I've worked as an animatic editor.

11:33 And one thing that we always try to explain

11:35 to people like outside the medium is the on a good

11:38 production the additive nature of animation in the sense

11:43 that the classic word we all use is plus.

11:45 Like are you plusing up the scene?

11:46 Are you plusing us in every way, shape or form?

11:48 the idea that the department adds on to what

11:50 the previous department did and so on and so forth.

11:52 So I'm just curious for this opening section because we have the comic

11:56 to actually compare it to um

11:57 the things that's striking me immediately the background

12:00 the moon which scaled up approximately 900 times from its comic version and also

12:06 the effects and I'm super curious at what stage was the violin added.

12:10 We I think we started even talking about like should this maybe be a song

12:13 instead of a poem and and it was like it doesn't really work as a song.

12:17 So if we're going to do a song, we got to write something else.

12:18 And so so we were like, well, how do we bridge those two things?

12:22 And like really like Rocky's so like musician

12:24 is is really the at the core of him.

12:26 Like artist is really at the core of him.

12:28 And he he's basically a jazz musician trying to be a gangster.

12:32 Uh because his circumstances violin is kind of like

12:36 the expression of spirit and soul for him.

12:39 Um it's core to his character.

12:41 You know, it's something you can do when you

12:43 have this audiovisisual medium that you can't really do.

12:46 Like I could draw him with a violet.

12:47 There's fun analogies, too.

12:48 I mean, it's like it's all Hey didd,

12:51 the cat and the fiddle, you know, the cow jumped over the moon.

12:54 You got all that going on there.

12:55 So, it's it's it's just it's what it adds to the appeal basically.

13:01 It felt like um a certain kind of like iconography that that felt familiar

13:06 even though we're using in a context that that doesn't match up with anything.

13:10 But yeah, cat like a grinning cat with a fiddle and the moon and everything.

13:13 I was just like, "Yeah,

13:14 that's just that that seems like the right thing here." So,

13:16 we we wanted to establish like the theme of the moon very early on because like

13:21 Rocky himself is very crescent shapes is is

13:24 is a very dominant part of his shape language.

13:27 The other thing that's going on here is

13:28 that since most of it is a chase sequence,

13:31 we need to have a way of like creating a landmark.

13:35 So like the opening sequence very firmly drives

13:38 the idea that there's this bridge where they're

13:41 starting off in the distance is the city

13:43 in the direction of the city is the moon.

13:46 You see the moon over and over and over and over again here right over the city.

13:50 So as the car chase sequence is happening we're

13:53 both trying to keep the screen direction really firm where

13:56 you have a sense of okay he's going over

13:58 here and then as they're chasing he's going over here.

14:01 The the challenge with uh this kind of stuff

14:03 is like keeping screen direction clear so that you

14:05 always know where the characters are going when they

14:08 have a firm direction that they need to head towards.

14:11 Yeah.

14:12 I'm not sure how how many people would

14:14 have like consciously paid attention to that, but hopefully

14:16 I haven't seen anybody pick up on it yet,

14:18 but it's funny what gets understood in the subconscious every now and then.

14:23 Yeah.

14:24 Yeah.

14:24 someone really hones in on something you were

14:26 really trying to communicate and un in an unspoken

14:29 way and and it's like yes that was that's

14:31 exactly what we were going for and that's really

14:32 you might notice I don't know if anybody's

14:34 noticed this but if you rewind and that scene

14:37 where you see the bridge Rocky is super

14:39 distracted with his poetry nonsense a car drives by

14:44 Oh yes no I know exactly the scene that you're talking about

14:46 he has failed at his job to be the lookout

14:49 Ivy was right he should have been paying attention he would have told him Hey,

14:53 a car just drove by, guys.

14:55 Maybe we should like pick it up or something.

14:58 Any visual detail in this, like it's all very deliberate.

15:02 Like

15:02 I mean, I think I think more than any any medium maybe like every every

15:06 little thing going on in in the frame is is very very deliberate in animation.

15:11 Like you have to pre-plan everything so meticulously.

15:16 Um because it's all artificial.

15:17 Like there's there's nothing that's in there by accident.

15:19 It's like the editing happens editing happens before the the work goes in.

15:24 Whereas, you know, with film making generally,

15:26 you you make you film it and then edit.

15:28 Um, you know, or you you

15:29 unless you're storyboard and film and then you edit.

15:31 Okay.

15:32 Well, [laughter] you do it the other way.

15:32 Okay.

15:33 So, you make it more like an animator would make it then, you know.

15:36 Yeah.

15:36 But that's the job.

15:37 Like at the end of the day, that's the job.

15:39 You are telling a story.

15:40 Telling a story is about knowing when to reveal information like when and where.

15:45 And then as directors and when you are making stuff visually,

15:49 where do you direct people's attention?

15:52 And how do you reveal that information?

15:53 And where do you what sounds are you using?

15:56 What cues are you using?

15:58 How are you situating people into the story?

16:01 Whether it's extremely obvious,

16:03 like literally a character saying something or it's

16:06 as subtle as the moon is here.

16:09 Use that as your visual landmark

16:12 and it all build like that's like that's the job.

16:15 Also, I would say like the other thing that just strikes me as always

16:17 whenever like working on this is the degree to which if you work on animation,

16:21 you could be working on the same scene for like a year.

16:24 So, if you're going to work like on that for a year,

16:25 you're going to think about it a lot.

16:27 Um, I met Phil Nibbling once.

16:29 He was the director of Five Goes West,

16:31 but he did the shot in Great Mouse Detective where Ratigan runs up the clocks

16:38 and he he

16:38 Oh, that was fantastic.

16:40 I was like we we pulled a lot from that early

16:43 Xerox era Disney for like a lot of visual inspiration.

16:46 You know, Great Mouse Detective did amazing work with early CG.

16:50 Just amazing work.

16:51 It it laid the groundwork for the Renaissance of the 90s really.

16:56 So

16:56 he would appreciate hearing that because he told

16:58 me he was just like that one scene

17:00 of Ratigan running up the clocks that was a year and a month of my life.

17:04 Well, among animators at least, it's it's a well-known scene.

17:07 Like I think actually while we were working on production,

17:10 we we went and watched a few different animated films that had inspired us.

17:14 We went and watched that again.

17:15 And and yeah, I mean that whole clock,

17:17 the whole Big Ben sequence is is really just stunning.

17:20 And um

17:21 still impressive, honestly.

17:22 Like nobody's like floating around or anything.

17:26 It's composited together like really solidly.

17:28 the tone of everything.

17:30 It's still foroding and honestly really

17:33 it was a better integration of 3D than a lot of like movies that came after

17:36 did where it was like the disparity between

17:38 the art style was just a little bit jarring.

17:41 This it wasn't.

17:42 I feel like one of the things that he would say is

17:44 like the fact that it was so it took so long just

17:46 to print the paper that had the stupid 3D asset on it

17:49 that it was just like we better get this dumb thing right.

17:52 And so I I do think that's another thing where it's like

17:54 oh my god is this like it's going to take forever to do.

17:56 Yeah.

17:56 You do get that kind of that feeling.

17:58 is like, "Oh, this has to work because I've I've it's

18:00 sucking cost fallacy [laughter] at a certain point." Because you're like,

18:04 "This better work because I've spent too much time." [laughter]

18:07 Yep.

18:07 Those of us who grew up on those like darker 90s,

18:11 late '8s animated features where things got a little grim compared to, I think,

18:16 modern cartoons that try to keep everything very positive.

18:19 And Cats Don't Dance.

18:23 Yeah.

18:23 Well, I mean, Cats don't dance.

18:24 It actually has kind of grim if you think about it.

18:27 It does have some dark moments.

18:28 It definitely has.

18:29 It has that

18:30 Darla Duckle is a great villain.

18:32 I like

18:32 she is she's amazing.

18:33 It has that Sunset Boulevard like undertone to it like with uh Yeah.

18:39 Um name is like Max.

18:41 Yeah.

18:42 Yeah.

18:43 It seems like it's an illusion direct illusion to to Sunset Boulevard actually.

18:47 Um but yeah.

18:48 No, I mean like is Secret of Nim and and um

18:51 you know uh like the rescuers and stuff where it's like child

18:55 kidnapping and child abduction and and smart rat people murdering each

18:59 other with swords and you know [laughter] and the politics of that.

19:03 Yeah.

19:03 And it's like so grungy and it's got so much texture

19:05 and depth that that like you know we really wanted to

19:08 grittier because it's literally visually grittier

19:11 and so that's what we're going for.

19:12 So, I mean, yeah, I mean, there's aesthetic,

19:14 like we just like to draw that way, but it's also a deliberate choice.

19:18 I'm going to segue into a couple other set of questions,

19:22 and that is what does a a day look like

19:26 when you clock in to for a virtual another?

19:30 We're we're pretty much uh we Fable and I throughout the production on the pilot

19:35 and every other short thing we've done and and on this on season one and things,

19:38 we basically are in a voice chat channel all day long every day.

19:43 Um kind of just like even if we're working

19:45 on our own thing and just quietly have our heads down,

19:47 we're there because the crew will pop

19:49 in and and out uh needing notes and direction.

19:52 It's a way of kind of expressing in a virtual environment,

19:55 my office door is open.

19:56 And then if I want to say my office door is closed,

19:58 I just deen myself or or I could pop off.

20:01 But yeah.

20:03 Yeah.

20:03 Or Fable and I are scheming together about, you know,

20:05 how we're going to handle this or that thing creatively or, you know,

20:09 or we're having midnight therapy sessions and going like,

20:11 "Oh god, the weight of everything comes crashing down." Yeah.

20:16 Well, there's definitely been enough turmoil in the world and stuff that we've,

20:20 you know, done our fair share of.

20:21 Um,

20:22 yeah, it's it's impacted us same as other people.

20:24 Like, we're we're aware.

20:25 But,

20:26 but we uh, you know, we have our meetings in in those voice channels.

20:28 We'll share our screens and be like, you know,

20:31 sometimes the notes are happening real time or it's like, you know,

20:34 just drawing over somebody's uh, work and sometimes people would just be,

20:38 you know, doing notes and then handing them out later on.

20:41 A big reason why we were able to do

20:43 this is that a lot of things came together that made

20:46 it possible like Tomb Boom being industry standard uh software

20:50 at a price point that we could get licenses for everybody.

20:53 Discord being like a communication tool so

20:56 we could talk to people constantly show work

21:01 file management software where I could say have a Dropbox and put a bunch

21:05 of files on there and then we could share those giant files with other people.

21:09 But we were able to achieve something akin to the studio environment

21:12 by working inside of Discord and and people

21:15 talking together and sharing their work.

21:17 It it really built a sense of camaraderie and also

21:20 you understood your shot in the context of other people's shots.

21:23 So it helped people like think of their work as being part

21:28 of a greater hole instead of I just got to get this one thing done.

21:31 Do you do dailies?

21:32 We did do um multiples a week meetings where it was kind of like dailies,

21:38 but we asked them to like uh by the end

21:41 of the day if you could just post where things are at, right?

21:44 So even if somebody didn't have any progress on their shot, they would just say,

21:46 "Haven't gotten to this one yet." And and so

21:49 every shot would have its own thread, you know, in in the Discord chat.

21:53 The uh production manager could go in and check each one and see, you know,

21:56 oh god, another horror story.

21:57 Originally, we didn't have a production manager because

22:00 since scope got bigger and eventually it was like

22:04 nobody else is gonna see the faces that we just pulled.

22:07 Our immediate reaction to that was like, "Oh, no." Because we've been there.

22:10 We've been there.

22:11 We've been there.

22:12 We've done that.

22:13 We've done that problem.

22:14 Yeah.

22:15 We uh everybody was wearing all the hats and uh

22:18 Fable in particular was was chasing down, you know,

22:22 animators going like, "Where's your shot?

22:23 Where's your shot?

22:24 They got deadline for this.

22:25 Where's this?

22:26 Where's that?" And it's like the director can't be doing that every single day.

22:29 And and to be empathetic, it's like again,

22:31 he hide co every all all these people are going

22:34 through it and you're trying to like track down the shot

22:38 and make sure that they're turning stuff in and if they

22:41 can't like that somebody else is able to pick it up.

22:46 Yeah.

22:44 And um is like hurting cats and

22:50 Yeah.

22:49 exhausting.

22:49 Just very exhausting.

22:51 So, uh, yeah, I came I came from the game

22:53 industry where we've been through this kind of, you know, production management.

22:57 If it goes ary, everything goes ary and, uh,

23:00 or if it just isn't there, you know, it's it's always a management problem.

23:03 Um, and so we went to to Spike, who was then our executive producer, uh,

23:08 at Iron Circus, and, um, we're like, we need to hire somebody to help Fable.

23:12 Uh, there's just no way Fable can continue doing all of this and directing.

23:17 And um

23:18 it's [laughter] going to get done and it's going

23:19 to be[ __] amazing because it's going to supply all

23:22 we learned we learned you know the hard way just

23:25 how important that infrastructure is and you like we didn't

23:28 go in not knowing that management and you know accounting

23:31 and and all this other stuff needed to be done.

23:34 We just thought I'll do it.

23:36 Yeah.

23:37 [laughter] you think you can do it

23:39 and also I'll be the art director and also I'll paint backgrounds

23:41 and also I'll do all the character design and also you know it's like

23:44 we're so appreciative like the people who became inspired

23:48 by the project and they were like I I want to be

23:50 a part of that sincerely not just because it looks good

23:52 on my resume but because I I want to see this get

23:55 made I think it's pretty cool and they're they're endeared

23:58 to it and it feels really good to work with people who

24:02 are all kind of pulling in the same direction so like

24:04 even as things get hard which it does it inevitably gets difficult.

24:08 Like it's that's kind of the job is that it's constant problem solving.

24:12 You at least can trust that everybody is trying to get there.

24:15 Like they're trying to get this made.

24:16 They're trying to make sure that things are secure and stable and eventually

24:20 people get to see this thing and and you get to enjoy it too.

24:24 This is the sort of storytime experience at least for us.

24:27 We're sort of curious if if you folks had this experience.

24:29 So basically I forget 2017 we got reached out to and more

24:32 or less was like hey you've been doing this thing on YouTube.

24:34 Do you want to do essentially a version of it for Netflix?

24:36 And we were like, "Sure." We went into it and our, you know,

24:39 initial reaction to it was,

24:40 "Well, it's a two-person process,

24:42 so now we have the resources and they'll give us more people.

24:44 So what we'll do is we'll think, okay, the two person process,

24:47 let's find a way to scale it up to like 40, 45 people."

24:50 Oh, boy.

24:50 Yeah.

24:51 We we basically started for like the small go up.

24:53 So basically, if we don't need a person,

24:55 we don't add them to the crew, you know, we'll just take care of it.

24:57 We

24:58 very quickly learned that was the incorrect

25:00 trial by fire on that one.

25:01 Like

25:01 genu.

25:02 Basically, our our uh we hired our producer

25:05 who we have multiple times said to him,

25:08 "We don't know where we would be without you." Um [laughter]

25:12 basically was like, "Hey, I know you guys worked in studios.

25:16 Instead of taking a twoperson process and trying to scale

25:19 it up to what it's going to need to be,

25:21 why don't you take that 300 person process

25:23 you guys already know and scale it down?" And we were like,

25:27 that was significantly smarter advice.

25:29 No matter how many how many times I've done this to myself,

25:32 and I've I've done it on in the game industry,

25:35 I've done it in working on a comic, I've done it on this project with animation,

25:39 I always way overestimate how much energy and and I'm going

25:43 to be able to put into something and and like you just,

25:46 you know, I was like, "Oh,

25:47 I can juggle that and I can juggle that and yeah, just give that task to me.

25:49 I'll do that." And and then, you know,

25:51 then you end up having a kind of a mini breakdown because you're like, "Oh, no."

25:55 Yeah.

25:55 It's like the the energy that you are used to expending

25:58 on things like this when you are working on team projects.

26:02 You're you're used to like just doing your part and so like throwing

26:06 that much of yourself in there is not wise in the first place,

26:10 but it's more doable because you're responsible for your chunk.

26:14 But the more you end up in like these management positions,

26:17 if you start behaving that way, there's two problems.

26:20 One, stuff will slip and it will be your fault.

26:23 And that means that bottleneck for other people.

26:26 Yeah.

26:26 Yeah.

26:27 And the other problem is that uh inevitably

26:29 people will look to you as like an example

26:31 of how to behave and they'll do the same

26:33 thing and then you'll see them do the same thing.

26:35 YOU'RE LIKE, "NO, DON'T do that." And you're like,

26:38 "I'll do this to myself because I'm a bad example." Right?

26:42 It's like, "Oh, Fabel and Tracy are working on the weekend.

26:44 Should I be working on the weekend?" And we're like, "No, no, no, no." And

26:48 that that's it's the definition of basically what it means to be a leader.

26:51 Like that's the thing like if you model if you do the things

26:54 even if you go like don't do what I'm doing they will

26:57 do it as I say as I do and but they but they'll

27:00 be like oh but they're but I see them doing it anyway.

27:03 You set the pace basically.

27:05 Yeah.

27:05 The the current cultural culture of like hustle grind mindset

27:09 that kind of thing where you have like CEOs going, "Yeah, I hardly ever sleep.

27:12 I get up at like 5:00 a.m.

27:13 and then I don't go to bed until like 2 a.m." What

27:16 they're communicating is they expect their employees to behave the same way.

27:20 And that's actually not good because after 40 hours in a week,

27:25 you're really not going to get that much work out of any given artist.

27:27 Like the more you ask out of them,

27:29 like the more hours you tell them to pour into something.

27:32 What you're doing is you're just creating

27:34 a situation where it's the same amount of work,

27:36 but just stretched out longer with more mistakes.

27:40 I would also argue that it harms the ability

27:44 to move forward as artists because you need downtime.

27:48 Not even just downtime, but we made a episode about Chuck Jones and he talked

27:54 about where he found inspiration from and he said from everywhere.

27:58 He reads [clears throat] all these books.

27:59 He goes to opera.

28:00 He does this.

28:01 And that's where ideas come from.

28:03 And if you don't have any time to do that, art.

28:07 Yeah.

28:09 I appreciate what you guys do actually because

28:11 it's it's always a a good like sit down and and look at what somebody's taken

28:16 out of that downtime and expressing to their audience.

28:20 Here's what I learned from this.

28:22 like I enjoy examining like your observations and like also

28:25 I I just appreciate the art form of communication in general.

28:29 So it's like it's a different genre,

28:31 but you guys are doing a good job of kind of like feeding folks

28:34 like us having us realize yes if you put in the effort someone will notice.

28:39 Yeah.

28:39 So what you're saying, yeah,

28:40 it's like if you art comes from in some ways it's a mirror

28:44 or reflection or a abstraction

28:45 of your lived experience or interpretation of that.

28:48 And so if you aren't living, you aren't going out and having relationships

28:51 and adventures and seeing things and doing things, then

28:54 what are you going to draw from then?

28:58 Did you ever see that that interview with Amiyazaki where he was talking to a uh

29:03 Oh, he's talking to a bunch of animators.

29:05 He's like and he for Spirited Away and he's like,

29:06 "Have you ever seen like a snake drop from a tree?" And they're like, "No,

29:10 I know." Very specifically, he's like,

29:11 it was the scene where she has to Shahiro has to feed

29:14 Haku the the the medicine and he doesn't want to eat it.

29:16 And he's like, it's like when you have your dog sick and you have

29:18 to shove your arm in there and just stick the food past the pal.

29:20 Have you ever had to rustle a chicken?

29:22 Yeah.

29:23 And he's genuinely just like, "Does anyone has anyone here ever had a pet

29:26 dog and you just see all these young animators like,

29:27 no, he's just like, "What's the point?" [laughter]

29:31 But yeah, like those that's where you draw those those things from.

29:37 And if you're if you're just constantly

29:39 burning yourself out and you're constantly working,

29:41 I'm not saying like, oh, you're you're ruining yourself.

29:44 I'm or you're limiting what you can bring to the art.

29:46 Yeah.

29:47 You're feeding yourself.

29:48 You're starving yourself.

29:49 Like you're only hurting yourself.

29:52 Yeah.

29:52 You're only hurting yourself in the long run.

29:54 We um a lot of the people that we hired on the production

29:57 were uh former or even sometimes

30:00 current Warriors Cats multi-animator pro project animators.

30:04 like they had been doing like cool animated

30:07 projects with like other kids for like years.

30:10 And so they were very used to animating cats and observing cat

30:15 body language and behavior and you know they love to draw cats.

30:20 They they love their own cats.

30:21 And so when you asked them, hey,

30:23 work on this project with all these cat characters,

30:25 you didn't have to explain cat body

30:28 language to them because they they just inherited.

30:30 For some people though, we did have to.

30:31 And that was almost surprising like, oh, you don't you don't know cats.

30:34 Oh, okay.

30:34 So, you understand their tails don't work like a dog tail.

30:37 It's it's way more prehensile and and like trying to explain all the the ways

30:41 a cattail does things and what it means and stuff and and their ears,

30:45 but their ears do like why the fur goes a certain way.

30:47 And so, the the the feline nature of the characters

30:51 becomes another way of expressing them.

30:52 It's like their thought bubble effectively.

30:54 And and you you hire people who are who know that.

30:58 And so this is another way in which like

31:00 your lived experience really really matters to your job.

31:04 It's not that it was a requirement that we understand adds it.

31:11 It always adds it doesn't subtract like go

31:13 out and do things like you got to pull

31:15 from something and you never know what's going to what

31:18 what's going to like follow you through your job.

31:20 This is so important that the major studios pay for their employees to do this.

31:25 Yes.

31:25 the just if you go back and you look at the the money that Disney

31:29 spends on sending their crew to wherever to look at the stuff and to see

31:34 or bringing animals in for them to draw.

31:36 It's that it's that sort of like you know

31:37 you get stuck whether it's writing or drawing or something.

31:40 It's like just take a walk just like

31:42 walk away from your workstation for a minute even

31:44 if it's just for an hour and then come

31:45 back with a different perspective on everything or rejuvenate

31:48 stuff like that is one reason why I

31:51 take your weekend off you know for crying out loud.

31:54 I it's like stuff like that is one reason why it's like I'm super in favor

31:57 of like public spaces where people can just

31:59 appreciate something without having to burn money on it.

32:02 But that was also one of the big challenges of working

32:05 on this uh during the height of COVID because we couldn't get out.

32:09 We couldn't get out of our homes is like what were you going to do?

32:13 Like in a way like the project was keeping us sane just

32:15 because there was something to focus on other than your own misery.

32:18 Just listening to people talk was often like my way of of kind

32:23 of dealing just like what their problems were and gaining some

32:26 perspective on like what everybody was going through and and realizing how

32:30 much we all shared in common no matter where we were living.

32:34 A lot of um animation production is like

32:37 you know cloistered off like one one team is very separate from another

32:40 like your voice actors generally don't ever

32:42 meet the animators and things like that

32:44 backgrounds and animators don't meet storyboarders

32:46 because we had this like virtual social space like everybody was

32:50 just hanging out with everybody and you could peek in at what

32:52 other people were doing like the voice actors could like look

32:55 at the character designs they could look at the animation roughs

32:57 and they could just go like oh that's awesome you know

32:59 and it's just like it was very um uplifting and it

33:03 it created the sense of camaraderie I think that a lot

33:06 of maybe productions don't have when you just don't really have that

33:10 social connection to all these people like there's the people you maybe are

33:13 working with in the direct office space near you or cubicles near you but

33:16 I think [laughter] I think in our our business like a lot of the fear that oh

33:20 well this information will get out or whatever anything

33:22 like that like really runs counter to a lot

33:25 of the spirit of media like this where

33:27 the collaborative nature is just so essential and like

33:30 the more you kind of open up areas

33:32 where people and at least observe from each other.

33:36 There there's like so much benefit to that because it ends

33:38 up inspiring them in a way that they wouldn't have otherwise taken.

33:41 Like they see someone else's shot, they're like,

33:43 "I have an idea now for how to handle this.

33:45 I really love what you did there.

33:47 I want to take that quirk,

33:48 bring it into my own work." I actually had to early on, I didn't

33:53 realize that people would do this, but early on I had to tell people,

33:55 "Do not animate on ones.

33:57 Everybody else will try to animate on ones to keep up with you.

34:00 You will make cleanup cry.

34:02 It will be a nightmare for so many people because you got ambitious.

34:06 Don't do it.

34:06 There's plenty of work to do.

34:08 Don't like blow all your energy on this one show.

34:10 The young young artists, they come in full of enthusiasm.

34:13 Like that was why you had to tell them

34:15 not to animate on ones because they want to flex.

34:17 They really Yeah.

34:18 Like you No, you're going to destroy yourself.

34:21 [laughter] Like please.

34:23 It It's the Husky team that wants to just go.

34:26 Yeah.

34:26 What you don't want to do is injure them and and burn them out and, you know,

34:31 make them cynical and uh I want to keep working with them 10 years from now.

34:36 You know, I I can't do that if I hurt people.

34:41 Yeah.

34:41 I I actually want to tag on to that because

34:42 the thing I keep thinking about is the sort of is it institutional knowledge?

34:46 Son of a[ __] [laughter] Way too long.

34:49 We we talk about this all the time.

34:51 Fear is the loss of institutional knowledge.

34:54 Well, your your greatest fear has unfortunately come to pass.

34:56 Yeah, it's it's I think it's a constant like chorus among us.

34:59 The idea that institutional knowledge gets dropped

35:02 because the expensive animator who's, you know,

35:04 a lead or a supervisor is absolutely amazing and has 25 plus years

35:07 of experience is more expensive than

35:09 a couple of juniors that who just graduated.

35:11 Yeah.

35:11 And and some bean counter is just like, oh, well,

35:13 this guy's more expensive, so we can just get rid of him.

35:15 It's like, no, that guy saves you money.

35:18 You're training up the other people to become like two of those guys.

35:22 It's hard it's hard to imagine a scenario

35:24 where you have like nine old men again.

35:26 Like they just they don't stick around that long because

35:28 of the ramp up and ramp down cycle that everything goes through.

35:31 You see uh a lot of studios just kind

35:33 of like just dumping crews and dumping entire projects

35:36 and not planning long term for the business because

35:39 everything is about make number go up for next quarter.

35:42 Yeah.

35:42 It's a cycle.

35:43 They they hire you on as a contractor.

35:45 you're only there for a short period

35:46 of time and then you're done and then everybody

35:49 goes away and then they maybe ramp up with a whole new crew for the next thing.

35:53 And sometimes like it doesn't matter how much work you get.

35:56 You had to constantly prove yourself over and over again just to get the job.

35:59 But sometimes like in the studio space the only people who were paying attention

36:03 to what I was doing was maybe like the line producer and the director.

36:06 And then if they didn't like really remember you past that point,

36:09 then the job didn't like go and get you more

36:11 work and you found yourself struggling to get the next thing.

36:14 And this, you know, cycling through two, three, four more jobs a year.

36:19 It was rough.

36:21 And eventually I was like,

36:23 the people who were respecting my work and kept coming back

36:26 to me for work were often clients of mine who sought me out,

36:30 you know, seeking individual custom work.

36:33 clearly like they they liked my work and what I had to offer.

36:37 Maybe I need to start viewing my processes less like I'm doing the studio

36:43 work and then in between I'm taking commissions and clients and stuff and more

36:47 view it as I'm taking commissions and clients and then in between that I'm

36:51 I sometimes I get studio work because that was just the reality I was living.

36:55 Yeah.

36:55 I think it's a microcosm version of like

36:58 why this indie animation thing is happening right now.

37:00 Why there's such the animation boom is

37:02 this has been the experience of so many people.

37:04 There's no avenue through which you can succeed and actually

37:08 get a job that moves you up into you know there's no ladder anymore bigger.

37:11 Yeah.

37:11 There's no ladder on contract work and and then sometimes it dries up for a long

37:17 period and you're struggling and struggling

37:18 and struggling and sometimes it it's okay

37:20 but it's kind of a go nowhere thing right now and so everybody's just like well

37:24 I might as well just do my own thing that I've been wanting to do anyway.

37:27 Um, yeah.

37:28 If I'm going to be poor, I might as well be poor and make art,

37:30 then just be poor and do nothing, you know?

37:34 At least like I can put like this this energy and furer to some purpose.

37:39 Uh, even if it's for nothing other than distraction,

37:41 like at least it's something.

37:43 It's It's better than nothing.

37:44 Um, well, it's experience and it is at least doing the art

37:48 that you came in passionate about and no one's giving

37:51 you as much money as you deserve to to do it

37:53 and to apply your trade and to exercise all those like unique skills you have.

37:58 But and there's like I mean there's some romantic notions to indie stuff,

38:02 but I mean the reality of indie is that it's you

38:05 know a three-year-old making like a flip book that that's indie too.

38:08 I think it's great that it's happening,

38:11 but I think it's a symptom of a broader problem

38:15 in just the way capitalism is doing us all dirty right now.

38:18 [laughter] So, it's just it it's another in a long line of the cycle of boom

38:23 and bust studios where you have an alignment of just bad decisions being made.

38:28 And right now, we have situations where the heads

38:31 of these companies just don't care what we make.

38:34 like the fact that they could take a hot entire

38:36 movie and even if it's rated really well and it

38:38 doesn't matter who's attached um it doesn't matter the accolades

38:42 anything and just dump it all in the toilet

38:45 for a tax write off like it it doesn't matter

38:47 to them it doesn't matter what the projects we're making

38:49 how they do we get punished uh regardless like animation

38:53 industry carried a lot of the entertainment industry uh in Hollywood

38:57 I know um Pixar Pixar came out with the inside out

39:01 too and then that was like the biggest grossing at the time,

39:05 you know, animated film ever.

39:07 Yeah.

39:08 And then the show does poorly, you get fired

39:10 and and then everybody got laid off like, you know, like their reward.

39:14 You do amazing, you get laid off.

39:16 There's there's no there's no like correct thing where you can just

39:21 do your job better and you'll keep there's no like work hard,

39:24 get good at what you do, and that will ensure or almost guarantee

39:28 that you progress in your career any longer.

39:30 And that that seems really fundamentally broken about everything.

39:33 If all I'm doing is a job that makes number

39:35 go up and I get penalized no matter what I'm delivering,

39:39 like at what point do you break and go, "Fuck it." You obviously don't want me.

39:45 If you're looking to outsource my work to uh not even just like very

39:50 poorly paid people in like another country where you can like hide labor abuses,

39:54 but a robot that does nothing more than spit out slop for folks.

39:59 Like if that's what you think my work looks like,

40:01 then why am I doing it for you?

40:03 Like what am I doing here?

40:05 Why am I fighting to please you when you don't appreciate

40:07 it in the first place and and attempt to justify something?

40:10 Yeah.

40:10 And the fact is is that a lot of us feel that way eventually at some point.

40:14 And that's what you're starting to kind of see is that they start

40:17 splintering off and they reform around each

40:20 other and start building things from there.

40:22 Because I like working with the people I work with.

40:25 If the guy upstairs doesn't respect that I'm the reason why he has his yacht,

40:29 then I'm gonna make the yacht happen for my friends or health care or, you know,

40:34 a home and a family or something.

40:36 Probably won't be a yacht.

40:37 Maybe a rowboat with a trolling motor on it, but

40:41 yeah, we're going to go out on our pontoon and go fishing.

40:44 That's a lot more fun than a yacht.

40:47 I know it's going to sound so basic,

40:49 but what art is at at the end of the day is communication between people.

40:54 And it's that desire.

40:55 Writing a story or making a comic or a show

40:59 or a movie is all about how do I talk to another person?

41:04 And then it's translating that to like how do you build a community?

41:07 How do you build a show?

41:09 How do you build a company?

41:11 It's all about how do I effectively communicate to the person next to me.

41:17 And it has become really good experience for writing lacadas.

41:20 That's for sure.

41:22 Yeah.

41:22 I I was gonna say you you and I have have

41:24 made the comment to I think we we made it we

41:26 were giving a talk at like NYU like four days ago

41:28 and like literally we were thinking about this when talking to them.

41:30 We were like this distance Mhm.

41:34 is simultaneously the shortest distance you will

41:37 ever have to travel and the furthest.

41:39 This is getting idea from here to here so hard will take the rest of my life.

41:47 Yeah.

41:47 [clears throat] Yeah.

41:48 it it's such a puzzle and and it's only

41:51 by the imperfect nature of that puzzle that you get

41:54 a more interesting experience than if you were able

41:57 to like just literally take word to picture and that's it.

42:01 I mean yeah I mean if you could just spoon feed everything you were thinking

42:04 and feeling and to other people like I think that would be a less interesting

42:09 it would be less messy maybe but that's a pitch for a Black Mirror

42:12 episode frankly as far [laughter] as I'm concerned.

42:15 Yeah.

42:14 Yeah.

42:14 It's it's like like too literal.

42:16 that's too perfectly too streamlined that the messiness I think

42:20 is where the art is because you put something out

42:23 there and it conjures different emotions and feelings and other

42:26 people and it it like provokes other sensory recollections and things

42:31 and other people in ways that you can't predict

42:33 and you can't control and then then they like give us

42:36 that feedback that to us is like what what

42:39 their experience was and that's really cool that we've communicated something.

42:43 Sometimes you don't always know quite what it is you have communicated,

42:46 but like if part of it gets through, that's cool.

42:48 And even if like you miss fire and they don't get it at all, there's something

42:53 in the attack.

42:54 It's one reason I'm not threatened by machine learning and like gen

42:58 AI is not a threat to me and what I do because

43:02 it kind of misunderstands what the role of the artist is.

43:06 It's not about how many fingers there are,

43:07 how perfectly you sculpt the nose or whatever.

43:10 I mean like that you look at any human art and there's

43:12 going to be that kind of[ __] up stuff all the time.

43:14 So that's not the point.

43:16 The trouble is it's never going to surprise you.

43:19 In fact, it's designed to not surprise you.

43:22 It's designed to deliver you exactly what the median

43:26 version of that description is going to be.

43:31 What is the understanding according to this data set and how heavily

43:34 weighted like this or that tag is of what thing look like.

43:39 So, by its nature, it's going to bring

43:43 up like the same things over and over again.

43:45 It's going to be the perfect average of a thing.

43:47 But art is not about the perfect average.

43:50 Even if you were to summarize all my work and like make

43:52 a a do a genai machine based off my work alone and then you say,

43:57 "Okay, print fable work," it's still not me.

44:00 And not because of some spiritual sense of what art is or not.

44:05 It's just by virtue of the fact that each new piece

44:07 I do is always a step beyond where I was before.

44:11 And the same can't be said of a machine because by its nature, it's a machine.

44:15 It's supposed to have regular output.

44:16 A human does not.

44:18 You can't replace artists.

44:20 You you just can't because you're you're talking

44:22 about taking the human out of human work.

44:25 And human is inherently the imperfection.

44:28 and perfect artwork where everything is

44:31 like perfectly rendered and everything everything is

44:33 as expected is also extremely boring for all

44:36 the people out there who are getting

44:37 despondent over like machines taking over art and you know oh what's the point

44:41 of doing this or that it's like well the point was you all along

44:45 nobody else can make your art maybe you could sit there and be envious

44:48 of someone's else's work but your work is yours and all those imperfections are

44:52 what makes it you and you can work on those things you can head

44:56 in a direction um you can make choices that a machine cannot and will not.

45:01 But those imperfections or are what make it art.

45:04 I'd also say perfection doesn't exist anyway because people

45:08 like you cannot communicate per anything perfectly no matter what.

45:11 Even Jenna will not you become the 100% artist.

45:14 Congratulations, you win.

45:16 But the thing is and this is true I think like

45:18 you can do your level best to be as clear and perfect.

45:23 Say the perfect thing.

45:24 put it in make sure the machine makes it

45:26 the perfect and somebody will still misinterpret it and that's

45:30 kind of the point.

45:32 Yeah.

45:32 Also, it's really funny.

45:33 I Okay, so here's my my final question.

45:35 I think it's it's kind of tied into what was just said.

45:39 I think that one of the things we're currently

45:41 living through is the feeling that people have that hey,

45:43 there's a difference between this stuff

45:45 that's just randomly generated or perhaps

45:46 fed to me algorithmically and something that is made with intention.

45:51 The person or people who made this had a goal in mind.

45:54 they were aiming for something and collectively together everybody was kind

45:57 of pointing in the same direction and the thing that is

46:00 always the hardest thing to do is to try and every

46:02 day get up and and be like you know okay what is

46:05 our intention what are we trying to do what is what is

46:07 that kind of thing so I suppose as sort of a final

46:09 question um I'm super curious to ask what was your intention

46:12 then and how has that intention changed from then till now

46:16 I've been saying that like I'm selfish in that I

46:18 want to see more cool cartoons so anything that helps

46:21 forward that because Just having grown up and just having

46:26 a really hard time as a kid and cartoons inspired me.

46:30 What got me really invested in this medium and making

46:33 that like my mission was reading those the making of books,

46:38 the people who made the movies that I cared about,

46:41 like who they were and what their thought process was

46:43 when they were making these things and the stories involved.

46:46 And I was like, "These are really cool people." And I, you know,

46:49 I feel really alone out here reading these stories

46:51 about people coming together and making these movies.

46:54 And despite all the challenges and including like how different they were,

46:59 they were able to make stuff that like

47:00 really touched people's hearts and touched me.

47:02 And I was like, I want to be a part of that.

47:05 I think that this is a space where people who are like kind of unique and really

47:12 dedicated just find a way to take who they are and really put it in their art.

47:16 And it's the collaboration is what draws me to it.

47:20 It It's nice to have people know your name,

47:22 but all it really means to me is like the ability

47:25 to once again go out and do more cool projects with cool people.

47:28 And I think it's it's way way cooler and more awesome to just have

47:32 known like so many people and get to see where they're going from there.

47:36 I I think if nothing else, even if everything comes collapsing down in my head,

47:40 I can say there was a space for a time where these these animators like

47:46 so young had an island to stand

47:49 on while like the tsunami was raging around them.

47:52 the opportunity to just help each other like help build

47:56 that sense of community that I think so many people are missing.

48:00 It's like what what is this feeling where all

48:02 of us are so deeply depressed and anxious and scared?

48:06 It's it's the worry that nobody's going to be there

48:10 to back you up and that you can't help anybody either.

48:13 But for all those like fellow millennials

48:16 out there where you're struggling like you

48:17 you're the adult now and you can be that person for somebody out there.

48:21 like you do have something to offer.

48:23 Uh, and for the kids out there, you can make it.

48:26 It's only by working together that we were really able to get this far.

48:30 This, if this was just me and Tracy, it would have gotten this far.

48:34 As hard Yeah.

48:34 As hard as it's been at at points, um,

48:37 it's been uniquely rewarding in so many other ways that uh,

48:41 it's been entirely worth it.

48:42 like no regrets at all about any of the extreme anxiety

48:47 and stress and everything and the exhaustion that is and the expense.

48:51 Um, and those experiences taught me that I can survive that stuff too.

48:57 Yeah, it's uh it's definitely made us stronger and but maybe

49:00 more importantly wiser about how to avoid those situations.

49:04 But um but yeah, just like generally being

49:06 able to be part of a movement that maybe

49:10 just makes things better for artists in general

49:12 has been like the best part of it.

49:14 And if nothing else, if it's if it's at at least it's just like um

49:19 a brief resppite in the middle of everything like you know, good.

49:23 Yeah.

49:23 I don't know if it'll last or like the the indie

49:26 movement as as it were like is is going to be

49:30 maybe it'll help just fix some things with the industry

49:32 at some point or it'll it'll cause like a reconfiguration.

49:36 Glitch has been doing amazing stuff and

49:40 you know it's kind of become a big prominent

49:42 you know vis in in the in the animation

49:44 scene and they're getting things done in ways

49:46 that are different from how things have been done before.

49:49 That's, you know, some pioneering stuff that I

49:52 hope does change things for the better ultimately.

49:55 Um, I'm super curious to ask in the context of, you know, it's 2006, Tracy.

50:00 You set out to to draw this for the first time.

50:03 What was your intention then and how

50:04 has that intention changed from then till now?

50:07 Um, it was a very it was very uh solopyistic, I think, at the time.

50:12 Like I was working in the game industry.

50:14 I've mentioned that numerous times now, I know,

50:16 but it was such a very formative thing for me because uh

50:19 I started out as a hands-on artist and then I kind of moved

50:22 into more of a art lead position and I ended up just

50:26 making art bibles and um delegating

50:29 tasks and scheduling things and interviewing,

50:32 you know, uh employee potent potential candidates and things like that.

50:36 and I wasn't doing so much of the hands-on work and I was going

50:38 a little nuts in that way because I didn't really want to ever be a manager,

50:42 but I just kind of that fell in my lap.

50:44 In the nighttime hours, I decided, well, I'm just going to use that to do

50:48 something creative that I need to that something

50:50 needs to come out of my brain and threw my hands onto the paper.

50:53 So, I I had this lifelong obsession with animation.

50:57 When I think of a story,

50:59 it it is animated in my head and but I couldn't do that on my own.

51:02 there was no like way I could conceive of to just animate.

51:07 If I was going to animate something,

51:08 it would have to be very short snippets and I had this like burgeoning world

51:12 and and you know all these characters talking in my head and stuff and so

51:15 I wanted to get that out as a story and the way you can

51:17 do that as like a solo artist really most effectively I feel is is comics.

51:21 I didn't really know anything about comics at the time.

51:23 I had drawn them like you know for silly

51:25 purposes here and there but didn't really take it seriously.

51:28 So that was my first like serious um foray into that.

51:32 That's why that's why I did it as a comic,

51:34 even though it was like an animation in my head.

51:36 Um, I just didn't have the resources or the knowledge or the, you know,

51:40 funding or the software to to make an animated thing.

51:44 And then, you know, I I got to a point with the comic

51:47 where it was doing okay enough and Patreon came out and I was like,

51:51 hm, can I leave my job and make this my job?

51:55 And I took that leap and it it worked out.

51:58 And I think it's probably largely owing to Patreon being new

52:02 and people hadn't just tone like tuned out mentions of here's my Patreon.

52:06 It was novel at the time.

52:07 Like it has been a life-changing thing

52:08 and I'm so so thankful to the the patrons.

52:11 But was like all about my own artistic fulfillment.

52:14 And then and then it became this group

52:16 thing like Fable mentioned suddenly was it 2019

52:19 somewhere around there you said something about needing

52:22 to fix your computer and and buy a tablet.

52:25 I was desperate.

52:26 [laughter] I was like, I am doomed.

52:28 And I was like, there's like crowdfunding options now.

52:31 To boom is available.

52:33 There's ways to do the animation thing that I was thinking of doing.

52:37 And maybe I'll just like go out on a limb and and reach out

52:40 to Fable and and that exploded into this whole

52:44 project where we then ran a Kickstarter.

52:46 We're like we started talking about it, you know,

52:48 we put that pitch together and yeah, that's not going to get us anywhere.

52:50 And it kind of became a challenge of like,

52:52 well, we're going to make it ourselves then.

52:54 And so we got Spike involved and we we ran that Kickstarter and it

52:58 did way better than we thought it would and we're like, "Oh yeah,

53:00 now we're going to do the thing." And as as we started

53:03 like accumulating more and more team members and more people around it,

53:06 it's it's become much more of a a team thing.

53:10 I wanted to succeed not for my own gratification

53:14 and not because I'm like a martyr or anything,

53:16 but because like the almost the more important

53:18 thing became the way that other artists can

53:22 can start their careers in this like kind

53:24 of horrible timeline that we find ourselves in.

53:27 And it's like a way for Fable to have

53:30 this career that they deserve and this career trajectory even though

53:34 so kind of you.

53:35 I'm trying to earn the career,

53:36 but I'm not I don't I don't want to think of myself as deserving the career.

53:40 But I've seen you and so many other artists get pushed by the wayside

53:45 when you have spent just like you've dedicated yourselves to this craft.

53:49 Like it means something to me on a level

53:51 that I'm going to actually get a little teary

53:52 about to be able to like do a project

53:56 that can mean like advancement for other people, other artists.

54:01 So yeah, it has like changed from like just being so totally selfish

54:05 to being selfish but also like something bigger than me and my own,

54:11 you know, ambitions.

54:12 So yeah, that has like that's been life-changing.