Talking Burnout, Making Art With Drinkbox's Gabby DaRienzo

on GDC podcast episode 6 we've got artist designer marketer and brazen overachiever Gabi dari Enzo I almost messed that up of drink box studios to talk art creativity deaf and more also stay tuned for exciting GDC 20/20 news including our state of the industry report and help us find out where Alyssa went back in a sec [Music] hey everybody this is Chris a graft editor-in-chief of Gamasutra and I am here with not Elissa Macklin I'm here with Alex Alex can you introduce yourself hi I'm Alex I'm not Elissa

McAloon but for today at least I'll do my best that's too much information mmm so we're just gonna leave it there so Elissa isn't here Alex were privy to her whereabouts aren't we yeah I think she's at lunch no she is in a high noise situation oh right yeah yeah that sounds rough it's being recited hmmm yeah it's you can't really do that when there's hammers just burying themselves into the side of your building you can't really podcast yeah I'm good if it was like the This Old House podcast I mean well if she could be podcasting than water what are we doing here I would much rather hear her side of the story let's rather hear podcast from deep within the bunker that is Alyssa macaroons yeah apartment yeah just the hammering and the jackhammering yes

scraping all the ambient sounds of a house being sighted that's Gigi see you next year GDC 2020 that's the segue you mentioned GDC GDC 2020 is coming up that's taking place March 16th to 20th registration is open at GT conf calm that's like it's a now two podcasts away one podcast away yeah man how you feeling about it I feel like she's gonna be pretty solid this year we just pronounced the desk drawer handing talk we got a bunch of other cool stuff coming up I'm like I'm starting to warm up to this year's a smorgasbord of content on offer yeah you've really been using the word smorgasbord a lot like lately and I approve I'm Swedish I don't realize that was the Swedish thing yeah I'm very us centric here mm-hmm yeah and it's not only any desu [ __ ]

Talk it's hideo kojima he's gonna be talking about the game where you deliver the packages about strands about strand games my connection how to express that through game design it's gonna be a banger i tell you what so don't miss it it's also gonna be about death which is what we're gonna talk about kind of in this podcast too will mention death we won't dwell on it I mean we might I don't know about 40 minutes into every podcast if you're a frequent listener you know that things get super existential really yes listen to any of the podcast yeah that's okay anyway there's also going to be a talk about the level design of outer wilds oh right yeah that's really cool okay man I gained something else it is something else there's also the the goose game that's gonna be there's gonna be talk on the goose game oh yeah so something I didn't know it I'd love anybody listening knows this when you go check out our talk on the level design summit about untitled cues game it's about how

they scouted the locations using like film scouting techniques it's really fascinating I can't wait to see it yeah I wonder if they brought a goose to these scouting locations and just kind of let it do at once and they probably got a goose to do the scouting honestly who would know better yeah does the goose like this farm area mmm honk once for yes twice in my experience geese don't really like anything yeah they don't it's true also we did announce the nominees for the game developers Choice Awards oh right yeah yeah death stranding is leading that and then there's also the finalists for the independent Games Festival Awards and you can see all those on I guess I don't have the I have the URL in front of me but I'm not going to read it out no but you can google it's more fun it's a game to go find it for yourself it is oh yes

no so nuts to no promises we do have a guest oh now that we got all the morning announcements she's lurking in the background currently as of now currently she is the art director of the Toronto based drink box studios which you might know from guacamelee is one of the games they did she was previously art director and co-founder of laundry bear games where she worked on the IGA AGF finalists morticians tail death her credits also include super crush ko Park attacked and the wonderful Celeste she has spoken at GDC in the past and is also speaking this year at GDC 2020 2019 for be under 30 that's awesome and and she's an

advocate for and she's a helpful voice within the game deaf community she's a kind of a just a really supportive person and advocate it's great so let's please welcome Gabby darienne's oh hey Gabby hey thanks for having me yeah thanks for joining us you are unmute a second ago because I think your cat was having a conniption yeah he's still still meowing so if you hear any kind of like high-pitched Mews that's about the high-pitched news here on the podcast so can you can you tell us a little bit about your background in art and just as an artist in general sure my background is actually in graphic design that's what I studied in school so I kind of like tangentially got into video games after I graduated

school I started working on the marketing team for a local game studio here in Toronto which is where I'm from and when I was working on the marketing team for a little bit eventually they moved me over to the the game side so doing art and UI UX design for the game side of the team and around that time I also started to get more involved with the indie scene both here in Toronto and also just online starting to go to events and stuff and taught myself how to use unity and start teaching myself how to make my own games and how to do 3d modeling and blah blah blah blah hey you know I started getting a lot of people who reached out asking me to do some freelance work for them so I left my full-time job at that studio and started freelancing and freelance for like four and a half years yeah and got to work on some really cool projects like Celeste and Park attacked and like you mentioned and also within that four and a half years I co-founded my own studio laundry where games which is a studio like that of my partner Andrew

Carvalho we got to make morticians tale which is like my baby and so we made that together and then yeah I guess back last September so like four months ago however long it's been people at drink box offered me a job yeah and that's like I've wanted to work with them for so long because they work on such cool projects I'm such a huge fan of guacamelee and severed which are also really big games about death that's like a topic I'm very into and so they reached out they offered me a job and so I'm working with them now which is really exciting so that's kind of my background and how I got to games and we're gonna hit like every single one of those things that you talked about yeah let's do it now let's let's start with being an art director at drink box I'm not an art director at drink box I'm just like a a senior artist okay sorry senior artist yeah well we like to give promotions away here nice on the podcast

that's official me yeah so what does it mean to be a senior like artists there yeah so the art direction are the art team at drink boxes only like four people and so I it's really exciting to be a part of them for the longest time while I was freelancing and even at Laundry bear I was often the art director on a bunch of different projects or not even art director but only like the sole artist on a lot of projects and so it's been a while since I've gone to work with the team that's like over two people and so working with drink box is really fun because I obviously am a big fan of their games I'm a big fan of their their artwork and so being able to work with other artists especially like an existing art director who's been doing art direction for their games for years is really exciting zai gets to kind of you know take a step back from art direction and really learn from them and I've already only been a few months and I get to learn so much from them and so it's been a really really really really good experience and it's great too because one of my biggest fears about taking the job with them was like oh I'm

going from being an art director to being just like you know like a regular artist and am I gonna hate that is that gonna am I not gonna be able to make decisions and stuff but the folks that drink box are so lovely and my experiences are taken so seriously and they listen to me a lot and I get to make a lot of decisions so yeah it's really it's really cool yeah so I think the term senior artists maybe is a bit confusing to some people but basically I get to do a lot of art and UI and marketing and just a whole bunch of stuff at drink box that's kind of what my role is now yeah I actually this is I'm so curious I was talking about this with someone else recently this weekend and all of you can speak to this but you just joined and sounds like you're really enjoying and feeling comfortable there and learning a lot can you speak to the onboarding process and what words like to join up with a with an established studio after sort of doing your own thing for so long I talked a lot of devs who are either really excited or really really nervous about joining a big studio after them working on their own for a while and I never really know what to tell them because I've never done it myself so I'm

curious like what was the experience like for you yeah it definitely was a little bit nerve-wracking especially going from working at like a two-person studio and freelancing on a lot of really small teams right what the Celeste team was only like six people and super crash is only like three or four people like it's very very small and so drink box is about 13 people which isn't drastically bigger but it is you know like they have their own processes and they have you know an existing team making existing games so it was a bit nerve-wracking but it was quite smooth right they're really good about their they they're really really organized and have a really good production pilot pipeline so coming into the onto the team it was like you know they showed me their tools they got me on board onto the art I'm pretty one of my favorite things to do the reason why I love working in indie games especially is I really love stylized art and kind of adapting to other people's styles and so the games were working on right now have two new

styles that I'm not super working used to working on and I'm really really really excited to be able to like make art for them and adapt to them and yeah I don't know it's been a was pretty smooth is basically what I'm trying to say that was a long answer it was a pretty smooth onboarding process and yeah we didn't didn't take very long for me to feel very comfortable and I think probably the weirdest thing is like having a schedule and routine again because when you're freelancing for so long it's like oh yeah I can I can wake up whenever I want and I can like work out of a coffee shop you know like you get very used to running your own schedule and doing your own thing and when you work at a studio you know they have their their own like 8:00 to 4:00 and 9:00 to 5:00 and you're like oh yeah okay I got it I got to be there on a certain time and get things done which is a probably a good thing I think it I think it really is I thrive underneath schedules and so it's kinda nice to have that again after so many years of not having that I think a lot of creative people are like that which is what kind of want to talk about

it's interesting you went from full-time studio and then you did freelance for a number of years and then now you're going back can you tell me what it was like you know that life as an artist that is taking contract work what are some of the ways that you put for people who are out there here either trying to break into freelancing or current freelancers you want to stay freelancers and even those freelancers who want to maybe pivot into full-time can you talk about your experiences as a freelancer what are some of the ways that you survive for that kind of life and and how did you end up leverage that leveraging that into a full-time position yeah I think the biggest thing is all people don't think about this when they want to do freelance but it's like 20% just admin and accounting right you're not just doing 100% of the time doing fun art or

design or programming or writing or whatever it is that you're doing freelance it's like you have to you're basically running a business and so a lot of your time is spent responding to emails and doing accounting but it's also things like self marketing um you know like putting yourself out there on social media going to events making sure your portfolio is always stocked with pieces and if you have a slow period with work making sure that you use that time to find more work or fill your portfolio with pieces that will help you get more work it's like it's a lot of that kind of stuff and I think if you are a person who is maybe not keen on that then freelancing might not be might not be a thing you're interested in doing but I love that stuff I love marketing in love I love running business this is like one of the things I enjoyed about running laundry prayer as well and so for me it was like a lot of that kind of stuff and so I think a lot of it too is like networking I hate the term networking it feels really business professional and that seems likes to contrast what we do in games but essentially just like making friends

you know going to events and being social on the internet and just making friends and then when people are like oh you know we need an extra artist on a thing or we need to hire someone to do a logo they think of you and that's like how I got a lot of my work when I was freelancing that's how I started working once it became friends the Celeste developers long long long time ago when they're working on towerfall and so when they were looking for another artist they were like oh yeah Gaby let's just hire her and so I think anybody who's interested in freelancing that's like a big thing I recommend it's just like you know making friends just getting friendly and you don't have to like go to events and shove business records of people necessarily yeah like I advise against that probably but like you know just making friends and I'm putting yourself out there and like goes a long way if you have to think you're comfortable with doing and then I think just like the experience of making so much art both professionally like both from freelance products and also just on the side doing my own thing that helped

really build up my portfolio and you know it's full of a lot of really impressive games and impressive pieces that really really helped me get this job at drink box and I think would help I think that that was a big thing that late yeah what probably helped a lot of artists if they're looking to exit freelance life is just you know building up your portfolio and the do you think that in particularly like the indie deaf community and this is why I respect you know what you're doing it like when I was internet stalking you for research for this I like one of the you know you're known as an artist but I think like one of the first if not the first result from you was a video of a talk that you gave at an indie conference about marketing about a mortician steel about niche marketing yeah yeah that was

for full indie cement I think two years ago last year which is like an event based in Vancouver and that's like not a thing that like I do professionally like I would never you know choose to work somewhere as like a market or a per se or a freelance marketing like I don't think that is the thing that I am best at and or want to do full-time but I think a lot of it comes from like my background in graphic design and marketing and like then my first job was in marketing for games as well it kind of just like it in greens things in you that you can't help but think about and when you are self marketing yourself as a freelancer but also you know running your own business and making your own indie games I think that's a huge part of it isn't something that people don't really think about is marketing yourself and I know we listen to when our episodes was it Hannah Flynn yeah from yeah I listen to that today about marketing and like I was just nodding my head using vigorously like yes yes great and a lot

of the stuff that she told us about marketing for Hannah Flynn as a marketing director at fail better games they did sunless skies for people we don't know but one of the things that the good marketers with successful games they say market early time tell us a little bit about that how you do that with a mortician stay off yeah so morticians tale was a game that I started thinking about back in like 2015 and it was just like an idea and I you know this is subject matter that's like very close to me and I think I'm really interested in and so I remember right from the beginning when I started to prototype things you know started to share it on the internet and share it with people and started to get some kind of interest in traction and your feet sorry no no you're a funeral director in this game right oh yes sorry I guess I should explain what the game is sure yeah so for anybody who hasn't played a mortician stale it is a three-day narrow

driven game where you play as a mortician running a funeral home it sounds really like gloomy and doomy but it's actually quite soft and like very very sensitive and brightly colored and you know you kind of it's it's very short but you kind of go through the story of the funeral home and how it evolves over time and you also get to see kind of the stories between each of the different the bodies you take care of we released that back in like 2017 and it won a bunch of awards and was nominated for an IG F award I did at GDC talked about it it was a really really cool thing to see people excited about this game and so yeah the I started prototyping morticians tail back in 2015 and yeah basically as soon as people started getting interested in it it was like okay yeah this is like a real thing that we should actually do and as soon as my my co-founder and I decided to make it our thing like a think we're gonna make that's when I started to

think about marketing and that seems like really early for a lot of people a lot of people when you say that to them they're like really right at the beginning that's so early though and also for a game that is so nation so small and so indie like that seems like a really good thing to think about but I think it's such an important thing to kind of consider when you're doing your market research is also like okay well you know how are we going to talk about this game what is our audience how are we going to reach them and that was a thing that we didn't have the budget or the capabilities of hiring someone to do this for us and so I did it myself it was you know I did all the marketing and all the social media we went to events ourselves we got a little bit of help at the very very very end like a month before we launched the game just with PR stuff just like getting someone who has more experience with that to help us reach out to people that we didn't have contacts for but yeah 95% of the marketing was was me and I think that that's like you know a big thing I bring to a big thing I'm excited to bring as well to to drink box as well as like you

know I started working with them and he started doing art with them and then they were also like oh you have a bit of a marketing experience and I was like I sure do so it's kind of fun to be able to bring that to them as well and it's a big like fun part of being in an indie developer as opposed to working triple-a is like being able to wear multiple hats and really enjoying that process nice I think also there's a certain amount of place from the devs I speak to who move talk about you know starting in our projects early if you commit to marketing yourself and thinking about your demographics and getting the word out there and announcing your project almost you know from that first month then you commit to finishing the project and that's harder for some people yeah that's that's totally fair yet so kind of segwaying back to the artist side of you mm-hmm kind of a general question but I'm curious what is like a good productive day for you as someone who makes art what does that look like let's

see that's an interesting question definitely like the way I like to start my day is I don't know that everybody does those but I like doing it is I get to my desk at work I like make a tea and then I have a bunch of websites I go through only for like 5 or 10 minutes like it's a very very short part of my day and I just like look through inspiration and even if that inspiration is not like directly tied to the games were making it's just kind of a good way to fill yourself with creative inspiration but also kind of just like see what's out there and kind of like slowly but surely pick up on trends whether it not even just like from games and game art it's also things like I look at architecture blogs I look at graphic design blogs and like packaging design and like you know like painting and 3d modeling and things that are not really related to what we're doing and it's just like a really good way fashion blah blah blah I don't

know it's a kinda like a good way to start my day and like it helps me feel super inspired and also helps me get motivated to be productive and it's also it's like yeah like I said like a good way to kind of keep on top of trends and and kind of get some ideas for making some interesting game art and so I think they're like a good productive state day for me starts with that and if I don't get that in I find that like yeah I don't do as well it's nice to kind of be surrounded by that stuff yeah and then yeah being able to just like go into work and again I think having a team of people of other artists is has been so excellent for my my mental health especially as an artist it's just like having people that you can kind of bounce ideas off of and just kind of brainstorm things with is is really nice and it's been a while since I've had other artists to do that with professionally yes and freelances like in whatever discipline you're and it's kind of a solo thing a lot of the time isn't it yeah and you know I have other

collaborators I work with and on super crash I had I get art like a little bit of an art team like a small art teams that was great that I get to like half of the people I could talk to about things but largely especially as an art director right you're you're kind of a lot of the pressure falls onto you to kind of make those decisions and so often times it was like oh god I don't have anybody to talk to you about this and so having a team that I can talk to you about these things is really nice it's really really good to be able to be like I'm thinking about this what do you guys think and you have people to be like yes or no about things it's good so I mean we asked about how you just I heard and we should ask do you have any trouble ending your day and do you have any ways in which you sort of work through the process of leaving your work at work and sort of moving on and going home that's a good question I think that something that I used to be really bad about especially freelancing and I think a lot of freelancers have this problem oh there's a cat hello sorry just jumped into my lap when I was

freelancing I had a big problem with working too much and this is gonna be a big thing I talk about in my GDC talk which is about like burnout and create a blog but when I especially when I first started freelance it was almost like a badge of honor to work too hard you know like oh I worked so hard today that I forgot to eat some meals or I worked so hard today I didn't look at the clock and now it's 11 p.m. and I remember like feeling so proud of myself for like I worked really hard today and having it in like that like years of doing that kind of slowly burns you out and also kind of ruins your work-life balance because you get home and you're like all the grocery stores are closed I guess I'll just eat whatever or you're like oh well you have a hard time like decompressing and getting to bed because you're still thinking about work because even working all day and have to get up and like six hours to get back at it again and like I don't know he's been really bad about that and I know a lot of people a lot of like not even just artists but also programmers and writers and designers

who are just as bad about that kind of stuff and I think certainly working at a studio that has like a rigorous nine-to-five makes that a lot easier because it's like okay well I have to get this work done and at 5:00 p.m. you know we all got to leave the office and it's like okay it's a good way for me to like yeah a good excuse for me to walk home and watch a podcast and like just yeah I like just kind of stop thinking about the the work you've been doing and then like you know get home and don't jump on other projects which I used to do a lot sorry I cut you off what's up no no no I'm cutting you off sorry I'm just saying because everything that you're describing right now like you know I I freelance did contract writing for you know for game business sites for like four and a half years or five years or something I don't know a single person who freelances anything that has good work-life balance or had good work-life balance while they were

freelancing right because it is just a thing where you're at home you never leave work and you find excuses and reasons to keep on going or you know like what what you are saying it's like you also have that badge of honor thing going on which is twisted so once I yeah you know but I think that's very encouraging that drink box is a studio that says you know five o'clock and and that's it I think that's how places should be because otherwise you know people can say oh we don't force you know crunch we don't force crunch but they also don't have management that tells people go home now or you're over hours now you have to go home and that's the kind I mean that's s management support is what you have that's great yes 100% that's Mike yeah a big thing that drink box seems to be very aware of and very good about and it's excellent its yeah it seems like

everybody there has really really good work-life balance and that's something that I really appreciate in general but also for everybody else I work with and as like a studio setting an example for other studios it's really important yeah should be standard across everywhere but you know what's it's like a bigger issue like was burnout then while we're on this topic now you know I guess I guess I'm wondering how you would recognize that in yourself in that moment because you said that you were burnt out for like a year or you were just like had creative block or I'm wondering what are the signs were you able to look back that back at that retrospectively and say these were signs that I couldn't recognize in the moment oh yeah 100% it's it's really easy for me to look back at now and be like oh yeah that that is a sign but at the time no idea

and like I think a lot of it was you know like so just to kind of give some context I'll talk about this a little bit in my GDC talk but I'm happy to talk about it now just to kind of give some context but basically after I after we shipped a morticians tale which was a very personal game we worked on a really really hard for long time I got really I felt like super burnt out and just like unmotivated and I think a lot of that wasn't to do with the project but it was because I was doing art direction on to new projects so one of them was super crush Keo and one of them is a project I was working off my studio laundry bear and I think art directing on to game projects pretty much like more than full-time because I was splitting like seven days not five days um I think a that's a lot of work to be doing but be you're kind of you're shifting your brain around so much right because you're doing it isn't like you're like there's an existing art style that you're hitting and you're like okay these three days I'm gonna do

3d art these two days I'm gonna do 2d art it isn't like that it's more like okay I have to think of and be in the creative headspace and concept art for one game and come up with ideas for one game and do the same thing but completely different on another side and that's I think creative work I think any work in general you there's only so much you can do before you get burnt out but I think especially creative work whether it's art or writing or whatever just like thinking of concepts for games even I think is especially tiring to like have two contacts which constantly yeah and I think that burn me out and it wasn't you know the people I was working with the team behind super Qashqai oh and also my co-founder neither of them were pushing me to do this this was just entirely self-imposed and I think a lot of it was like I was getting very in hindsight it's very clear I was getting very frustrated and just was making a lot of really bad decisions and I think a lot of it was I felt the pressure to like I have to get it right I don't have time to to concept and think of ideas I

just have to get it right immediately and we know that that's not the way that anything works there's the you know games especially are very iterative process they changed so much they evolved so much over the development and I think setting up this expectation to get it perfect the first time not realistic and I think I was pushing myself to do it not just for one game but two games and that really like messed me up because I was like if I don't get it right if this art isn't completely unique then these games won't sell and these companies will go under and blah blah that sounds really like that sounds so bizarre and so like huge but that's kind of a lot I mean I talk to a lot of game developers that's kind of how they feel and I think a lot of it is just like the indie space in general is you know it's very there's a lot going on right now and I think a lot of people are just kind of panicking so that panic on top of thinking about art also you know working on two things at once and just coming off of a game that was very personal I think they just kind of all added up to this burnout and I think a

lot of the signs in general are things like yeah just feeling really frustrated feeling really unmotivated I just like didn't want to I didn't want to work on these games at all and I was really excited and you know in my head space I was very excited about these two projects but like when it came down to sitting down and doing the work I just didn't want to do it I just could not push myself to do it and it's also things like I got really defensive I was very defensive about my own art or something that I'm embarrassed it bears to talk about and bears to admit but I think it's important to kind of speak about because I see a lot of other artists go through the same thing where you know I was very defensive about like you know my co-founder would be like oh I think this art would be good might be like what like what's wrong with my art or like on super crush I would make a really weird decision and mobians Vickery who's the lead designer and the programmer and like that the owner of vertex bob who makes super crush he you know he would

feel like oh here's a critique of a thing and I would get very defensive about it and that's like a very clear sign if you're a person who you think that you might be burning like burnt out or you know someone who might be burnt out and that's a huge sign is someone just getting very very defensive about the work that they're doing right and I think a lot of it too was just like it was bleeding into my personal life as well like I was getting really I was too exhausted all the time and like just so stressed and having a really hard time decompressing like it's just I think burnout I don't I don't mean to like go on and on about this because it's pretty sad yeah it's such a big deal and I think it's it's something you know when we think about burnout when we hear the term burnout especially in games we often think about you know triple a big studios forcing their their employees to work we think about I think about like rock star that marketing pitch where they were that article that was like oh yeah our employees are working hundreds of hours to get ready at done

like that's what you think about when you hear burnout but I think a lot of people especially indie devs we really have to consider that a lot of it is self-imposed right where we're putting it on ourselves without even realizing it and I think was a GC that did I think the state at the industry report yeah right I think you guys we talked about that earlier about this one of the thing yeah one of the things that was mentioned in there was like was talking about crunch and burnout and if you feel I think the ID camera but the exact according was but it was something about like why you feel the need to crunch and very very small amount of it was like someone's forcing me to and the very very large amount was either like its self-imposed like I feel like I need to or I wear it as a badge of honor like I think a lot I mean that's not entirely indeed EPS I could be triple a dad's too right I know a lot of indie devs like just like either they don't notice that they're doing it or they do it because they think it's like you know you can't be Indian less you work 16-hour days and that's just not true and they're right and there's so much more I mean you've talked about it but like it is what you

face in triple-a and then some because so often you are the whole company you are I mean the foot the you know you live or die based on how what your game sells and so like absolutely it is a culture of rife with overwork and with pressure to overwork do you think there's anything you could have done differently during the period you were burning out to sort of avert that or stave it off I I just really think there are some things in hindsight that I could have done sooner luckily I was able to kind of I think I think the Burnett lasted way too long and that that kind of sucks in hindsight I feel like I wasted a lot of time but there were some things that I was able to kind of do and get support in that really helped and that kind of helped me overcome my burnout I think my only regret is I didn't do them or didn't know about them sooner and again this is a big thing I'll talk a lot about my GDC talk but a few of the things were things like you know admitting that I needed help and admitting that I wasn't feeling like motivated or excited to work on

things right and I think as soon as you're able to admit like I'm not having fun doing this your colleagues your co-workers whatever you're working with can kind of help you you know like it's not I don't have too much pride to ask for help or wait I do have too much pride I don't it's very easy for me to ask for help and so you know and that was a big thing to happen on super crash was mo I get in the designer the programmer he saw that I was really like frustrated and getting defensive and kind of struggling with coming up with art and this was pretty early on in the development of super crash and so and he was like okay you know what take like a couple of weeks and just walk away from this don't try to and be hate what we're doing here just kind of like come up with what you like just just kind of do what you want like do your own thing and come up with an art that you want to come up with the context here is that I was having a really hard time coming up with a style for the game and it was like it wasn't bad necessarily the things I was coming up with but they

were very safe like I think I was falling into some again some of that pressure to like oh I just need to be different we need to be different we need have a different art style and subsequently I wasn't really making any good decisions I was just kind of making safe decisions and so as soon as I was able to kind of walk away from the project and just like take a mental break from the the game and just kind of like look at art for art's sake and start concept and that's when I was able to kind of bring in some colorful palettes bringing some interesting character ideas and that's like really where the art for super crush came in and that was like again just having mo be able be patient enough and had the bandwidth to just give me that in that few weeks to do that that was that was tremendous that helped out a lot I think things to like and this is the thing I didn't learn about until a couple months ago when I starting at drink box but the concept leader drink box Cousteau Keano or COO show he is an

incredible concept artist and he came up with the concepts for both while chameleons severed right and something that he said to me kind of offhandedly one day was like oh you can't be too precious about your concept art that's what he said and I think it was just in response to me being like oh I'm not very good at concept art and he said yeah well you know it's one of those processes you can't be too precious about and that's stuck with me so much because I was like oh no you're right I have a this whole tendency to be like I have to get it right the first time that completely negates what the whole process of concept art is for right concept art I don't know what they're writing equivalent is or what the programming equivalent is but concept art is basically just like sketching out as many ideas as you possibly can doesn't matter if they work doesn't matter if it makes sense you just do it and when you do that when you just let your brain kind of go into this creative flow and think of ideas you're gonna have some good ideas and it also kind of gives you and again working with a team of people is really easy to kind of give them concepts and have other

people say hey I really like the direction you're going in here and that kind of opens up the ability to do even more stuff like that and so I kind of I really love that it's definitely made making concept are a lot more fun and a lot easier and that's the way it should be right I really wish I had heard that you know when we were starting to concept stuff for super crash because I feel like that would have made things just more fun and more easy and breezy and just you know would have would have given me more motivation to actually do the thing yeah I wonder it sounds like you're you're deeply passionate not just about the work you do but about improving that work and learning new ways to do it is there any kind of advice you would give you know fellow game artists who are looking to improve their artistry on sort of what you can do and what do you do like on a regular basis to try and get better or you know like broaden your skill set yeah it's a great question I think part of it is just doing it as often as you can doing anything as often as you can right and that's that that sounds really

simple and easy to do but you know when you have a full-time job and hobbies and groceries and like errands you get a run sometimes that space fills up but just making a little bit of time every day to just draw a little bit or model a little bit or write a little bit or whatever whatever it is that you do just doing a little bit but every day or every other day really that practice adds up and I last year my partner bought me an iPad pro so I'd like the procreate in a pencil and I noticed that I started drawing way more often and when I look at my art and how it's evolved over the last year it's that the the difference in my skill set is way bigger than it was a lot the previous years before that because I wasn't doing any of that stuff right and so I think just like daily practice is a really really important thing but I think part of it too is also just like you know making the effort and the time to to learn new things and learn new skills and very fortunately we live in a

time where a little bit yeah oh my god I have two cats turn the volume up on that in the finally really good talking about inner conflict and just have the two cats fighting over me in the background yeah creative block is really hard interesting analogy cats jeez um cattle were you talking about talking about art oh yeah just like we live in a great time of everything's on the internet you know I mean and so if you're like I really I really want to improve my skills in 3d you can because there's so many tutorials and so many resources and blender is free and unity is free like there's so many things you can do to just learn I think a lot of it is just committing to putting the time into doing that you know and I don't

know I think a big thing to and this is like this might sound kind of out of left field but I think a thing that's really helped me is finding hobbies and interests that are not related to games and art sorry I'm laughing at Mike don't even notice any more drama going on back there it's because I'm sitting at a microphone and not paying attention to them so they're like we gotta cause trouble um Jesus yeah I think getting into hobbies can really like things that are not related to games right and this one I talked about earlier about getting into the office every day and like looking through art blogs and architecture blogs and giving you ideas of things that are outside of games is a really good idea but I think also your personal hobbies and interests it helps a lot when they're not connected to games because I think we if you're a

person who is only interested in videogames it really narrows what your what your kind of like creative capabilities are right if you're only ever looking at what games are doing you're not seeing what like animation or film or comics are doing and so I think just like having interests that are not games is really important not gonna be anything that can be sports it does have to be visual will just have to be like writing related or whatever you do it could just be like you know it could be pottery it could be woodworking it could be going for runs just anything that is outside will ultimately like let you have that creative freedom to just like do something that it's different and also I think probably give you the headspace that you need to kind of get away from work you know when you're not thinking about work it's kind of a rest like resting your muscles that you can get back to work and really ank I mean that's not you you said you said that scent would sound out of left field but you know I I hear game developers mostly the ones who make really interesting stuff say the same thing but

you know that there there was definitely a time where you know everything is like military shooter type thing and it's like okay this game was definitely made by a gamer you know and yeah it's kind of like after a few decades people kind of want something new you know so I think that's that's totally great such as like if we can get back to morticians to uh cuz we're kind of winding down here but I want to talk about that real quick and why is it that we talk about interests outside of games death positivity and commentary on that it's not exactly you know you know halo but like where did that come from and why is death positivity positivity important to you and why what's the deaf thing with Gabby so for anyone who doesn't know what that is the positivity

is basically you know similar to sex positivity I guess the idea that if we talk about a taboo thing it makes it less taboo and when we make things less taboo were able to have really open and honest conversations about those things and so for me death positivity is really important because it allows you to kind of like be more aware of what is going on in that industry and what's gonna happen to us and our loved ones when we die and that sounds really like super goth and very sad but for me the importance of it is when you are able to kind of be open to talking about that kind of stuff you can make really important decisions for yourself and for others and that's always been know me not always but a thing I've been really interested in for a long time and I have a few friends who are morticians which is hilarious that like I just kind of draw that crowd I don't know I have no idea I'm not a goth but say you don't seem got the stereotypical enough no not at all I think and we just like deep

down inside me but there's something about me that but I think this has been a thing I've always been interested in and I think just their jobs are so fascinating and and so beautiful a lot of their work has nothing to do with you know the taking care of dead bodies it's also about supporting people and having empathy for people and I just think that's a really really fascinating thing and and that's kind of what got me interested in the subject matter and like what kind of inspired me to make this game about it but also you know like I had a podcast for a little while about death and video games kind of my two worlds colliding and also a big reason why I wanted to work for drink box is because their games are so death positive right and like guacamelee you know such a beautiful beautiful game and severed is one of my favorite games ever like really subverts the expectations of like what it means to kind of collect things and you had to know it just like yeah what did you

notice about death like in video games and how like give us a little like taste of what we would hear on on your podcast video games because I'm interested like there's I'm sure there's God you've probably found a lot of stuff to say about it there's a lot of death in video games so sure is and I think I think a lot of it too I don't have anything all that profound to say about it but a lot of it is you can really tell when someone has experienced a loss in their life or whose culture is a lot more open to talking about death and loss and grief because when I interview someone like ie it's like a long time ago before I was working at drink box I interviewed Kosho Quijano again who's the the concept leader drink box and he talked about guacamelee and Mexican culture and folklore as a person who's from Mexico and you can really tell that this is a subject matter that he's comfortable with and a lot of people I talked to my podcast you know like the team behind edith finch like very

obviously very very very comfortable with talking about it and you can really see that in their games is it's they don't shy away from it they're really open death is often like very beautifully showcased whereas there's been a few developers and i won't say who they are but even when I talk to them about death it's very clearly like yes it is a thing that happens and we've put it in our game mechanically for these reasons like they are very clearly don't have that experience and maybe don't have that comfort with the subject matter and that's fascinating to me and I'll never call them out on X it's totally understandable to feel that way especially like in Western culture we're really really quiet about that kind of stuff and you talk about as much but it's so fascinating to see you know like the the personal stuff behind each game and you know like I would love to you and then I don't do the podcast anymore but I really wanted to talk to the outer wilds team because that game is like they do such cool things with death ray and I really wanted like to speak with them about it and their experiences with it because I get the impression that at

least one person on that team has some really like you know have some experience with that and that's really fascinating to me so time to relaunch the podcast yeah coincidentally and you know not to totally get off of video games here but like come on student late this morning I was listening to I think it was like this American life and it was about the whole episode was about digging and like what you know you can you know find digging and one of the one of the segments was about how and I didn't know this maybe everyone knows this but me but in Greece they run out of land to bury people and they don't really cremate much out there so after like three years or so the family mm-hmm the family comes and they exhume their relative and it followed I think that she worked like she works at NPR or something but she went back to Greece to

meet her father who was digging his mom up so her grandma so by the time they get there the dad is just kind of like kind of freaking out understandably yeah and it's saying stuff like I hope that you know mom is totally decomposed by the time we by the time we dig her up and then they do and then there's a very specific process of how they dig the people up like from the head to the toe and yeah yep and then they just like take the skull out and then they put them in boxes when when they died they were socks so that they know that they got to the end of the body Oh interesting yeah and then they yeah then they put cleanup put in a box is like so the guys mom is in back in the in the shed and in boxes that were blessed you know and then that's that's how they handle death

I mean and and at the end of it it was really cool because he was very nervous and kind of afraid of what what's gonna be like but their whole family felt more at peace yeah yeah after going through that process so hmm that's really beautiful and I there's so many different ways that different cultures handle it that are just so just so beautiful and so hands-on and I really wish that was a big part of morticians tale was just its very Western focused you know you you make what you know and all of us are based here in Toronto Canada so we just kind of went off of what the Western death process is and so mortician still is very much about that like how you know cold and there's just like no interaction between us and are in our dead and that's you know and hearing stories like that is really I'm a little bit envious like I wish that we had experiences like that and we're able to kind of take care of our own and that's

really cool that's really neat Alex I want you to dig out my body see what's on the record yeah yeah me in the shed if you have one by then if not I'll take the kitchen or something yeah absolutely okay on that note I think thanks so much for joining us this has been completely fascinating I'm glad that we got it and an artist on here too you know and just talking about the process and creativity and I think that a lot of people think that you know you just go to your desk at drink box and start doodling until some good comes out yeah probably not however found out that so thanks again for having me and also my cats on your pocket yeah you should ask for their names for crediting purposes oh one of them is named Bastian after you know the overwatch character and one of them is Meredith and I could go on for hours with my cats so maybe I should go yeah make sure to

give them a proper credit there so thanks again and best of luck with everything thank you [Music] and we're back I think that was pretty great that was yeah I can't believe that you agreed to deceive him my body hey man that's what I'm here for that's what that's what being colleagues at JDC means means right or - yeah ride die and a mm-hmm yep that's what it is I call the old RDD yeah we just talked about so much death and I've been playing so much death stranding and it just is on a whole nother level it's like really not even

relevant to the conversation of meaningful death rights but I don't know how much death is in actually in deaths Trant I mean you 3d print roads out of death so there's like a lot of it big crisscross America do you consider that death positive I think it really is a very deaf positive game I don't know of it really I don't know what it's trying to say about that not as good as Martin morticians tale its toots to hard I concept for me yeah Justin's tale kind of guy now Kojima he was like pretty like Metal Gear Solid 3 it was three right you walked down the stream and then you see all the ghosts of the soldiers oh yeah the sorrow yeah yeah I mean you actually you actually addressed like all the deaths that you uh you know mate happen yeah yeah he did but also if you happen to have killed one of those

poor souls by shooting them in like a really private place they would have like a really silly animation when they were walking down that really somber River so it's hard to take it terribly seriously hey it's just being real let's just spend your games I guess yeah absolutely is video games anyway Gabby great great guest her cats yeah also phenomenal guests top ten for sure at least I would say at least as good as Gabby was um I don't know let's top that's tough better than me I'm sure I would have I would have I would have placed Gabby a lot further up the scale compared to her cats if it weren't for that little fight that they got into that really sold the drama for me yeah I was gonna say it was the high point of my podcast but uh you're right I'll take that into consideration and how do you how do you title these so we have to like cope with a fun catchphrase they're gonna be like a fun kick somewhere well

we'll find out yeah well surprise people I guess that they'll know by now problem oh I guess they would what we title the podcast they tell us yeah well with the cats names again yo Gabby Gabby it's my favorite that's probably too much though no anyway let's let's let's let's talk about something real quick before we go GDC did release we mentioned it during the podcast that the worst oh this is still the podcast yeah earlier in the podcast yeah I didn't want to draw focus away but yeah the state of the industry report is out and it is real hot we have tons and tons of ROI and exclusive day time yeah that you were gonna want to check out if you go to Gd calm calm there's a bunch of stuff I think we recently just highlighted the fact that there was a lot of conversation in this year's survey about sort of like new stuff like especially subscription services and you have a game store and all that kind of stuff and we've got a lot of interesting feedback from the

devs and other professionals we surveyed I think we ran this little story today check it out if you have time it's all about how when we asked yeah I think there's like nearly 4,000 people we survey every year for this and we asked him like how do you feel about a subscription services you know let's talk about it like Xbox game past like your Apple arcade that kind of stuff like is it gonna devalue individual games and what we got back was really interesting and mixed it was not a strong yes or no it was a lot of confusion and a lot of like concern from our survey respondents and it's really interesting so you should go out and get their report it's uh it's available right now for free so go download it it's on Alex yeah it's free its ups on me as many copies as you want okay that's great yeah highly highly recommend checking that out GDC state of the industry survey how

do you feel about game description services Chris are you still an apple arcade are they are they sponsoring this podcast okay then no actually I actually canceled it but I'm trying to be better with my budget but I'm probably gonna re-up it at some point I am a an xbox live game games pass game pass oh you got a games pass I do rarely PC with the PC yeah so I am just drowning in video games that this is one thing with with subscriptions is that there's you get so many games and it's the same thing with my like Kindle unlimited you're just you have so many choices that you just end up not playing games or not not reading anything I mean I officially play something but it's about like three seconds of a game and then I close the game yeah open another

one play that that's not really in the spot close that open another one yeah until do that ten more times and then just open up Netflix and watch do it all over again time yeah see this is the problem with smorgasbords like not to take it back but like you have all these options on front of you have like an array of just mouth-watering choices and you just can't take any of them you just got to take that's not an actual what is on a real Swedish yeah this is how we stay in such good shape is we had these just tables full of mouth-watering dried fish and flat breads and we just we can't pick we can't can't eat any of those seams soldier that can't be that good for you I mean you know you look fit but how healthy are you yes it's I mean it's it's all sodium but that's literally that's all it keeps me alive that's death positivity you are preserved by all of the you could just mummified

by all of the salted fish that you Vinnie yes yeah I wonder if anyone's still listening to this anyone who can say yeah I had the opposite problem with you which is where I am not watching my budget I'm still on all these services because I only play one to two video games a year and that is a problem like when you talk about games like you say that you say you only play one or two video games easier hmm but you play a ton of video okay but so far this year I've only played one or two video games alright everybody if you're still there if you made it with us to the end congratulations you win every year of F arcade no you don't actually you do win a free copy of the GDC 2020 estate of the industry report downloader right now today at jdcot.com smorgasbord of noon all right that's all for this week then check us out on itunes google play spotify and youtube yeah I think we need to upload the last

one yet I don't know I'm afraid of YouTube commenters so uh kind of been dragging my feet on that one but if you like what you heard like and subscribe yes please thanks everybody thanks Alex [Music] [Music] [Music]