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SpectroVision Radio.
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Join us for a very special Halloween edition of Waste Oids TV.
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It's a creature double feature, double feature, double as we go wolf, on wolf, and float into high strangeness.
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With comics writer Christopher Cantwell, it's two terrific talks and twice the spice, all in one creature, double feature, double feature.
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First, your brain will scream as we talk with writer Christopher Cantwell about Spectrovision's paranormal comic series high strangeness.
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Then your blood will shiver with animator Jamie Wolfe as she teaches a howl to course on artful inking with Resident Werewolf Salvador Cresta.
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Only on Waistwood's TV.
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With Oni Press's High Strangeness, Spectrovision steps into the realm of paranormal comic books.
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With Spectrovision co-founder Daniel Noah providing stories, High Strangeness features a cast of comic creators like Chris Condon, Dave Chisel, Valerie Berzo, Cecil Castellucci, Kristen Ward, and many more.
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We rang up one of the series writers, Christopher Cantwell, to discuss bringing a human-level perspective to potentially cosmic realms.
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And what he listens to while investigating the phenomenon of high strangeness.
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There's a lot going on.
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We've got the big mothership on the way.
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I guess the rapture is supposed to happen later today.
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So I mean, I don't know.
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It's not the I heard tomorrow or Wednesday, so I'm excited.
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Well, thanks so much for taking the time to chat.
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Yeah.
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High Strangeness is, of course, a new project from Oni Press and Spectre Vision's Daniel Noah.
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Um, it features a bunch of different comic creators, all creating stories that circle around the paranormal, uh, the weird, that sort of thing.
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So, how did you how did you get involved?
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Um, well, I've known Daniel uh and his partner, Elijah, for several years now, and we've worked on some projects in development together on the TV and film side of things.
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Fortuitously, like I had an original book at Oni Press called Out of Alcatraz.
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Yeah.
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And Daniel and Elijah put together this really cool partnership with Oni.
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And the first book coming out of the game was this was this concept high strangeness.
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And I didn't know much about it actually until Daniel reached out to me to do the third issue.
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I was struck by how sincere he wanted to approach the concepts because he himself is is, in his words, is a sensitive person to these phenomena, and so he wanted to treat it with a real legitimacy that he felt was lacking in uh, you know, more typical genre fair.
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So I thought that was fascinating.
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And each issue deals with uh different phenomena, but they're also interconnected and tell one whole story.
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But the sincerity of it was the real draw for me.
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Now that I've never considered doing that, like you you wanted to be sincere and you want it to feel real when you're writing something, but with this, it felt like a way to approach it with a real note and major chord of empathy in a way that I loved and really responded to.
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But I mean, part of what makes this so interesting, the High Strangeness Project, is the degree of verisimilitude that people are bringing to it, wanting it to feel informed by actual experiences and sort of trying to find a way to imbue these somewhat fantastical stories with a sense of realism and as you said, empathy.
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The idea that experiencers are telling their own stories through this is a very interesting one.
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Do you have uh personal paranormal experiences that you drew on uh for this project?
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Or for me, you know, it's it it I will say no, but I do have people close to me who have said they've experienced certain things, and uh it it becomes it seems it seems simplistic to write them off.
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Um and it and it also seems overly simplistic to go the other way and just say, oh, it's this, it's Roswell, it's aliens, it's blah blah blah, and it's you know, and and because you realize so much of that has been dictated to us by by our stories that we've been told.
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And some of them are quite profound and wonderful, but but the actual experiences people have that get dismissed, and you read about the specifics of them, and they're quite intriguing to say the least, even on a human level, right?
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It's just that the what these people are are experiencing, and then and then being courageous enough to share, uh it it just speaks to a part of the human condition that I think is is really interesting and shouldn't be ignored.
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So they always need to tap into that.
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Yeah, it's interesting to think about that because when experiencers start telling their stories, common themes, uh threads, similar expressions and experiences sort of start to develop.
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And I think if you're a skeptic and you're looking to write it all off, in a weird way, that sort of allows you to do that.
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You go, look, now this is just when something strange starts happening, we start defaulting to these notions or these ideas.
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First and foremost, that's weird as hell, if that's the way it works.
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Like that alone is weird.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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And I think that, yeah, and there are there are and and to hear this is to hear the stories related to you by people who experienced them, there's something about that that is very different than just reading about it or coming across it in Wikipedia or some article or online or things like this.
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So I think that you know, here to hear Daniel talk about the things that he's personally experienced is it was it was rather profound.
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And uh yeah, it's I find it endlessly fascinating.
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Daniel being somebody who started off more or less in the skeptic camp and then sort of started to slowly move you know towards these other modalities.
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Yeah, it it you know I I knew him for years before he opened up to me about this, and I think the conversation about this book, and it, you know, what started as me coming on to write the third issue, it ended up in into an hour-long conversation about what he had gone through and realizations he had made about himself that he had never shared with me.
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So it was really it was really cool and it was it was it was quite powerful for our friendship too.
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Yeah.
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That's fascinating.
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So obviously, when we talk about these, when we talk about the paranormal, when we talk about extraterrestrials, anything like that, our pop culture is a huge part of that conversation.
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And our pop culture becomes a reference point when people are having these strange experiences.
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And again, going back to the sort of skeptic side of things, you have people who can almost say, Well, you're simply your brain is simply kind of pulling that reference point, and that's how you're interpreting what's what's occurring, right?
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So if you have seen, you know, an episode of the Twilight Zone or Outer Limits, and your brain goes to that.
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But I think part of what I found really interesting about where like Walsh is coming from is that she sort of and others, Jacques Villet, chief among them, are sort of asking the question whether or not to some degree these encounters are taking place within our consciousness and whether or not it would simply be very natural for us to default to pulling, you know, uh reference points, pulling some sort of our back catalogue of imaginal material in order to interpret what's happening to us.
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So I think that fiction ends up being an incredible way to process this stuff and to explore it without having to put a, you know, sort of uh uh having to define exactly what it is.
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We don't we don't full fully know.
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And so I I think and I think comics are an especially interesting medium to do that because it's uh maybe it's a little more possible to portray the phantasmagoric in comics in a way that doesn't feel quite the same as movies or TV.
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I'm you worked in all those mediums, so I would be very comics can be quite I mean they're almost by default impressionistic.
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Right?
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And so they're leading with almost a sense memory first.
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Um film and TV obviously can be heavily impressionistic too, but they start they have to do so by subverting the literal recording method of of capturing media, right?
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I mean it's you point a camera at something and and take a photo of it and that's what happened, right?
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And I think that obviously even seeing some of the best photographs, you know, you see what's underneath that and the best films do that too, but but yet comics start from a different part of your brain just in terms of interpreting the information on the page, and I think that that allows people to enter the book like this uh immediately open, you know, in a way that sometimes uh the the the the faux realism and very similitude of TVs and movies might might get in the way of, right?
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Even though there's been some that are quite transcendent, you know.
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Sure.
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What are some of your favorite films or TV shows that approach this stuff?
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And you know, if you did have the green light and were expanding this out, like who are some creators that you might want to see explore this a little bit more?
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The movie that's in my head right now, just because I just finished it two nights ago, was John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness, which I had not seen.
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We were on a carpenter kick, and I thought it was fascinating because you go into it and it it takes this novel approach of a scientific explanation for the devil.
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And yet, it builds to such a crescendo of some really horrifying and terrifying things.
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And in a way, there are there are containers in that movie in terms of it's got a it's got a bit of slasher quality to it, you know, where one by one these scientists in the church are disappearing.
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But then some of the stuff that the the lead physicist and and Donald Pleasance, the priest, discuss back and forth about shared dreams, and then this idea that collective unconscious can be informed by that at a certain point they get too tacky on emissions from the future that are SOS transmissions.
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And you see those in the film, and it to me it was the it was the most striking part of the film because it's something from the future using rudimentary technology that they have that is far beyond anything we have to reach back and touch us in our brains, exactly like you're talking about, so that we see images or warnings of what's to come.
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And it's interesting because the way Carpenter did it is he shot those dreams on 1987 VHS video, uh, and they're handheld at the time, which is really interesting.
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So it's like some it's like the transmission quality is very low res.
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And then also the voices are heavily distorted through radio frequency.
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And to me, that was just endlessly amazing.
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Like the the idea of this this all this stuff is like another form of of a way we can connect with each other and and the the profoundness of human connection.
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Like it just even in that movie, it's like I don't know, it's it's such an incredible notion.
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And I mean, I've heard those samples are the samples of those transmissions are used in music I grew up listening to, which is funny.
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I mean, like it it's even gone into different mediums and stuff just because I think it's such a wild idea.
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Um, but you know, like that that is really fascinating to me.
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I mean, I we were my wife and I are huge fans of of David Lynch.
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Um that's somebody who I think really did what we're talking about in some of his work, uh, even if it had nothing to do with the paranormal or supernatural, it almost spoke to the human experience as a supernatural or paranormal experience.
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Um, and mundanity being paranormal and supernatural.
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I thought, you know, that was that was really rich.
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In terms of other creators that are doing things now, I mean uh for some reason I think of um Karin Kusama's movie The Invitation, which again it's not a paranormal or supernatural experience, but it it speaks to a kind of preternatural, I hesitate to even say the word evil, but like darkness that moves through people.
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Like there are there are things like that that I'm really drawn to.
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And I I think like creators like that coming to material like like this, I think would be would be great.
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And I I because I think it sh it shouldn't feel immediately programmable, although you know and I think you also want directors that or filmmakers who are really versed in people, so it's almost like as much as I would say the cinema rink director, I would also say like, what would Kenneth Lonergan do?
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You know what I mean?
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Like, yeah, if you watch Margaret, that movie is transcendent and almost horrific and and and really probes deep into human consciousness in a way when it's really just dealing with a young girl who is inserting herself into a catastrophic traumatic event that she just witnesses.
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Like it's that kind of stuff.
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So like unspooling from the inside out is I think where I'd want to see people work from when it comes to this.
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Yeah, I really want to see Kelly Reichart make a film about somebody who got abducted by an alien.
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Yeah, exactly.
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Where it's almost like on the it's like a grassroots level version of it, right?
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As it because we have Exactly.
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We have Spielberg and we have the X-Files and we have these things, and they're great, but like it's it's the intimacy of the experience, it would be neat to see that approached in something.
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Yeah, I want to see somebody's life start falling apart because they don't know how to process this, and like how does it affect the people around them?
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It's like it's not that films never show that stuff, but very, very rarely do we get the human drama of these stories.
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Well, that's what's great about close encounters, right?
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We're talking about Spielberg, it's like the first hour of that film is Drivers' life falling apart and it's family falling apart.
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Like the the the with the nature of that, right?
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Where his wife opens the door of the bathroom and he's just in the shower with the lights off and he says, I don't know what's happening to me.
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That to me is the ambiguity of that is so great, right?
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And I think we've moved away from some of that, you know, in the kind of bigger tent pole stuff, and it'd be nice to get back to that.
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I think that part of what one of the reasons why I wanted to catch up with you is in addition to your film and TV work, and you know, you started kind of doing comics uh in the early 2010s, is that about right when you kind of got started?
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So I I I I was finishing up my show, Halt and Catch Fire, and I had an idea that just didn't immediately translate to a script, and it had something, it was something that I had had for about 20 years, and and I I was able to bring it to Karen Berger, who started Vertigo for DC back in the day, and she had just spun off her own boutique label that was through with a deal through Dark Horse at the time, and so I was able to do my first book with her.
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That was called She Could Fly.
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She Could Fly, and that was Burger Books, right?
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It was Burger Books, and that one was very much about my own experiences with primarily obsessional OCD and things like this growing up that I had really kept private my whole life.
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And and comics just again, it felt like a medium that lent itself to something like that where you could really tap into it.
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To build something like She Could Fly with with Martine and Clem and and uh Miroslav, the colorist, like it was and then to work with car with Karen, like it was such a such an amazing experience, and to create something wholly original like that was uh really a gift.
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And that one that if Daniel's book, if Daniel's personal book is High Strangeness, I feel like my person most personal book was She Could Fly, and it's funny because it was the first thing I did, and I think that the reaction to it was really positive, and I think it just parlayed into other things in comics, right?
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Like all the way to Marvel in DC eventually being like, Hey, do you want to try this over here on this character?
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And that stuff's been very fun too, but but it is always fun to get back to the heart of the matter, you know, when it comes to some of this stuff.
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Sort of you it is and it would you say that's where your creator stuff, creator owned stuff comes in, stuff like out of Alcatraz or Kid Maroon.
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Yeah, that even that one, it's like and she could fly.
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I mean, that there's similar themes there where that the main character is a teenage girl named Luna, and she is very much trapped by her own mind.
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And and in Alcatraz and in Alcatraz the characters are doing the exact same thing.
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They're they're breaking out of the most famous prison in the world, and and then they're finding themselves still confined, and so they're really pushing against all of that.
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So yeah, yeah, and that's not the only thing that I focus on.
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I think it's just I really I feel like I can probe my deeper consciousness when it comes to creator own books.
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Sure, because a leader as a writer, you know, I'm curious, do you tend to do you tend to listen to music when you write?
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Is that uh part of of of the way the process works for you?
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So I I'm I'm hugely into music of all genres and stuff like this.
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And I will even confess it's funny to say this on a podcast.
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I rarely listen to podcasts in the car.
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I I only listen to music.
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I just I'm I'm just always knee deep in music.
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It's the right way to go, actually.
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Yeah.
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I just can't.
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I just I grew up, my dad always had music on in the car, meaning a lot of vinyl in the house, and then CDs, and then 5.1, and blah, blah, blah.
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Music was constant, and so it's constant for me, but when I'm writing, I it's totally silent.
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And the only reason is because when I write to music, what I have found is that when I read it without the music, I go, this wasn't this isn't as good as I thought it was when I was writing it to music.
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Yeah.
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There's once in a while, I haven't done this in a while, but if I have to do like an extended action set piece or something that's very kinetic in a script, usually in a film or TV script, there may be a short set list that is propulsive enough to keep me moving through it, but it's rare.
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I usually am just, I have to, it has to be just like radio silent for me to vote so that I when I read it and it's radio silent again, I'm like, it's it's just on its own merit.
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But I am constantly listening to music in the car.
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And so when I'm driving around, I am listening to, I mean, I have playlists for every project I'm working on.
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I have huge playlists for like an independent feature.
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I've been trying to get it off the ground.
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I've got um there's a genre thriller that I'm doing with our studio that it leans heavily on like you know, sometimes I just port a whole thing in where it's like it's Carpenter's synth score from Assault on Pre-State 13.
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You know, but like here, I'll tell you some of this.
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Like, I have a playlist here for I have an Alcatraz playlist.
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Most of them are period songs, but it's like because I was what's interesting about Alcatraz is it's June 1962.
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So you're post-war America, early, like the some rock and roll, but also more country-oriented, right?
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But it's like everything, so it's what it this is a short one too, because I didn't have much that I had, but it was like it's Cupid by Sam Cook, Big Bad John by Jimmy Dean, yeah, Runaway, Del Shannon, Spanish Harlem, Benny King, Walk Right Back, The Everly Brothers, Running Scared, Roy Orbison, uh Apache.
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Right, just like doing things like that.
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But then I get to I mean, the the the uh I have a huge one here too for the the the genre piece I'm doing at the studio.
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So it's like liquid liquid, Tommy James and the Chandels, Shimmy Shimmy Yahs on here.
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Oh, it's awesome.
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Hard 11 Pond magazine human league.
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I mean there's there's all kinds of stuff, and like it's all over the map too, stylistically.
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Um it's just stuff to get me into the into the vibe.
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You know, it's really the vibe of the characters and the world I'm trying to create.
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So just pulling that stuff, it it becomes intrinsic to it.
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And I think when it comes to needle drops and in stuff I'm making in post, that's so important and and key to me.
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It's brainstorming in the car and then silence, and then I come back to it in post when we're actually dropping it in.
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Yeah, that's awesome.
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Well, uh, Chris, thanks so much for taking the time to hang out with us and chat about your process and all the cool stuff that you're up to.
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I really appreciate you doing so.
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Oh, yeah, man.
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Thank you.
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This is great.
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I appreciate you taking the time, and uh I'll talk to you soon.
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Awesome.
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Thanks so much, Jason.
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Take care.
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Bye.
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Chris Cantwell is known for comics like Doctor Doom and TV shows like AMC's Halt and Catch Fire.
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If you'd like to hear more of our talk, give us a ring on the Waste Oids Hotline.
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One eight seven seven waste.
00:21:29.599 --> 00:21:31.440
Let us know what you think.
00:21:31.680 --> 00:21:35.279
And hear a haunted message just for you.
00:22:33.200 --> 00:22:40.880
Jamie Wolf is a Los Angeles-based artist known for her short films and animated music videos.
00:22:41.039 --> 00:22:51.839
One of her first works, Roommates, from 2016, which participated at the time in all these festivals and screenings.
00:22:55.759 --> 00:22:58.240
It's hand-drawn on paper, frame by frame.
00:22:58.400 --> 00:23:01.119
I use ink in a light box.
00:23:01.359 --> 00:23:02.400
Come with me.
00:23:02.720 --> 00:23:04.160
Alright, welcome to my studio.
00:23:04.240 --> 00:23:11.759
I had to do some digging, but I found the original frames for roommates so you can kind of get a feel for how I don't know, all this goes down.
00:23:11.920 --> 00:23:15.279
So I'll pull a frame so you can see it's all an animation bond.
00:23:15.519 --> 00:23:19.359
Each frame is drawn on paper, lime work.
00:23:19.920 --> 00:23:24.319
We later digitize it, and voila, an animation is born.
00:23:24.559 --> 00:23:34.640
And yeah, so use brush and ink initially at the time, because I found that um, you know, when you animate with a brush, you lose a little bit of control.
00:23:34.799 --> 00:23:37.119
So your lines are a little shaky, a little vibraty.
00:23:37.359 --> 00:23:43.279
You know, however you're feeling in a day, it's very directly referenced in like the steadiness of your line.
00:23:43.599 --> 00:23:49.759
So I found that when br you know working frame by frame this way, it kind of eliminates a smoothness.
00:23:49.920 --> 00:23:55.119
It creates like a frequency, a vibrating energy through the literal vibrating lines.
00:23:55.440 --> 00:23:59.039
And it tapped into some kind of similar anxiety that was feeling at the time.
00:23:59.440 --> 00:24:12.640
Since then, I've continued using Brash and ink whenever possible because it um I found it's like actually quite useful for tapping in to many inner anxieties and frequencies that I'm feeling within myself.
00:24:13.039 --> 00:24:16.240
It's such an expressive piece, Jamie.
00:24:16.400 --> 00:24:25.599
And the way you have handled the sounds is excellent and contributes so well to that desperate tension that is there throughout the video.
00:24:26.160 --> 00:24:33.839
Roommates was the first thing I saw of your work, and I immediately thought about sharing it through this show.
00:24:34.160 --> 00:24:39.519
Now, Jamie, do you have some of those ink drawings around to show us?
00:24:39.839 --> 00:24:41.839
Do we have any inky drawings around me?
00:24:42.000 --> 00:24:42.720
Are you kidding me?
00:24:42.799 --> 00:24:44.559
I'm surrounded by them.
00:24:44.720 --> 00:24:47.839
I have to have things in front of me or I forget that they exist.
00:24:48.400 --> 00:24:51.039
How did I build this develop this style, you asked?
00:24:51.279 --> 00:24:57.119
Well, I think, you know, it's just that act of doing it over and over and doing it for a long time and doing it every day.
00:24:57.279 --> 00:25:05.440
You know, you you try things out, you you see what sticks, what doesn't stick, repeat what's working for you for a while, and when it stops working, it shifted a little bit.
00:25:05.680 --> 00:25:17.839
And by that I mean, you know, literally the way you're drawing curves and arcs and lines and shapes, but also, you know, attributes of bodies, ways of expressing different emotions and time and spacing.
00:25:18.000 --> 00:25:21.200
You just keep doing it until things start working.
00:25:21.279 --> 00:25:23.119
And when things are working, don't drop them.
00:25:23.200 --> 00:25:25.279
Like keep doing it again and again.
00:25:25.759 --> 00:25:26.960
Does that really mean I don't know.
00:25:27.119 --> 00:25:31.440
Also just embracing what, you know, who I am, you know, I'm messy.
00:25:31.519 --> 00:25:32.720
So that just kind of becomes part of it.
00:25:32.799 --> 00:25:36.079
You know, like this messiness, you know, I won't try to do it clean and rendered.
00:25:36.319 --> 00:25:38.880
Who do you consider your biggest influences?
00:25:39.279 --> 00:25:42.559
You know, if I name my number one influences, this is tough.
00:25:42.799 --> 00:25:47.039
But I guess my entire life I've been looking a lot at Red Grooms, you know.
00:25:47.440 --> 00:25:53.039
I'm super inspired by the frenetic energy within all the marks he makes.
00:25:53.200 --> 00:25:59.599
He's able, it's almost like he's able to capture enti the energy of entire cities within, you know, one figure.
00:25:59.759 --> 00:26:06.960
I also just love how playful it all is and not taking itself too seriously, but having depth within that.
00:26:07.200 --> 00:26:15.920
Um, Gary Panter, I guess for a similar reason, you know, just like the dense ink and the lively nature of his figures and forms.
00:26:16.079 --> 00:26:34.640
I also have pulled a lot from the Chicago Imagist and really, you know, fine artists like that that are looking at the cartoon form from an artistic express you know point of view, and you know, dissecting them and abstracting them and kind of looking at them from a separate lens.
00:26:34.960 --> 00:26:37.920
As for animators, I mean, number one, Sally Crookshank.
00:26:38.079 --> 00:26:46.000
I think she was the first animator that I ever saw that was thinking about character animation, but in an experimental way.
00:26:46.319 --> 00:26:57.279
You know, as the way they move and the way they act tell as much about the character as it the character's physical performance, which I find really inspiring.
00:27:12.400 --> 00:27:16.640
How did you end up making a lyric video for the Rolling Stones?
00:27:16.960 --> 00:27:20.400
Honest answer, it's the internet is crazy.
00:27:20.480 --> 00:27:25.359
I think I just happened to be right place, right time in the eye line of someone who was hiring for them.
00:27:25.599 --> 00:27:30.240
And yeah, it was a really honor that it worked out and it was fun to work on.
00:28:08.640 --> 00:28:10.079
The big ones.
00:28:10.480 --> 00:28:19.279
I'm prepared to stay locked up here for two months, drinking and eating dust, cardboard and small spiders.
00:28:19.519 --> 00:28:27.039
I will leave when the world has been recovered from the clutches of robots by the Boca Juniors fanatics.
00:28:27.359 --> 00:28:35.440
You in the USA don't know the Bocker Juniors fanatics, but when you meet them, you'll know what I'm talking about.
00:28:35.759 --> 00:28:40.240
Well, Jamie, thank you very much for stopping by.
00:28:40.559 --> 00:28:45.599
It was a pleasure to be able to share your work with the people who watch us.
00:28:46.000 --> 00:28:52.319
Let's close this show with a very nice video that Jamie made for the band Local Natives.
00:28:52.559 --> 00:28:55.839
The song is called Statues in the Garden.
00:28:56.160 --> 00:28:59.920
Oh, and she also did the artwork for their EP.
00:29:00.640 --> 00:29:02.799
See you in the next episode.
00:29:03.119 --> 00:29:04.319
Good night.
00:29:04.799 --> 00:29:06.000
Bye bye.
00:00:01.919 --> 00:00:03.839
SpectroVision Radio.
00:00:11.599 --> 00:00:16.559
Join us for a very special Halloween edition of Waste Oids TV.
00:00:16.800 --> 00:00:25.359
It's a creature double feature, double feature, double as we go wolf, on wolf, and float into high strangeness.
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With comics writer Christopher Cantwell, it's two terrific talks and twice the spice, all in one creature, double feature, double feature.
00:00:37.759 --> 00:00:46.560
First, your brain will scream as we talk with writer Christopher Cantwell about Spectrovision's paranormal comic series high strangeness.
00:00:48.399 --> 00:00:59.679
Then your blood will shiver with animator Jamie Wolfe as she teaches a howl to course on artful inking with Resident Werewolf Salvador Cresta.
00:01:00.240 --> 00:01:02.000
Only on Waistwood's TV.
00:01:04.799 --> 00:01:11.439
With Oni Press's High Strangeness, Spectrovision steps into the realm of paranormal comic books.
00:01:11.599 --> 00:01:26.079
With Spectrovision co-founder Daniel Noah providing stories, High Strangeness features a cast of comic creators like Chris Condon, Dave Chisel, Valerie Berzo, Cecil Castellucci, Kristen Ward, and many more.
00:01:26.239 --> 00:01:35.760
We rang up one of the series writers, Christopher Cantwell, to discuss bringing a human-level perspective to potentially cosmic realms.
00:01:36.159 --> 00:01:41.920
And what he listens to while investigating the phenomenon of high strangeness.
00:01:43.280 --> 00:01:44.239
There's a lot going on.
00:01:44.319 --> 00:01:46.000
We've got the big mothership on the way.
00:01:46.079 --> 00:01:48.159
I guess the rapture is supposed to happen later today.
00:01:48.239 --> 00:01:48.959
So I mean, I don't know.
00:01:49.040 --> 00:01:52.640
It's not the I heard tomorrow or Wednesday, so I'm excited.
00:01:52.879 --> 00:01:54.640
Well, thanks so much for taking the time to chat.
00:01:54.719 --> 00:01:54.879
Yeah.
00:01:55.040 --> 00:02:00.640
High Strangeness is, of course, a new project from Oni Press and Spectre Vision's Daniel Noah.
00:02:00.959 --> 00:02:08.639
Um, it features a bunch of different comic creators, all creating stories that circle around the paranormal, uh, the weird, that sort of thing.
00:02:08.800 --> 00:02:10.319
So, how did you how did you get involved?
00:02:10.560 --> 00:02:20.240
Um, well, I've known Daniel uh and his partner, Elijah, for several years now, and we've worked on some projects in development together on the TV and film side of things.
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Fortuitously, like I had an original book at Oni Press called Out of Alcatraz.
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Yeah.
00:02:26.319 --> 00:02:31.520
And Daniel and Elijah put together this really cool partnership with Oni.
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And the first book coming out of the game was this was this concept high strangeness.
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And I didn't know much about it actually until Daniel reached out to me to do the third issue.
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I was struck by how sincere he wanted to approach the concepts because he himself is is, in his words, is a sensitive person to these phenomena, and so he wanted to treat it with a real legitimacy that he felt was lacking in uh, you know, more typical genre fair.
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So I thought that was fascinating.
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And each issue deals with uh different phenomena, but they're also interconnected and tell one whole story.
00:03:03.840 --> 00:03:06.080
But the sincerity of it was the real draw for me.
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Now that I've never considered doing that, like you you wanted to be sincere and you want it to feel real when you're writing something, but with this, it felt like a way to approach it with a real note and major chord of empathy in a way that I loved and really responded to.
00:03:21.439 --> 00:03:42.000
But I mean, part of what makes this so interesting, the High Strangeness Project, is the degree of verisimilitude that people are bringing to it, wanting it to feel informed by actual experiences and sort of trying to find a way to imbue these somewhat fantastical stories with a sense of realism and as you said, empathy.
00:03:42.800 --> 00:03:48.879
The idea that experiencers are telling their own stories through this is a very interesting one.
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Do you have uh personal paranormal experiences that you drew on uh for this project?
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Or for me, you know, it's it it I will say no, but I do have people close to me who have said they've experienced certain things, and uh it it becomes it seems it seems simplistic to write them off.
00:04:11.520 --> 00:04:27.759
Um and it and it also seems overly simplistic to go the other way and just say, oh, it's this, it's Roswell, it's aliens, it's blah blah blah, and it's you know, and and because you realize so much of that has been dictated to us by by our stories that we've been told.
00:04:27.839 --> 00:04:41.120
And some of them are quite profound and wonderful, but but the actual experiences people have that get dismissed, and you read about the specifics of them, and they're quite intriguing to say the least, even on a human level, right?
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It's just that the what these people are are experiencing, and then and then being courageous enough to share, uh it it just speaks to a part of the human condition that I think is is really interesting and shouldn't be ignored.
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So they always need to tap into that.
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Yeah, it's interesting to think about that because when experiencers start telling their stories, common themes, uh threads, similar expressions and experiences sort of start to develop.
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And I think if you're a skeptic and you're looking to write it all off, in a weird way, that sort of allows you to do that.
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You go, look, now this is just when something strange starts happening, we start defaulting to these notions or these ideas.
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First and foremost, that's weird as hell, if that's the way it works.
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Like that alone is weird.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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And I think that, yeah, and there are there are and and to hear this is to hear the stories related to you by people who experienced them, there's something about that that is very different than just reading about it or coming across it in Wikipedia or some article or online or things like this.
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So I think that you know, here to hear Daniel talk about the things that he's personally experienced is it was it was rather profound.
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And uh yeah, it's I find it endlessly fascinating.
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Daniel being somebody who started off more or less in the skeptic camp and then sort of started to slowly move you know towards these other modalities.
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Yeah, it it you know I I knew him for years before he opened up to me about this, and I think the conversation about this book, and it, you know, what started as me coming on to write the third issue, it ended up in into an hour-long conversation about what he had gone through and realizations he had made about himself that he had never shared with me.
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So it was really it was really cool and it was it was it was quite powerful for our friendship too.
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Yeah.
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That's fascinating.
00:06:42.160 --> 00:06:53.759
So obviously, when we talk about these, when we talk about the paranormal, when we talk about extraterrestrials, anything like that, our pop culture is a huge part of that conversation.
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And our pop culture becomes a reference point when people are having these strange experiences.
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And again, going back to the sort of skeptic side of things, you have people who can almost say, Well, you're simply your brain is simply kind of pulling that reference point, and that's how you're interpreting what's what's occurring, right?
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So if you have seen, you know, an episode of the Twilight Zone or Outer Limits, and your brain goes to that.
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But I think part of what I found really interesting about where like Walsh is coming from is that she sort of and others, Jacques Villet, chief among them, are sort of asking the question whether or not to some degree these encounters are taking place within our consciousness and whether or not it would simply be very natural for us to default to pulling, you know, uh reference points, pulling some sort of our back catalogue of imaginal material in order to interpret what's happening to us.
00:08:01.519 --> 00:08:16.079
So I think that fiction ends up being an incredible way to process this stuff and to explore it without having to put a, you know, sort of uh uh having to define exactly what it is.
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We don't we don't full fully know.
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And so I I think and I think comics are an especially interesting medium to do that because it's uh maybe it's a little more possible to portray the phantasmagoric in comics in a way that doesn't feel quite the same as movies or TV.
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I'm you worked in all those mediums, so I would be very comics can be quite I mean they're almost by default impressionistic.
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Right?
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And so they're leading with almost a sense memory first.
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Um film and TV obviously can be heavily impressionistic too, but they start they have to do so by subverting the literal recording method of of capturing media, right?
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I mean it's you point a camera at something and and take a photo of it and that's what happened, right?
00:09:11.360 --> 00:09:44.159
And I think that obviously even seeing some of the best photographs, you know, you see what's underneath that and the best films do that too, but but yet comics start from a different part of your brain just in terms of interpreting the information on the page, and I think that that allows people to enter the book like this uh immediately open, you know, in a way that sometimes uh the the the the faux realism and very similitude of TVs and movies might might get in the way of, right?
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Even though there's been some that are quite transcendent, you know.
00:09:47.440 --> 00:09:48.000
Sure.
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What are some of your favorite films or TV shows that approach this stuff?
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And you know, if you did have the green light and were expanding this out, like who are some creators that you might want to see explore this a little bit more?
00:10:03.759 --> 00:10:11.440
The movie that's in my head right now, just because I just finished it two nights ago, was John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness, which I had not seen.
00:10:11.600 --> 00:10:21.120
We were on a carpenter kick, and I thought it was fascinating because you go into it and it it takes this novel approach of a scientific explanation for the devil.
00:10:21.360 --> 00:10:28.240
And yet, it builds to such a crescendo of some really horrifying and terrifying things.
00:10:28.480 --> 00:10:39.360
And in a way, there are there are containers in that movie in terms of it's got a it's got a bit of slasher quality to it, you know, where one by one these scientists in the church are disappearing.
00:10:39.679 --> 00:10:56.960
But then some of the stuff that the the lead physicist and and Donald Pleasance, the priest, discuss back and forth about shared dreams, and then this idea that collective unconscious can be informed by that at a certain point they get too tacky on emissions from the future that are SOS transmissions.
00:10:57.120 --> 00:11:16.080
And you see those in the film, and it to me it was the it was the most striking part of the film because it's something from the future using rudimentary technology that they have that is far beyond anything we have to reach back and touch us in our brains, exactly like you're talking about, so that we see images or warnings of what's to come.
00:11:16.240 --> 00:11:27.519
And it's interesting because the way Carpenter did it is he shot those dreams on 1987 VHS video, uh, and they're handheld at the time, which is really interesting.
00:11:27.600 --> 00:11:31.200
So it's like some it's like the transmission quality is very low res.
00:11:31.600 --> 00:11:36.799
And then also the voices are heavily distorted through radio frequency.
00:11:37.039 --> 00:11:40.240
And to me, that was just endlessly amazing.
00:11:40.399 --> 00:11:48.879
Like the the idea of this this all this stuff is like another form of of a way we can connect with each other and and the the profoundness of human connection.
00:11:48.960 --> 00:11:53.919
Like it just even in that movie, it's like I don't know, it's it's such an incredible notion.
00:11:54.159 --> 00:12:02.320
And I mean, I've heard those samples are the samples of those transmissions are used in music I grew up listening to, which is funny.
00:12:02.399 --> 00:12:07.679
I mean, like it it's even gone into different mediums and stuff just because I think it's such a wild idea.
00:12:07.919 --> 00:12:12.080
Um, but you know, like that that is really fascinating to me.
00:12:12.159 --> 00:12:16.559
I mean, I we were my wife and I are huge fans of of David Lynch.
00:12:16.960 --> 00:12:35.200
Um that's somebody who I think really did what we're talking about in some of his work, uh, even if it had nothing to do with the paranormal or supernatural, it almost spoke to the human experience as a supernatural or paranormal experience.
00:12:35.360 --> 00:12:38.639
Um, and mundanity being paranormal and supernatural.
00:12:38.720 --> 00:12:41.519
I thought, you know, that was that was really rich.
00:12:41.759 --> 00:13:03.360
In terms of other creators that are doing things now, I mean uh for some reason I think of um Karin Kusama's movie The Invitation, which again it's not a paranormal or supernatural experience, but it it speaks to a kind of preternatural, I hesitate to even say the word evil, but like darkness that moves through people.
00:13:03.600 --> 00:13:07.840
Like there are there are things like that that I'm really drawn to.
00:13:08.000 --> 00:13:14.799
And I I think like creators like that coming to material like like this, I think would be would be great.
00:13:14.960 --> 00:13:34.159
And I I because I think it sh it shouldn't feel immediately programmable, although you know and I think you also want directors that or filmmakers who are really versed in people, so it's almost like as much as I would say the cinema rink director, I would also say like, what would Kenneth Lonergan do?
00:13:34.240 --> 00:13:34.960
You know what I mean?
00:13:35.039 --> 00:13:54.559
Like, yeah, if you watch Margaret, that movie is transcendent and almost horrific and and and really probes deep into human consciousness in a way when it's really just dealing with a young girl who is inserting herself into a catastrophic traumatic event that she just witnesses.
00:13:54.720 --> 00:13:56.159
Like it's that kind of stuff.
00:13:56.320 --> 00:14:01.440
So like unspooling from the inside out is I think where I'd want to see people work from when it comes to this.
00:14:01.759 --> 00:14:07.360
Yeah, I really want to see Kelly Reichart make a film about somebody who got abducted by an alien.
00:14:08.399 --> 00:14:09.200
Yeah, exactly.
00:14:09.279 --> 00:14:13.200
Where it's almost like on the it's like a grassroots level version of it, right?
00:14:13.360 --> 00:14:15.679
As it because we have Exactly.
00:14:16.000 --> 00:14:26.720
We have Spielberg and we have the X-Files and we have these things, and they're great, but like it's it's the intimacy of the experience, it would be neat to see that approached in something.
00:14:27.039 --> 00:14:34.000
Yeah, I want to see somebody's life start falling apart because they don't know how to process this, and like how does it affect the people around them?
00:14:34.159 --> 00:14:41.120
It's like it's not that films never show that stuff, but very, very rarely do we get the human drama of these stories.
00:14:41.360 --> 00:14:43.039
Well, that's what's great about close encounters, right?
00:14:43.120 --> 00:14:49.279
We're talking about Spielberg, it's like the first hour of that film is Drivers' life falling apart and it's family falling apart.
00:14:49.519 --> 00:14:51.519
Like the the the with the nature of that, right?
00:14:51.600 --> 00:14:57.039
Where his wife opens the door of the bathroom and he's just in the shower with the lights off and he says, I don't know what's happening to me.
00:14:57.440 --> 00:15:01.360
That to me is the ambiguity of that is so great, right?
00:15:01.519 --> 00:15:07.519
And I think we've moved away from some of that, you know, in the kind of bigger tent pole stuff, and it'd be nice to get back to that.
00:15:07.840 --> 00:15:20.960
I think that part of what one of the reasons why I wanted to catch up with you is in addition to your film and TV work, and you know, you started kind of doing comics uh in the early 2010s, is that about right when you kind of got started?
00:15:22.000 --> 00:15:48.480
So I I I I was finishing up my show, Halt and Catch Fire, and I had an idea that just didn't immediately translate to a script, and it had something, it was something that I had had for about 20 years, and and I I was able to bring it to Karen Berger, who started Vertigo for DC back in the day, and she had just spun off her own boutique label that was through with a deal through Dark Horse at the time, and so I was able to do my first book with her.
00:15:48.720 --> 00:15:50.320
That was called She Could Fly.
00:15:50.559 --> 00:15:52.559
She Could Fly, and that was Burger Books, right?
00:15:52.879 --> 00:16:02.720
It was Burger Books, and that one was very much about my own experiences with primarily obsessional OCD and things like this growing up that I had really kept private my whole life.
00:16:02.799 --> 00:16:09.039
And and comics just again, it felt like a medium that lent itself to something like that where you could really tap into it.
00:16:09.360 --> 00:16:26.720
To build something like She Could Fly with with Martine and Clem and and uh Miroslav, the colorist, like it was and then to work with car with Karen, like it was such a such an amazing experience, and to create something wholly original like that was uh really a gift.
00:16:26.960 --> 00:16:42.639
And that one that if Daniel's book, if Daniel's personal book is High Strangeness, I feel like my person most personal book was She Could Fly, and it's funny because it was the first thing I did, and I think that the reaction to it was really positive, and I think it just parlayed into other things in comics, right?
00:16:42.720 --> 00:16:49.120
Like all the way to Marvel in DC eventually being like, Hey, do you want to try this over here on this character?
00:16:49.279 --> 00:16:58.320
And that stuff's been very fun too, but but it is always fun to get back to the heart of the matter, you know, when it comes to some of this stuff.
00:16:58.639 --> 00:17:05.440
Sort of you it is and it would you say that's where your creator stuff, creator owned stuff comes in, stuff like out of Alcatraz or Kid Maroon.
00:17:05.680 --> 00:17:08.079
Yeah, that even that one, it's like and she could fly.
00:17:08.160 --> 00:17:14.319
I mean, that there's similar themes there where that the main character is a teenage girl named Luna, and she is very much trapped by her own mind.
00:17:14.400 --> 00:17:18.079
And and in Alcatraz and in Alcatraz the characters are doing the exact same thing.
00:17:18.160 --> 00:17:26.240
They're they're breaking out of the most famous prison in the world, and and then they're finding themselves still confined, and so they're really pushing against all of that.
00:17:26.400 --> 00:17:29.519
So yeah, yeah, and that's not the only thing that I focus on.
00:17:29.599 --> 00:17:34.799
I think it's just I really I feel like I can probe my deeper consciousness when it comes to creator own books.
00:17:34.960 --> 00:17:41.759
Sure, because a leader as a writer, you know, I'm curious, do you tend to do you tend to listen to music when you write?
00:17:41.839 --> 00:17:45.119
Is that uh part of of of the way the process works for you?
00:17:45.359 --> 00:17:49.440
So I I'm I'm hugely into music of all genres and stuff like this.
00:17:49.519 --> 00:17:52.480
And I will even confess it's funny to say this on a podcast.
00:17:52.640 --> 00:17:55.039
I rarely listen to podcasts in the car.
00:17:55.119 --> 00:17:56.559
I I only listen to music.
00:17:56.640 --> 00:17:59.039
I just I'm I'm just always knee deep in music.
00:17:59.519 --> 00:18:01.119
It's the right way to go, actually.
00:18:01.359 --> 00:18:01.759
Yeah.
00:18:02.319 --> 00:18:03.119
I just can't.
00:18:03.200 --> 00:18:10.160
I just I grew up, my dad always had music on in the car, meaning a lot of vinyl in the house, and then CDs, and then 5.1, and blah, blah, blah.
00:18:10.400 --> 00:18:15.759
Music was constant, and so it's constant for me, but when I'm writing, I it's totally silent.
00:18:15.920 --> 00:18:27.680
And the only reason is because when I write to music, what I have found is that when I read it without the music, I go, this wasn't this isn't as good as I thought it was when I was writing it to music.
00:18:27.839 --> 00:18:28.160
Yeah.
00:18:28.400 --> 00:18:47.359
There's once in a while, I haven't done this in a while, but if I have to do like an extended action set piece or something that's very kinetic in a script, usually in a film or TV script, there may be a short set list that is propulsive enough to keep me moving through it, but it's rare.
00:18:47.519 --> 00:18:56.640
I usually am just, I have to, it has to be just like radio silent for me to vote so that I when I read it and it's radio silent again, I'm like, it's it's just on its own merit.
00:18:57.119 --> 00:19:00.720
But I am constantly listening to music in the car.
00:19:00.880 --> 00:19:07.200
And so when I'm driving around, I am listening to, I mean, I have playlists for every project I'm working on.
00:19:07.440 --> 00:19:10.160
I have huge playlists for like an independent feature.
00:19:10.240 --> 00:19:11.519
I've been trying to get it off the ground.
00:19:11.599 --> 00:19:26.000
I've got um there's a genre thriller that I'm doing with our studio that it leans heavily on like you know, sometimes I just port a whole thing in where it's like it's Carpenter's synth score from Assault on Pre-State 13.
00:19:26.240 --> 00:19:29.200
You know, but like here, I'll tell you some of this.
00:19:29.519 --> 00:19:33.359
Like, I have a playlist here for I have an Alcatraz playlist.
00:19:33.440 --> 00:19:39.680
Most of them are period songs, but it's like because I was what's interesting about Alcatraz is it's June 1962.
00:19:40.480 --> 00:19:48.319
So you're post-war America, early, like the some rock and roll, but also more country-oriented, right?
00:19:48.720 --> 00:20:06.240
But it's like everything, so it's what it this is a short one too, because I didn't have much that I had, but it was like it's Cupid by Sam Cook, Big Bad John by Jimmy Dean, yeah, Runaway, Del Shannon, Spanish Harlem, Benny King, Walk Right Back, The Everly Brothers, Running Scared, Roy Orbison, uh Apache.
00:20:06.799 --> 00:20:08.480
Right, just like doing things like that.
00:20:08.720 --> 00:20:18.160
But then I get to I mean, the the the uh I have a huge one here too for the the the genre piece I'm doing at the studio.
00:20:18.400 --> 00:20:24.079
So it's like liquid liquid, Tommy James and the Chandels, Shimmy Shimmy Yahs on here.
00:20:24.319 --> 00:20:25.119
Oh, it's awesome.
00:20:25.279 --> 00:20:28.319
Hard 11 Pond magazine human league.
00:20:28.400 --> 00:20:32.640
I mean there's there's all kinds of stuff, and like it's all over the map too, stylistically.
00:20:33.200 --> 00:20:36.960
Um it's just stuff to get me into the into the vibe.
00:20:37.119 --> 00:20:40.880
You know, it's really the vibe of the characters and the world I'm trying to create.
00:20:41.119 --> 00:20:44.160
So just pulling that stuff, it it becomes intrinsic to it.
00:20:44.240 --> 00:20:51.200
And I think when it comes to needle drops and in stuff I'm making in post, that's so important and and key to me.
00:20:51.599 --> 00:20:57.759
It's brainstorming in the car and then silence, and then I come back to it in post when we're actually dropping it in.
00:20:58.079 --> 00:20:59.440
Yeah, that's awesome.
00:20:59.680 --> 00:21:06.240
Well, uh, Chris, thanks so much for taking the time to hang out with us and chat about your process and all the cool stuff that you're up to.
00:21:06.319 --> 00:21:07.440
I really appreciate you doing so.
00:21:07.599 --> 00:21:08.240
Oh, yeah, man.
00:21:08.319 --> 00:21:08.559
Thank you.
00:21:08.640 --> 00:21:09.039
This is great.
00:21:09.200 --> 00:21:11.759
I appreciate you taking the time, and uh I'll talk to you soon.
00:21:12.000 --> 00:21:12.319
Awesome.
00:21:12.400 --> 00:21:13.279
Thanks so much, Jason.
00:21:13.519 --> 00:21:13.759
Take care.
00:21:14.319 --> 00:21:14.559
Bye.
00:21:14.960 --> 00:21:22.319
Chris Cantwell is known for comics like Doctor Doom and TV shows like AMC's Halt and Catch Fire.
00:21:22.559 --> 00:21:26.880
If you'd like to hear more of our talk, give us a ring on the Waste Oids Hotline.
00:21:27.200 --> 00:21:28.960
One eight seven seven waste.
00:21:29.599 --> 00:21:31.440
Let us know what you think.
00:21:31.680 --> 00:21:35.279
And hear a haunted message just for you.
00:22:33.200 --> 00:22:40.880
Jamie Wolf is a Los Angeles-based artist known for her short films and animated music videos.
00:22:41.039 --> 00:22:51.839
One of her first works, Roommates, from 2016, which participated at the time in all these festivals and screenings.
00:22:55.759 --> 00:22:58.240
It's hand-drawn on paper, frame by frame.
00:22:58.400 --> 00:23:01.119
I use ink in a light box.
00:23:01.359 --> 00:23:02.400
Come with me.
00:23:02.720 --> 00:23:04.160
Alright, welcome to my studio.
00:23:04.240 --> 00:23:11.759
I had to do some digging, but I found the original frames for roommates so you can kind of get a feel for how I don't know, all this goes down.
00:23:11.920 --> 00:23:15.279
So I'll pull a frame so you can see it's all an animation bond.
00:23:15.519 --> 00:23:19.359
Each frame is drawn on paper, lime work.
00:23:19.920 --> 00:23:24.319
We later digitize it, and voila, an animation is born.
00:23:24.559 --> 00:23:34.640
And yeah, so use brush and ink initially at the time, because I found that um, you know, when you animate with a brush, you lose a little bit of control.
00:23:34.799 --> 00:23:37.119
So your lines are a little shaky, a little vibraty.
00:23:37.359 --> 00:23:43.279
You know, however you're feeling in a day, it's very directly referenced in like the steadiness of your line.
00:23:43.599 --> 00:23:49.759
So I found that when br you know working frame by frame this way, it kind of eliminates a smoothness.
00:23:49.920 --> 00:23:55.119
It creates like a frequency, a vibrating energy through the literal vibrating lines.
00:23:55.440 --> 00:23:59.039
And it tapped into some kind of similar anxiety that was feeling at the time.
00:23:59.440 --> 00:24:12.640
Since then, I've continued using Brash and ink whenever possible because it um I found it's like actually quite useful for tapping in to many inner anxieties and frequencies that I'm feeling within myself.
00:24:13.039 --> 00:24:16.240
It's such an expressive piece, Jamie.
00:24:16.400 --> 00:24:25.599
And the way you have handled the sounds is excellent and contributes so well to that desperate tension that is there throughout the video.
00:24:26.160 --> 00:24:33.839
Roommates was the first thing I saw of your work, and I immediately thought about sharing it through this show.
00:24:34.160 --> 00:24:39.519
Now, Jamie, do you have some of those ink drawings around to show us?
00:24:39.839 --> 00:24:41.839
Do we have any inky drawings around me?
00:24:42.000 --> 00:24:42.720
Are you kidding me?
00:24:42.799 --> 00:24:44.559
I'm surrounded by them.
00:24:44.720 --> 00:24:47.839
I have to have things in front of me or I forget that they exist.
00:24:48.400 --> 00:24:51.039
How did I build this develop this style, you asked?
00:24:51.279 --> 00:24:57.119
Well, I think, you know, it's just that act of doing it over and over and doing it for a long time and doing it every day.
00:24:57.279 --> 00:25:05.440
You know, you you try things out, you you see what sticks, what doesn't stick, repeat what's working for you for a while, and when it stops working, it shifted a little bit.
00:25:05.680 --> 00:25:17.839
And by that I mean, you know, literally the way you're drawing curves and arcs and lines and shapes, but also, you know, attributes of bodies, ways of expressing different emotions and time and spacing.
00:25:18.000 --> 00:25:21.200
You just keep doing it until things start working.
00:25:21.279 --> 00:25:23.119
And when things are working, don't drop them.
00:25:23.200 --> 00:25:25.279
Like keep doing it again and again.
00:25:25.759 --> 00:25:26.960
Does that really mean I don't know.
00:25:27.119 --> 00:25:31.440
Also just embracing what, you know, who I am, you know, I'm messy.
00:25:31.519 --> 00:25:32.720
So that just kind of becomes part of it.
00:25:32.799 --> 00:25:36.079
You know, like this messiness, you know, I won't try to do it clean and rendered.
00:25:36.319 --> 00:25:38.880
Who do you consider your biggest influences?
00:25:39.279 --> 00:25:42.559
You know, if I name my number one influences, this is tough.
00:25:42.799 --> 00:25:47.039
But I guess my entire life I've been looking a lot at Red Grooms, you know.
00:25:47.440 --> 00:25:53.039
I'm super inspired by the frenetic energy within all the marks he makes.
00:25:53.200 --> 00:25:59.599
He's able, it's almost like he's able to capture enti the energy of entire cities within, you know, one figure.
00:25:59.759 --> 00:26:06.960
I also just love how playful it all is and not taking itself too seriously, but having depth within that.
00:26:07.200 --> 00:26:15.920
Um, Gary Panter, I guess for a similar reason, you know, just like the dense ink and the lively nature of his figures and forms.
00:26:16.079 --> 00:26:34.640
I also have pulled a lot from the Chicago Imagist and really, you know, fine artists like that that are looking at the cartoon form from an artistic express you know point of view, and you know, dissecting them and abstracting them and kind of looking at them from a separate lens.
00:26:34.960 --> 00:26:37.920
As for animators, I mean, number one, Sally Crookshank.
00:26:38.079 --> 00:26:46.000
I think she was the first animator that I ever saw that was thinking about character animation, but in an experimental way.
00:26:46.319 --> 00:26:57.279
You know, as the way they move and the way they act tell as much about the character as it the character's physical performance, which I find really inspiring.
00:27:12.400 --> 00:27:16.640
How did you end up making a lyric video for the Rolling Stones?
00:27:16.960 --> 00:27:20.400
Honest answer, it's the internet is crazy.
00:27:20.480 --> 00:27:25.359
I think I just happened to be right place, right time in the eye line of someone who was hiring for them.
00:27:25.599 --> 00:27:30.240
And yeah, it was a really honor that it worked out and it was fun to work on.
00:28:08.640 --> 00:28:10.079
The big ones.
00:28:10.480 --> 00:28:19.279
I'm prepared to stay locked up here for two months, drinking and eating dust, cardboard and small spiders.
00:28:19.519 --> 00:28:27.039
I will leave when the world has been recovered from the clutches of robots by the Boca Juniors fanatics.
00:28:27.359 --> 00:28:35.440
You in the USA don't know the Bocker Juniors fanatics, but when you meet them, you'll know what I'm talking about.
00:28:35.759 --> 00:28:40.240
Well, Jamie, thank you very much for stopping by.
00:28:40.559 --> 00:28:45.599
It was a pleasure to be able to share your work with the people who watch us.
00:28:46.000 --> 00:28:52.319
Let's close this show with a very nice video that Jamie made for the band Local Natives.
00:28:52.559 --> 00:28:55.839
The song is called Statues in the Garden.
00:28:56.160 --> 00:28:59.920
Oh, and she also did the artwork for their EP.
00:29:00.640 --> 00:29:02.799
See you in the next episode.
00:29:03.119 --> 00:29:04.319
Good night.
00:29:04.799 --> 00:29:06.000
Bye bye.
