Dev to Dev S03 E03 - Lana Bachynski

speaker-1: Whey! It's another episode of DevToDev, the podcast about everyday video game developers and why they do what they do every day. This week's season three, episode three, with Lana Bashinski. Lana is a fellow podcaster on the DLC channel. We've both podcasted over there, both on the main show, on the paid DLC and and on some bonus content. Lana and I never work together directly, but we're connected, we're sort of in similar circles and I really appreciate her taking the time to sit down with me and go through a history. It was great to understand her journey into animation, falling in love with stop motion animation, wanting to get into video game animation but not really knowing how until a professor gave her the inspiration. And then finding a way through Blizzard and through Riot and on some fascinating projects. Some great insight into clean culture and ways to to grow it and ⁓ work through boundaries and to find new ways to to grow and be successful as a team. So important when you're building a video game, it's trying to find those connections and those ways to bond. I think Lana's a gives some great insight to how she goes about that. That's very inspiring. We also navigate the complexities of saying her name as a British person versus an American person. She was very gracious to clarify how you say it depending on how you say the word banana. So that helps a lot. Took some pressure off. But anyway, hope you enjoyed this conversation. I really enjoyed it. Lana's great and yeah. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. As always, you know where Dev2Dev is, in the usual social places, on the Patreon, all of season one and two now archived, all the video versions of season three, available for a simple subscription. Please sign up if you can. If you're just discovering the show now, there's two whole seasons worth of content on that Patreon that you can access from as little as a dollar a month. If you can support the show, that would really help. I'd really appreciate with the hosting fees and all the bits and bulbs it takes to make a show like this. I appreciate everyone that already does. I appreciate those that continue to do so. Please share the podcast as much as you can. Discovery is my hardest challenge. I mentioned a couple of I think maybe at the end of season two, I was setting up an appearance on the the level design lobby, which is a really great podcast you should go check out. Max was very kind to n navigate our schedules and just recorded that yesterday. Excited for that to come out next month. But yeah, you can find me on the interwebs if you if you're curious about other stuff that I've done and do. But anyway. I am waffling as always, so let's sit back and listen into another episode of Dev to Dev with Lana Bashinski. Yay, thank you for taking the time. Now, right off the top, as we've said before, I'm gonna have a hard time saying your name right, 'cause I'm English.
speaker-0: Which is legal. I always say to the you know, consternation of my my friends and peers, ⁓ that if you s however you say the A in that yellow fruit that you might put in a smoothie is how you're allowed to say the A in my name. If you say Lana but you also say banana, it's legal.
speaker-1: Well now you've confused me 'cause now I'm a hypocrite. ⁓ so hello I'll say it Lan There you go. Yes. Hey Lana, thank you for ⁓ taking the time. Excited for you to be a part of the podcast. I always like to kick this conversation off with my favourite first question What first inspired you about video games?
speaker-0: That is a great first question. probably the thing that first inspired me about video games was their i illicitness in my household. They were the forbidden fruit that was only found elsewhere. ⁓ the very inspiring, cool thing to to push the button and see the thing go on the screen. I I feel like that first time because we didn't have video games in the house for Years and years and years. Computer games were eventually allowed, but not video games. We going to my friend's house, second grade, she's got a a Super Nintendo, and pushing the button and seeing the guy on the screen jump was it was like magic. It was like fireworks in my mind of being like, I can't believe the buttons I'm pushing here are having the effect on that thing over there. And that fun was immediate and amazing. Now, what first inspired me about video games is like a developer, the probably the first th time I ever thought about a video game in d in a development way that was a direct line to my career was much, much, much later. ⁓ I always said I wanted to make video games, but I had no concept of what that mean meant or what my role in that might be. But playing Jack and Daxter, and s I still think of it as the best double jump in a game that's ever existed. And it just had this juicy timing. You hit it and it was snappy and like a really st ⁓ strong stretch pose into that really wide pose at the top with little Daxter hanging off of Jack's shoulder was so satisfying and so cool. And I remember just double jumping around all the time just so I could see it.
speaker-1: Okay, cool. So so interactivity, like being able to make something move on the screen, caught you straight away. ⁓ I I'm fascinated by the illicitness of them, right? So ⁓ they were they were the forbidden fruit, they were the th the thing you couldn't you couldn't freely play. What what do you think that outside of the obvious, right? Like we're always drawn to the thing we're supposed to not not mess around with, but was that all it was? Was it just the fact that it was the forbidden fruit, or was there something about video games in particular Being forbidden that kind of attracted you even more.
speaker-0: think it was just I've always always loved games. Despite not being like a video game household, we were always a games household, like played tons of games, like from sports and things outside to my parents making up games for us on rainy days or in long car rides or whatever it might be and tons of board games and cards, lots of like euchre growing up. So games competition was a big thing and video games having this very satisfying loop of being able to say, I'm gonna try and do this thing. And even if it's the hard thing, it's doing the hard platforming section. It's getting through, you know, the wall is coming up behind you and Mario. And if you can do it fastest and not die, there is like a a competition that is both everybody rooting for you, rooting against you, because they want to try that that competitive feeling that can be very self-contained and very self-satisfying. ⁓ I think was the part that really hit me and made me want to do it again and again and again.
speaker-1: Got it, okay. I love that. Yeah, I love that the yeah, that that competition element that and the fact that games were such a part of your life. Y growing up in your house, did you have any siblings that were also gamers?
speaker-0: Yeah. ⁓ all my siblings are. I've got a twin sister, so nat competition built in from the first breath. ⁓ and then I've got two older brothers as well. And when we have did eventually we got a computer in the house, it was for documents. But we did eventually, you know, convince my parents to get ⁓ some limited computer games. We had a disc that was one ⁓ one, only the best games that came in like the What I think of as the wallet fold out of photos that you would see in a cartoon where somebody's like, Here's my family of CDs that you'd get at the grocery store. And it had like fifteen different Pac-Man ripoffs and lemmings and a bunch of random little things like that. We were allowed to play for limited chunks of time. ⁓ and eventually we got Jeddah Knight Dark Forces 2 in Mysteries of the Sith. And we would set up At the computer, the one computer chair, that was this wooden chair we had in the house, and then all the footstools around. And then you would set up a thing where you could make it say after twenty minutes, advance to the next level, or after so many kills, advance to the next level, and like rotating levels on the internet in sort of group competitive play, but not like ⁓ leaderboards. But every single time the level switched, we would always set it to a timer. Twenty minutes or fifteen minutes and then it would switch. And then you'd switch around the seats. So s one of the siblings is playing and the other three siblings are sitting on footstools waiting for their turn and cheering them on and being like, ⁓ there's somebody who was around that corner, like whatever it was. It was a very it was one of the the times that was very formative in my in my mind of sitting around that computer with my siblings rotating on those footstools and just waiting for your turn.
speaker-1: Your own version of Love Lord Life. I love that. Yeah. ⁓ and and where where did you grow up?
speaker-0: I grew up sort of in three main cities, but we we moved around a bunch from my my dad's work. not as a part of my dad's work, but my dad's industry was sort of going through consolidation and so you get moved around. And mostly in Calgary from roughly when I was born to about twelve years old with a stint in this place called Fort McMurray, which is quite quite north in ⁓ northern Canada or northern Alberta. And then Edmonton, where I say I lived most of my conscious childhood. So more of my brain forming twelve to eighteen years old in Edmonton, where I went to art school and had a had a great grand old time in Edmonton, Alberta.
speaker-1: And and okay, so growing up in in a a relatively cold part of Canada, presumably
speaker-0: Yes. Even despite Fort McMurray being much further north, more consistently cold in Fort Mac, very, very dark. You know, the sun is rising at like eleven AM and setting at two PM, like short days. ⁓ Edmonton will consistently spike into being the coldest place on earth. There's something about its location that even though it's not, you know, the North Pole, it will spike up to that negative eighty. I guess spike down to that negative eighty Celsius for a few days and have a have a rough one.
speaker-1: And I I presume that motivated more indoor activities, more more more gaming, more things.
speaker-0: I mean Edm West Edmonton Mall, formerly World's Largest Mall, had what I still say is one of the greatest arcades that has ever existed. It's gone now. Palladium. Those who know know. There's websites dedicated to remembering Palladium. But getting the Palladium like time cards where it's like, I'm gonna be here for five hours and I'm beating Jurassic Park and not because I'm good, but because I can swipe an unlimited number of times. Woo! Now that's an afternoon baby.
speaker-1: Okay, yeah, so arcades were a big thing. So gaming in general and I presume you know, plenty of competition in the arcades as well. ⁓ yeah. ⁓ so this comp this competitive thread kinda runs through a lot of your early gaming by the sounds of it. It sounds like e you know, either co op or comp competitive, yeah.
speaker-0: Yeah. ⁓ there's a also like a local land called Fragapalooza that I used to go to and have like a honestly a pretty rough time being one of the fifteen women at the three hundred person land, whatever it was. ⁓ but going and just demolishing people and Unreal Tournament 2004, few are more satisfying. Like, ⁓ yeah, I did show up wearing my little skirt and my little time and then I won. And how rough was that for you? Man, I don't know.
speaker-1: Yes, person who initially looked out on you and then was thoroughly embarrassed. Love it.
speaker-0: Competition, definitely my early life, and definitely don't still feel very competitive all the time every day. Problematic.
speaker-1: It doesn't sound like that's left you left you. ⁓ so so you mentioned kind of, you know, being being drawn to interactivity, being drawn to competition as a Katuber by the sounds of it, but then at some point, you know, Jack and Daxum inspired you to make games. Talk me through that. Like did you understand how games were made? Did you just have this inspiration of like I don't care, I wanna make them? Like how did that come to you?
speaker-0: Wish it came to me. I wish I had a better brain that I could have connected the pieces. I would say so many things around. It's like reading, you know, some kind of young adult book where the protagonist is like, here's some things that I think could be possible about the future, but ⁓ shucks. Who knows what that could mean? And you're like, it's the most obvious foreshadowing of your life. So I'm playing Jack and Daxter, I'm registering. Like these animations are great. ⁓ as I mentioned earlier, I went I started going to art school in seventh grade. They had this you have to submit a portfolio, you had to prove at the time, you don't anymore. But the school Victoria, composite school for the performing and visual arts, sounds very fancy, but it was kind of this run-down inner city school for the weird kids. But you had to apply with a portfolio even when you were eleven years old and prove that you wanted to make art. And then once you got into the school, they had such a variety of art options and all the normal school options too. But starting in, you know, just drawing and drama, sort of the classics, and then branching all the way from like welding to cheerleading and jazz and all the dance dance dance varieties and ⁓ video audio ⁓ not A V, but they had video, radio, and photography with a full darkroom in there. So learning how to develop film and web design and new media and an animation class. This is the first time I I took an animation class. And then as soon as I saw that, I went, ⁓ animation. This is like that thing that I really liked. And started animating all the time. But I thought it was this weird hobby that I enjoyed. So I would show up really early to school. I would get there way before Any before the teachers frequently and I'd just be waiting on the steps, being like, Can I play on the computers? And they'd be like, Sure, weirdo. Come on in. And I'd be animating in the lab ⁓ before class started, going there at lunch, and then afterwards I'd babysit my teacher's kids and I would animate after school from three to five thirty when they would go home. And the whole time animating, like, what a fun thing I'm doing. I wish I could figure out how to work in video games. And like not sticking those ideas ever together. But ⁓ my teacher, shout out Mr. D, always the best. at some point, I think heard me saying out loud those two thoughts back to back. And in the his classroom he had posters from ⁓ Warcraft three, he had ⁓ posters for a bug's life. He got somehow like from the movie theaters, like the big cardboard setup stuff from the Incredibles, like he had all these animated things around. And he goes, Lana, you got it, just come here for one second. And he like See these things that are all around you? People get paid to animate those. And I was like, ⁓ that's what my job could be in video games. He's like, Yeah, I thought you knew that. Like, I didn't, I'm dumb. And so it was like a a light switch from that moment of him pointing out that animation, this weird hobby that I had, was my in to doing this career that I wanted to do. And he helped me put my demo reel together. He helped me to apply like find good animation schools and apply to all these different universities. He had me apply to all these scholarships, which I won, which was fantastic and really offset the cost of going to school in the States. And ⁓ was just this massive support in what felt like this crazy push in the last six months of high school to get myself out the door and ready to go to art school. And so I did.
speaker-1: Hmm. I love that. That's such a great story. And the fact that you So I want to draw that line. Was it was it literally the the motion of Jack and Daxter that inspired you to be an animator, or was there something else in human motion, in you know, the the way people w were you sort of drawn to the motion of humans in a way that made you want to animate, or was it just the video games?
speaker-0: Say that because it they felt like distinct ideas to me, animating was a fun thing I did that was a way to express st little stories more than the actual animation. And then when I got into animation school, it became like that tactile expressiveness and how economical could you be with an idea and what your frames were to express emotion in a really punchy way. But video games was always for the fun of video games. And when I stuck the two together, video games was always the career goal. But I think I get I think I find myself like running into animators a lot and they'll ask me like what inspires me as an animator, like about that heart. And I like that merging of being on the computer and doing acting, 'cause I did a bunch of acting and stuff growing up and my ⁓ parents met on stage. So like theater was a huge part of my life. But I enjoy the acting part of animation less than just like making something look cute and move around in a cute way. And video games, animation was always just my the way to work on video games. And so people, now that I do art direction, they're like, ⁓ do you miss animation a lot? And I'm like, ⁓ I don't miss doing animation because I'm still doing the thing which I really wanted to do, which is make games. And so there's sort of a they're related, but they are not a Venn diagram of my my complete interests of what is great about games and what is ⁓ I still think of as like my favorite hobby, which happened to be my career of animation.
speaker-1: You just happen to have found a way to smash the two together and and and make a make a career out of it.
speaker-0: Yeah, as animation like I grew into it, the joy of it really was making the game feel responsive and the game feel fun. And the pu animation was the puzzle piece to the game being great and not the game being the train that animation could ride on into being the set piece the or the show piece.
speaker-1: I mean you're talking my language as a game field designer, that's my that's my language. And I'm curious, you know, at that time, like you mentioned, you know, Bugs Life The Incredibles, right, Pixar was a thing, right? There were great animated digital animation houses around there, but it was the was it the interactivity of video games still that pulled you you know, you didn't feel the draw to just animate a movie, you wanted to animate a video game.
speaker-0: Yeah. In university there was a strange phenomenon that I think of going to university for animation, especially the school I went to, I went to the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, which is I went there because it was a animation hub. I knew ILM was in the Bay Area, Pixar, Tippet Studio, and Blizzard North was up there, EA, tons of video games, Ubisoft, bunch of video games in the area. And I was like, if I, even if this school sucks for some reason, I bet I can still find somebody who'll teach me what I need to know. But because of that proximity to Pixar showing up at school and saying, ⁓ I want to work for Blizzard, which was the dream, everybody was like, You want to work in video games? You're stupid for thinking that. There was a Games are lesser than because objectively animation quality in games, because of performance reasons, because of like a million other things, the complex puzzle of putting pieces together, animation is objectively worse in video games at the time for sure. And there's this idea that if you didn't want to make films, you didn't know what you wanted from being an animator and you were a fool for thinking otherwise. And so there's a big amount of pressure to want to make movies. And so I did feel a halfway pull to being like, ⁓ maybe I was wrong about what I wanted to do, but I never wanted to work at I mean, I would have taken a job at Pixar. Don't get me wrong. But I wanted to work at creature houses. So animating monsters, animating, you know, robots, punching each other. So Tippet was my ⁓ it was Blizzard or Tippet were the two Dream Studios, an ILM, big one in there. If working on a Star Wars would have been fantastic. But the interactivity of games and It was really the replayability of games that stuck it to me. So when I got my internship at Blizzard, which was a cool first job to have after all the dreaming, it was animating something. And every time you see it, if you love a movie, you'll watch it fifty times. That's crazy. You watch the movie fifty times, but I play a thousand hours of a video game. And see that same animation. And if I'm losing the video game, I feel differently. If I'm winning the Vinny game, I feel differently. If I see somebody else using it, I feel differently. And you see it all the time and it you just feel steeped in this your work and it changes context and it always feels interesting and satisfying to see. Hmm.
speaker-1: Yeah, I gr I I get that. I very much empathise with that and just that ability to have the thing you made get played by people, replayed by people, enjoyed by people as opposed in a in a more you know, in a more interactive way, in a more organic way than just like it's always the same every time. Yeah, I like I like that a lot. ⁓ and y and so you mentioned sort of Blizzard was a target. What what was it that drew you to to Blizzard? Were you were you a big fan of their games? Was there a particular game that drew you or was it just a company? What was it?
speaker-0: I love Starcraft. That was like one of the core. There's like three games that we ever had, other than 101, only the best games, CD. There were sort of the the games that we were allowed to play was StarCraft and Jedi Knight and Dark Forces 2, Mysteries of the Sith, and Unreal Tournament. Those were our three games that we ever owned. And then we never got a computer that was capable of playing any more contemporary games than that. ⁓ we tried to get Warcraft 3. And we're like, it's 3D. ⁓ my gosh, it's so exciting. We got like one frame a minute. We could not. We were way below min spec on that thing. And that was it. And so StarCraft, first of all, you could burn a copy of StarCraft. Ooh, baby, can you get a LAN party going like s just Maybe that's not something I should admit, but you could take StarCraft and you're like, okay, I've got five friends. I got some friends who are really modern who either brought their PCs over for a land party or their parent had a laptop they loaned them for the weekend. And how quickly you could get a land party going locally for StarCraft until BNet spun up was like so fast. And so we play a ton of it with you know kids in the basement, my brother upstairs on some laptop that he would get or a friend upstairs and just A four person or five person free for all happening within the household. Ooh, that was a good time. And so StarCraft being one of like the places of fondest memories, that was Blizzard was the target for me because of that that joy and the and the gameplay and the competitive scene. Like it was it had all the makings of the things that I liked. The little characters would dance and the campaign was so satisfying. There's just everything about it spoke to things I liked in video games.
speaker-1: Yeah, it sounds like all the pieces you love in one one perfect perfect experience. And and and so you land an internship at Blizzard, an animation internship. How did that intern hap internship happen and what was that like to to land that?
speaker-0: I mean it was surreal, honestly. ⁓ I was when I was going to school in San Francisco, a GDC Game Developers Conference is also in San Francisco. And I would volunteer there every year, which as you know, a destitute college student, getting the all access badge felt like the most glamorous thing that you could do, this expensive thing for free that came to my town. I got a place to stay. I got the badge. I got I was an RA in school, so I had food to eat. It was this crazy free event that showed up, and it was the the biggest event, one of the biggest events in games every year. And so I met a really good group of pals there that we still keep up with like literally daily. The chat is popping off. And I wasn't actually tracking the job pages at the time, but one of my buddies from GDC was like, ⁓ my gosh, I've never seen this before. Blizzard has an animation intern. role opening up. You should apply. And I'm like, I yes, of course I should apply. Of course I should apply. I applied immediately and the thing that I put in my demo reel that I felt like because my focus had been on, you know, this pressure to work in film and work on monster stuff. And so I had very a variety of different characters. I didn't just have bipeds. I'd a lot of people applying to games assume ⁓ I'll do a bunch of walk cycles because you know you need cycles in games, but I didn't have I think I only had one walk cycle and it was a crazy monster walk cycle and not a guy vanilla walking down a street kind of thing. And had all this body mechanics, physicality stuff in my reel. Ogre's really terrible animation piece, but ogres like punching the crap out of each other. And ⁓ just all this physical stuff and and monsters. And so I I applied with that demo reel. And I was like, I wonder how quickly I'll they'll write back and sort of staring at the phone. For days, weeks, and then being like, ⁓ I didn't get it. Three months later, I got an email and I remember I was sitting with a buddy of mine and a teacher when the email rolled in. I'm like, What this says Blizzard Entertainment, that's weird. It says Starcraft something or other, Starcraft intern and I was like, I don't I don't I c I ⁓ it was like everything No sound. Whatever we're talking about, I don't remember. Ejected from my mind. Shaking mouse, going over and opening up the email and them saying, Well, you know, we'd love you to do this animation test. And we'd be like, everybody, shut up right now, you know. Freaking out in the lab. And the test was crazy in retrospect. It was rig and animate a character. You have seven days, five animations, full rig. I'm not a tech artist. I'm one of the worst riggers of all time. ⁓ but rigid animate this character. You have seven days. Good luck. ⁓ and immediately conspired with people around me being like, ha, well, how do I get through this? We ended up taking the mesh and doing a skin wrap to Norman, who's one of the oldest character rigs that exist. I think he was rigged in the 80s or 70s or something like that. Really archaic ⁓ 3D animation guy, Norman. So skin wrapped. basically it was thrall to n Norman did these five animations and my with the optional they had it was like a run, a death, an idol, an attack, and then an optional. Whatever you want optional animation. And my optional animation was the ogre drinking out of a stein, like choosing and drinking and then slamming it on the table. And the when I submitted the work they said it was really cool that I put the Stein animation. I didn't know Stein's was like a big blizzard cultural thing. They give the Stein away at two years. Yeah, yeah. So they got Stein's galore and ⁓ I ended up being down to me and one other guy at the end and having that phone call. It was like a 30 minute phone call. Just like are you normal? And me being in a kind of ⁓ and later they told me that
speaker-1: Yeah, I see I see how.
speaker-0: They I only got the job. I mean it was down to me and one other guy. So I, you know, got the chops, but they told me that I got the job because the hiring manager made an embarrassing joke to the other guy who had more experience, had a slightly better reel, but he was too ashamed of the joke that he made and they hired me instead. And so Woo! Keep it humble You know, just Every job you get, it's like such a great lesson, and always like you never know why you get the thing, and you never know why you don't get the thing. And I feel like knowing that at the time was kind of like bummer. But it just such a good lesson to have with me for the rest of my career. That's like how it kicks off. And so that's how I I got in and you know, just made that good impression through the internship. Just hungry and and quick, animating really quick. f speedily was a specialty of mine and you know, just sunk it and it stuck around.
speaker-1: That's great. And and was that so that was so that was you moving from Sanford that was on site in Irvine, yeah. So you you you took that into so you moved down to LA or Orange County and and did the the on site. Internships are hard though, like there's a hard period. I mean it was for four months, but you know, it's low if any pay and like you've got to move somewhere and it's on site too. So how was that like or did you feel all the pressure? Were you nervous? Like how did it feel?
speaker-0: I feel like, you know, once I got there, I had the confidence of ⁓ not having ego and knowing I I'm here to learn and just like whatever I can possibly learn. Maybe this is the only three months I get. I better soak it all in and not show up as though I own the world and I I know better because I'm the next people, I'm the next gen coming in or anything like this. And so kick the ego to the curb on the way there. But it was really. Really hard. The work I actually felt like came really naturally and really easily. And you know, they started me at things that was work that nobody wanted to do at really low level. I did all the flail animations for the the Phoenix unit in Legacy of the or not Legacy of the Void, in Heart of the Swarm that could pick the the units up in StarCraft and then they would flail because they were floating in the air. I did every single one of those. But it was like enough different units that it was like a couple weeks of time to get through it all, which was just enough time to learn 3D Studio Max, which I wasn't using. I was using Maya, learn the editor, meet everybody. And so by the time I got through all of the lowest level work that started going faster and faster and faster and faster, then they gave me more fun work that other people had critical path work stuff to do. Like you can make everything dance now. Now you can make all the critters and things. And so I got to do what I perceived to be all the fun work while everybody did more ⁓ wrote things but that were gameplay critical path pieces and it was in it was incredibly enjoyable. But the hardest parts were getting paid basically nothing. ⁓ I still had to pay rent in San Francisco and in Irvine. And I guess there was like some drama with previous interns the year before me. and Blizzard got really worried about how they did the interns and at what level they supported the interns. ⁓ the previous intern group Facebook groups were like a newish thing. And they made a Facebook group that was like Blizzard Interns 2011. And then posted like a bunch of photos of them like drinking together. And Blizzard was like, That's no, no, no, no. We did not make you do that. Don't put our name on it. And it was they freaked out. And so they did not provide housing for my year. And so I was paying rent in both places. And I had two roommates that were also interns. And we all slept on the ground in little nests that we made. None of us had a bed. and the Irvine is also known for being sort of in the desert, and there's so many ants. And we didn't know that ants were like a fact of life. And so when the ants showed up after we had a barbecue, everything was clean, but we had just food in a box, like ⁓ donuts on the counter. And it wasn't sealed enough, answer apartment, and we thought we would get in trouble if we told the apartment owners about it. And so every day waking up brushing the ants off you getting ready and then walking the walking the I had a bicycle with no seat 'cause it was free and then riding twenty, thirty minutes to work, standing up on the bicycle so I don't impale myself and getting to the office that way. It was it's weird because it's like one of the hardest times. Like that living was not good. But the internship itself and being at work and meeting everybody and feeling like I could so unabashedly be myself and felt celebrated. Like the people I was were excited to be there and excited that they had sort of like this it felt like people were excited that there's this new young person in the office who was ready to kinda be down to clown, play games, make games and just have a really, really, really good time. So, ⁓ at their earliest convenience, they brought me back in.
speaker-1: So you found your people, you found your space. and and did you so yes, you did your four months at Blizzard. Did you it was a couple of years after that though, before you actually got a full time role.
speaker-0: That's Yes, that's why I said at their earliest convenience. Yeah. Yeah. So I went back and finished my degree 'cause it's ⁓ as a Canadian, it's mandatory for me to have the degree to be able to get the visa to work in the States. So it was a year then and when I w was gonna go graduate, I wrote Blizzard and was like, I'm ready for work. And they were like, We don't have job availabilities because the project that would eventually become Overwatch Just had a hard reset. And rather than firing everybody, they sort of sucked them up onto other teams in the company. And so they said, Can you wait another year? And I said, I will get deported. So no, I cannot. And so I started working, I started applying for three jobs every day for six months basically, just trying to get any other ins. And then I was working at a little studio cod called Visual Inc. Creative, doing what I would call internal marketing for places. So it'd be like Pepsi wants to talk to its people about the future. And then every I learned every corporation is saying the same thing to their people and wants the same picture to reflect that. So drawing doing so much drawing of like here's where we currently are and it looks like an old timey steam or like coal town and all the buildings are brown and there's smog coming out of it. And then a big yellow arrow that's also a bridge that looks to the future, which looks like the Jetsons, and there's bubbles and glass and spaceship. And every single I drew the same picture like fifty times. Just for Pepsi, for HP, for this random tech company, like all these different places want that same picture to talk to their people about the the now. ⁓ and then eventually you know, all the people who would go make Overwatch went back to Overwatch and my former boss texted me at like nine at night and was like, What's up? You wanna move back to Orange County? And I was like, I sure do For a job for a job, to be clear. And he's like, ⁓ yeah, yeah, yeah. Offers in the mail. So I didn't even have to I think my path into it, I didn't have to do the second round interview. When I I think about like my job application, it was thirty minutes for the internship and then they just shipped me the offer when it was available, which I don't know I've never heard anybody else have it was so fortunate that they were like me enough to ju just send me the offer without talking to me again first. It was crazy.
speaker-1: Yeah, that's great. Obviously made such a great impression in those four months and even though time passed. And and you mentioned kind of a lot of illustrating and drawing there. Like did did was that ever a an angle you wanted to take or or was animation always the king?
speaker-0: I liked being animation was always the king because it would be the the that's the path to games. Drawing in games, you're drawing stuff for other people to put stuff in the game. And it's like one step removed. But I really liked the arts education that I had because I feel like it gave me well really well rounded knowledge about things, which I think allows me to do my current job better than I would have if I was solely animation focused. So I have some drawing chops. I have better like long form rendering chops than I have like concept ability. But ⁓ I can I can get by and then ⁓ you know, color theory, like the my school made you do like foundations and all the things and sculpting and if you wanted to go into fine art I could have gone into oil painting, but instead I went to the digital side of it and kept on that way.
speaker-1: Right, but like you say, the the the course gave you a really good broad understanding of art, you know, with a capital A and and helped you set you up for success. That's cool.
speaker-0: I'd say the ⁓ the the closest th thing I ever got away to really deviating from it was stop motion animation. Mm.
speaker-1: Yeah, you mentioned tip it. I wondered if that was an angle, yeah.
speaker-0: Yeah, it's being able to like make a I still have my little there's a guy somewhere on the shelf. I ⁓ there's like a little guy there. Anyway, he's my stop motion doll. Pick it up. ⁓ stop motion, being able to make things with your hands super tactile and feels so great to have a physical thing when you have it. And stop motion was one of the things that made me understand animation and how to do it better than trying to do it in the computer first. There was like this
speaker-1: Okay.
speaker-0: flow state that you could get into of moving something and seeing the onion skinning on the screen and putting a couple frames back, doing quick playback and being, it needs a couple more frames. It just helped it click and understand what timing was, why more frames slowed something down, you know, all the different principles sort of came into really sharp focus in stop motion in a way that made it easier for me to translate it into the computer. But I was taking those animation courses at the same time that I they were so rough and it like, Why do I understand it over here? but I don't understand it over here and eventually I was able to sort of merge that knowledge into the the side of my brain that that could parse how to how to do the job.
speaker-1: Yeah, that's it. I'd never thought of that before 'cause i in many ways stop motion animation is about the journey to a pose. Whereas I think digital animation tends to be about the pose to the pose, right? So I w almost?
speaker-0: ⁓ well ⁓ the stop motion animation i it was so you had to think of everything at the same time, where your things are in the background, the dialogue that's happening, and because it's straight ahead, there's not another way to do it. You just have to crank through it and you're you w does feel like you're kinda sculpting it as you go along because you can play it back and see it happening, you can check when your timing feels a little bit off in it in a really different way. And with Digital, you're sort of fighting the computer for control. ⁓ ironically, animating using like a stepped mode or a stepped approach in the computer was extremely hard for me to do. I put these poses in and stepped mode for anybody listening who doesn't know, it like forces no other poses between every pose you put in, so it'll just sort of pop between them. And some people can use that to see timing, but every single time I would get it into like a spline. Where you'd smooth things out and the computer would start adding in-betweens to it. It would either be extremely slow or extremely fast. I just couldn't see it. ⁓ and the way that I animate in the computer is in a layered technique. ⁓ I'll put a couple big poses in, but then I will do just the hips or just the root ⁓ or the center of gravity and animate that so it feels really good. Even when the the upper body is just sort of like popping between stuff. And get the if I can get the core of the b body or the biggest motion happening in the body feeling like the timing is correct, I can match everything else up to that. But it's literally like do the root and then I do the hips and then the feet and then also do the spine and then the arms and so it'll look really silly. It basically looks like a mess until the moment it doesn't. Yeah.
speaker-1: Yeah. Got it. Okay. Yeah. Until you put that last piece in and it all comes together. ⁓ Okay, so so so you get your text and you you you you you join Blizzards, ⁓ and you move down to you back down to Orange County. and and you're you're doing it, right? You're you're at Blizzard for five years, you you kind of work your way through, you know, from associate to senior, ⁓ working on some, you know, some big competitive games, right? Working on on heroes and ⁓ I also make I love the graphic design for Sick Team Bondy merch. I love that.
speaker-0: Yo, yo. I I did do that. I loved making shirts for the I always wanted something to commemorate what I'd worked on. And I can't I that's really funny that I wrote that. ⁓ I every hero that I would work on, I would it started where we would have like some kind of team event where we'd all be social on site and They would have sort of little competitions and people would make little games for each other to play just at each other's desks. And one time I made for all the animators, I I did this design for a shirt for our team that I went to one of those iron on kiosks at the mall. And I'm like, Can you do custom designs? They're like, sure. And pulled up like their emojis that I could stick on. I was like, no, no, no, no, no. I have this P and G. And I worked with the dude at the mall to get these iron on custom things for like the animation team special custom t-shirt that I made. And everybody was like, Wow, you guys made shirts. This is crazy. And then every sort of team event, I would make the animators a different custom shirt for our group. And then more people wanted in on that. So it started branching out into I wanted to commemorate the heroes that I worked on with these teams, because you're there together for like nine months of working through it. And at the end it Blizzard didn't sponsor it, but everybody would opt in and I had like relationship with a local screen printer that I'd be working back and forth with on the design and making sure they sure the colors were right. And then I would take payments. And I was like a little internal only merch store. And for some reason Blizzard never stopped me from being like Blizzard like on the on the clothes. But I made l a little logo for every hero that I worked on, stamped it on a t-shirt. And anybody who wanted to could buy a t-shirt from me. ⁓ and so that I'm I'm trying to think of all the ones that I've made. I made like 10 or 15 different shirts for the team for heroes, and then I made three or four different ones for team events. ⁓ so I did a I did a lot of merch design w in between everything. I did a lot of weird things because one of the things that felt so great about working on that team is they really let me sort of flex into what I thought was interesting. I think because I was a really fast animator, like I could crank through and get to a shippable quality really quick. And then I'd be like, what else can I do? And they'd be like, Well, everything else is kind of waiting. Like, I'll make a shirt, you know, I'll I'll work on a GDC talk. I will ⁓ I'll I help with a little cinematic thing for BlizzCon or like any little things that came up. I would just be like, I can help with that. I can help with that. And it really let me feel like I could fire on a lot of cylinders from Doing prototypes in game to like what could be fun using the knowledge I had from the engine, which of course was like one of these proprietary little beasts, and it's just anything else in between. So tons of public speaking. They ended up tapping me for doing spokesperson stuff for the company for ⁓ many of the years that I was there. And I really felt like I was embracing myself as a developer and not just an artist, which is I always wanted to be a developer and not just an artist. And I w really felt empowered to do that there. Which is great.
speaker-1: Yeah, I love that. And I I guess, you know, by developer you also, you know, sounds like a key team member, right? You're key to you're not just an animator that shows up and animates on a project. You are a member of a team and you know, it's important to you that that team connects and you know, team you're a team working on a complicated project, especially one that's got live service and has got, you know, patch dates to ship and, you know, big things to to add. You've got you've got to be a community, right? You've got to be a You gotta be a team that wants to work together and it sounded like that was a big part of the experience. It wasn't just the work, it was the community as well.
speaker-0: ⁓ absolutely. I mean the community and like the it's like such a an a sentence that you hear devs say all the time, but I feel I can tell you're really in it or on one side of it that you don't it doesn't really sink in. It's like people wanna work with people that they get along with and they're having a good time with because if we're having fun, we're gonna make something that's fun for other people. And if we are having fun, we're having we're comfortable together, we're gonna give better feedback, we're gonna be more honest. We're in a space of psychological safety that is empowering to making tough choices. Those types of teams are the ones that can make the heart calls and make the heart cuts and do things because they're gonna be there to support each other. And it's not on the other end, if you don't feel safe around somebody, you're not gonna give them tough feedback because you don't know if they're gonna freak out or like whatever it is. And I feel like When I first started on the team, and this is a a big team effort, this is my experience, but not that I was, you know, the only person pushing for this. But I sort of resolved of like people be like, ⁓ I don't wanna ask the designers, somebody ask the designers. Well, I'm like, I'll go ask the designer. I I don't wanna be in this space place where I'm afraid to talk to a designer about something. Why are we scared of this? And so I want it to be my personal mission to not feel that fear. And then the whole team sort of over the course of time and having to work together. And honestly competing with a much bigger, much ⁓ more successful game like League of Legends, you have to bring it, baby. You have to move. And eventually they like physically knocked out some of the walls that were keeping like the designers in a little pen. So they were like, they were like in their little castle. And then they punched the walls out and they're You're actually hanging with the rest of us. And they were Yeah, you're right. You know, and over the course of time everything kind of leveled out and any of the more toxic personalities either got removed from the team or went to a more glamorous team at Blizzard, like, wow, where they could find a limelight. And so by us being sort of the least successful game at the company and one of the more demanding dev cycles where it's like we need to be shipping something every three weeks, it was it sort of pared it down into people who really wanted to be there and were really willing to be there with each other.
speaker-1: Yeah, and you know, I'm sure this is true of other creative fields, but I certainly in video games I think not all of us are like that, right? Not all of us have that in us to be that catalyst and be that I didn't for the longest time. It was only years of you know, a combination of failure, a little bit of success and like realising to your point, like why am I not talking to people, right? We should just be talking to people. ⁓ that I shook myself out of it. I think there's a lot of us that don't have that gene and and having people that are ⁓ you know are can bring people together and get them excited to work together, I think are really is really important. Especially when, you know, not all teams get to work together for long periods of time, right? You know, these projects can be big and people come and go and th things get cancelled, teams fall apart, right, because the project fails, you know. So it's even more important to have that ⁓ you know, those people that can motivate people to come together and build that community. ⁓ So so you spend five years at Blizzard, right, the dream place, right, working on a game that sounded like it was a dream game for you. ⁓ and then you move. ⁓ Tell me about that. Why did that happen and and how did that feel?
speaker-0: ⁓ I mean it felt honestly it felt like somebody died when I left. It was I mean, working at Blizzard for better for worse is v extremely all consuming. And and I learned so much. And, you know, there's you can't talk about working at Blizzard without talking about, you know, what the error of time, you know, you go read Jason Schreier's book and I was working there during that exact time frame. And so there's a lot of things I experienced that I sort of ⁓ the games industry is definitely full of mm I don't know the delicate way to put it, you know, bad actors. ⁓ but from my experience it wasn't any worse than the the same type of being ball I'd meet at a coffee shop. It was just being it was existing there felt the same way as existing in the world as a woman anywhere. and so I had this really overall very positive experience. But for me, ⁓ because I am so hungry and I want more working on heroes was so fantastic and was a dream in so many ways. I felt very supported. I felt very safe, but I wanted to keep learning. I felt like I was starting to reach diminishing returns in the types of things that I could learn about. And I was hungry to sort of be put in another deep end and find another place to like, ⁓ I really do think that building a team and building community is a skill set that I have in something I am I'm good at and wanting to I can't test that until I leave a team and go try and do it again. So I first tried to move around internally to Blizzard, but it sort of coincided directly with them w which I didn't know when I was trying to move around. It ended up coinciding directly with when they were starting to downsize heroes and they canceled the HGC, which is the c was the competitive scene, and they immediately started moving people off of my team onto other teams at the company and There's kind of this frustrating moment where they knew that I was looking to move to other teams, like ⁓ I was looking to move on to Diablo specifically. And instead they kept me on the team, moved other people into the available roles that that were there, and they they told me that it was a choice, it was a concession that they had to make because I was so involved with the community outside and the community on the team that they needed me to soften the blow. To the community and to the team that was still there. And they kind of held me hostage on the team. They said, even if this means that you're only here for three months or three weeks, it's like a choice we have to make for the short-term overall everybody else's health. And I was like, that's crazy. and I said, you know that this is like giving me only one choice, which is to leave the company. And they're Yeah, we know that that's true. So ⁓ that ended up being a really good thing, but to because working at Riot has also been fantastic experience and just in a lot of ways I was really, really able to grow in ways that I I never would have been able to at Blizzard just because of how they're structured and how the teams work. and Riot has some like unique opportunities, namely the community of practice that in the rat, which I'm sure we might talk about, but it I just wasn't allowed to do anything else at Blizzard and so I had to scoot out of there. And it felt really bad to be sort of forced out. But I'm very happy for the choices that I made and ⁓ therefore happy for the choices that they made for me. And so, you know, no regrets, baby.
speaker-1: It's it's a big thing though, isn't it? Like, you know, I I when you work on something or or somewhere where you dream and then, you know, that dream changes. I don't want to use the word sours because it isn't necessarily souring, right? It can just change in a way you don't predict. It's it's a hard c it makes you question, I think well, it certainly made me question like, do I wanna keep doing this? Like if I don't do it here, where else would I even think of doing it? Like I don't know if I wanna do it anywhere else. But ⁓ You know, it sounds like finding Riot you know, finding a spot of Riot, you know, w of which there's a lot of overlap I think between Blizzard and Riot in certainly in Genesis and and in in structure gave you that gave you that freedom. And Did you did you at any point question that, right? Did you at any point think should I just you know leave the industry and go somewhere else? Or were you just determined that this was y nothing's gonna stop you making games?
speaker-0: ⁓ there's no there's no world where the and leaving the industry was an option. There's just I would I would leave and like try and start my own thing before I leave the industry. I can't imagine doing something else with myself, unfortunately. ⁓ given how the industry is. But, you know, Riot being like this big, very successful student, it seemed like a very natural fit for me to I know they had a big R and D department, which is why ⁓ what I was found most appealing about them. And then I knew I'd be able to sell a lot of my skills to them because they have a game in the same genre where I'm like, I'm such an easy onboard. I have to learn your your engine, but I've got the community chops that I can bring over there and I know how to animate for a MOBA. Period. I've got the camera angle. I know the weirdnesses that you have to do to make something look and feel great for this camera angle. And I got good ideas. And you know, they were this was right in twenty eighteen, end of twenty eighteen. So they were just going through their own thing. So I was also like, Hey, I can maybe help with whatever you have going on over there too. And so I was able to pop over to Riot. And the one of the things they brought up in the interview process or in the offer call was, well, we have these communities of practice and there's an expectation that you as a leader would be a part of that. And I was like, okay, I would have done it without the threat. ⁓ but I'll come do that. And I think it's one of the things that is extremely unique about Riot that comes from Riot's weird some of Riot's weirder choices that they've made in the past is once a week they have this reserved time for disciplines to get together to talk about whatever their discipline thinks they want to talk about across the company. So you're an R and D, you're on Ballorant, you're on whatever, you can come together for an hour. reserved hour, 5 p.m. to six p.m. on Tuesdays, and do discipline things. And that and you get a a small budget to do that with. So you can bring in guest speakers to talk to animators about whatever. You can go take a class together somewhere else off site. You can go for dinner together. You can do any sort of team bonding kind of events that you want to do. And through that, ⁓ you meet people from all over the company and even in the you know, pandemic world, it was such a space of reliability to come together and and chat and play games and have this little spike of connection. and ⁓ I ended up when I came over, I was sort of told that this is like the way that it was at the company and every discipline has this and blah blah blah blah blah. But when I showed up, I was like, okay, where's this community of practice? I'm ready to do my job. And it was like three people in a room going, How can we get more people to come to this thing? And I was like, What? ⁓ and so I helped sort of build the animation community, which we call the Riot animation team or the Riot. And ⁓ from just like the few people who were in that room that one day, ⁓ me and Nick Matthews and Adam Turnbull, ⁓ wonderful guys, and into like really regularly. anywhere between sort of fifteen and forty animators coming together, doing live streams together. We have like a big external community presence. Some of our rats, ⁓ Brendan Ressard and Alex Verisamos will go do ⁓ lots of lectures, guest speaking, light box, CTN. We're like very like a bustling community. And ⁓ Riot really appreciates go getters. They love a go-getter. And so somebody who's willing to sort of go the extra mile and do something that's cool and compelling and s really speaks to to players specifically. They really do care about the players. it sort of made a a big impression.
speaker-1: I mean that's the most tailor tailor made for you, Lula, in many ways. Based on what you were doing at Blizzard, you just stepped right into those shoes and and and ran with it, it sounds like. That's that's great that Riot lets you do that and that you know, that you've embraced it so much.
speaker-0: It was really ⁓ fun a little scary to be like, I'm the new guy and I'm here to say you should hang out with me But it worked out. It worked out well.
speaker-1: And I think that's an interesting thread to sort of pull on just briefly is you know, it sounds like your personality type is to, you know, engage with folks and be open, you know, and be excitable and and motivating. You know, I think that's again, that's not everyone that makes video games is like that. And I'm I'm curious if if finding an ability to do that in your job, right? Sounds like you've literally found a way of expressing that. part of you in your daily job as well as all the other sort of work stuff you have to do. Like has that blot made that blossom in you more or was it always there and now you just get the chance to just freely do it?
speaker-0: I think that it was there, but not in the same way. The desire to do it. But it despite doing like so much theater and like speaking stuff, I had pretty extreme stage. I wouldn't even know if I would call it stage fright. I would call it stage adrenaline, where before doing anything that would require me to, you know, give a presentation in front of the class, I would be fine doing it, but I would get so much adrenaline that I would be like physically shaking. Like you, if I couldn't hold a piece of paper because you could see it. Like it was very intense for me to do that. And so there's the desire to do it, but I don't I don't I guess that's probably is what stage fright is. It's the fight or flight feeling that fills your body with that feeling of fear and shakiness. And I hated feeling that way because I loved the idea of doing it and I felt out of control of myself and being able to do that. So ⁓ through university, I started a student club. the first time I sort of spun up a community through school with my buddy Brandon Nason, who now also is the animation lead at Val on Valorant. Pretty sweet. ⁓ we I got a lot of sort of public speaking, wringing that fear out by just repetition. And then I feel like it could have really come back at at blizzard if I had like sat back and been like, I'm gonna zip it. But I really was sort of empowered to do more of that stuff. And because I was sort of above average, okay, talking in front of people, it would be like, can you present in this meeting? ⁓ can you talk on behalf of the art team? Can you present for our team to the whole company? ⁓ sure, you can make a a game show at BlizzCon and present that on a stage for a bunch of people. It was like all these absurd things that they let me do that I feel like I was able to embrace it. And the more I embraced it, the less it became something I was afraid of. And the more it became something I was excited about. And I saw the way that it got people excited about what we were doing too. And that sort of feedback loop of I'm helping by being a weirdo. And just by being whatever goofball I am, my most natural self, it put other people at ease. And it felt like a very symbiotic loop of give and take for my personality.
speaker-1: Yeah, that makes lot of sense. And I I wonder if also I I've felt this too, right? That there's some kind of psychological safety about doing it in front of people that you kind of know are your people, right? Like it's a lot easier to stand up and be an idiot and a wally in front of people that you kind of know have the same sort of mindset as you do, versus trying to do it in front of people that you can't read at all or that you know are in a completely different field, right? There is something that allows you to kind of let go a little bit and go, Yeah, hey, I'm gonna get accepted here which helps I think.
speaker-0: And then it'll delude you into thinking that everybody's like that and then you stop caring. And then you become a shameless, reckless weirdo. Absolutely.
speaker-1: Then you'll say anything you need to do in front of people because it's fun and it you know gets a reaction. Yes, done that, know what it means. Yeah, absolutely. ⁓ so as we sort of start to wind this down. do you I'm I'm curious as an animator, Lana, if do you do you so let me take a step back. As a designer, right, I often see things in the real world and I and it either makes my weird brain go, ⁓ that gives me an idea for a design, or I apply the systemic understanding of things that I have to the real world, right? There's some sort of h synthesis there of like I pull ideas and I also apply ideas. Do you do that at all as an anime? Like do you get you know, do you pull inspiration from, you know, a ballet that you watch or you'll whatever, right, in terms of emotional like emotion, and and do you also then apply that back to yourself when you you know, when you're physical, when you do things in the real world? Like I'm curious if there's any bleed there.
speaker-0: Absolutely. From like just the way I talk about things. I don't even mean to, but if I see somebody with like a unique way of walking, my brain says, That's a funny walk cycle. That's not what people are doing. They're not doing walk cycles. They're just existing. ⁓ so there's definitely the language which I use to describe certain things is very animation y based. ⁓ but I will see things and certain actions, I feel like the emotion of it is so interesting or weird or beautiful. I find I want to like put it in my eyeballs over and over and over again. So ⁓ I'll see like weird sports clips where somebody like I'll go watch like pitchers in baseball just pitch because it looks like their body is bending in impossible ways when they do it. I love when they do the slow-mo of the pitchers because you're like, look at what this guy's doing to throw that ball so fast. It's crazy. ⁓ so there's a lot of admiring motion. I follow like a lot of dancers. I ain't a dancer. I don't even have to animate dances anymore, but I just I can't get enough of sort of like delicious, beautiful motion. But the thing I found it applies so much to is, you know, being at the computer for a long time. I had like a knee injury in 2016 or 17 that I've only recently rehabbed. And being able to understand like the physics of things, why things work the way they do, and the combination of all the anatomy I had to take in university, understanding body's anatomical structure, plus animation and Trying to figure out why things move the way it does. I think it helps me ⁓ understand my own body. Like at the gym, there's like weird applications for the knowledge of motion and like the light knowledge of physics and and an anatomy that needs to you need to have to create animation, sort of it trickles into how I move, how I consider moving, how I try and keep myself safe at the gym, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And then I know. The ⁓ the only other thing is I feel like it's forever broken my brain in left and right. Cause when you're giving animation notes, you'll be fi depending on where you're at, sometimes you say screen left, sometimes you say screen right, and sometimes you say characters left and characters right. And those things will frequently be flipped. And so it's like a fifty fifty shot if I say the correct direction now, which is a new thing that I can only attribute. to animation shattering what I'm talking about. I'm pointing this way and saying right it's 'cause my brain's saying right hand, but I know it's the left side of the place we're going. So that's ⁓ that's probably the biggest e effect it's had on my life is ⁓ sounding a lot like an idiot.
speaker-1: Yeah, I I I definitely done a few. But my one my one is always it's this is super nerdy, but my one's always frame rate. Like I always get thirty and sixty mixed up and then I'm always obsessed with frame rate. Like whenever I see something that's got a bad frame rate, I'm like, ⁓ my god, that's running at twenty frames, I can't handle it. And like it drives me mad. Like it was something it was some video my kid was streaming and and he was telling me about it and all I could say was, But the frame rate though, the frame rate, what's up with the frame rate? ⁓ so yeah, you sort you just eyes become your mind becomes fixed in these these these ways. and i if you weren't making games, Marlon, what would you do?
speaker-0: Parish. No. what would I do? I might be ⁓ making music. I'd probably still be making art to some degree. ⁓ you know, I'd probably be a graphic designer. ⁓ that is one of the other things I do a I'd do a lot of it. I do it for the rat. I've done like a ton of different design work for different live streams across a bunch of different platforms. I if anybody's ever seen one of my GDC talks, I take a lot of pride in the Just doing the design work on the slides that I'm presenting. It's always something custom. I just I love graphic design. I would love to be better at graphic design. I'm kind of like, you know, fake it till you make it kind of thing. But that being a designer and a guy, CJ Cauley, and I'm not gonna get the other person, it's like this incredible I fought's the other thing. I follow lots of dancers and lots of graphic designers for being like, Maybe I you know, maybe those would be my two career paths based upon how much I look at content from those things. But ⁓ definitely something still in art, something still creative. ⁓ I just the ⁓ the joy of bringing something into the world is a special feeling that I feel like everybody does. Even if they're, you know, doing a accountant, whatever they're doing, they likely have some little hobby where they're doodling on a notepad or they're, you know, knitting or whatever it is. Creation is such a a huge part of what we're doing and it's so satis satisfying as a human to do it. I just can't see myself doing anything other than what I what I wanna do.
speaker-1: Hmm. I love that. That's a great way to end and ⁓ a brilliant journey that you've you've had and appreciate you sharing it with me and ⁓ some great stories and ⁓ yeah, I love that thread of just you know, just being obsessed with with animation and being obsessed with with making stuff function in games and that being the thing that you just just keeps you happy, you know, all every day. You know, it's very similar to to the mental my mentality but from a design perspective. So ⁓ yeah, I appreciate you sharing and and thanks for being on the pub.
speaker-0: Thank you so much for the invite. You're such a d delightful host. Thanks for walking me through Trip Down Memory Lane, baby.
speaker-1: Very kind, thank you.