NWPAS Seminar 2017 - John Youssi - Pinball Artist

[Music] [Music] first time I laid my here what else could I do with you girl you changed my world anything's possible between you [Music] to let you know let it show [Music] you [Music] maybe [Music] we talking about the dialed in today and I have to tell you though that back in 99 when pinball took a big crash all of us in the industry we just kind of figured that pinball was done for it was a we figure we might see one in a flea market I'll beat up you know but um so its pleasant surprise to walk in here and see a lot of games you know that looked really great and a lot of generations playing them so thanks for that I'm the art guy and I see a couple other art guys out there a couple of game designers but when I tell somebody what I do isn't familiar with pinball they say well do you design the games and I had to say no guys like John Trudeau designs the games yeah yeah exactly and actually my neighbor back in Illinois my next-door neighbor lived next door to me for ten years before he realized I didn't actually paint every single cabinet he thought I was in my basement painting cabinets all day long but I I guess the easiest way to say it is the game designer designs the game the physical appearance of the game are the physical parts of the game and I'm the decorator I hate that word because I think I'm decorating curtains or something like that but there's a lot of real estate on a pinball machine and there's got to be art on almost all of it so that's what I do quickly though the number one at least for me the number one rule in pinball art is the pet the artist is responsible for drawing a player up to the game and I think this goes back to competition when there were arcades with banks of pinball video games and a player walks in there and the owner of the company wants that player to walk up to your game you know so you do whatever trick you can to get the player up there after that it's up to the the gameplay and the strategy to keep the player there so a lot of responsibilities there let's see next slide mic next Oh okay I have a little quiz here and at the end if you give me your name and address jack told me we're gonna send yourself himself I'm supposed to have something here but my source is dried up on me so anybody know this is probably an easy one but game this is from you know by the way it's a black and white pencil sketch from a back glass from a game nobody knows so no but what he's gonna get anything yeah not you the guy that you're insured what's that yes that's correct it's in the background on the left hand side so if you come up give me your information not now at the end okay don't let me forget go ahead like next fine yeah exactly you get nothing good nothing let's see when Twilight Zone when we finally had prototypes when we were building and I think it was like in 92 we put the prototypes out on tests so this is a photo at a bar in Woodstock Illinois as I recall and the guy in the white shirt let me look at my copy here because otherwise I'll be bending over the guy in the white shirt is the game designer of dialed-in Pat Waller and right in front of him is Larry - Marv a pinball legend done a lot of programming and management everything has his own company now - Larry's left let's see I want to make sure I get him an order - Larry's left is Ted sts who is a programmer on dialed in and worked on Twilight Zone obviously doing the same thing over Pat's left shoulder that's me back when I had hair and the other guy's got slow me on e he works for Larry right now as a matter of fact Larry's company go ahead next slide by the way three of those guys are on dialed in Ted and myself so and it's that way with a lot of companies you know where a lot of us are still doing it so people you worked with back in the 80s and 90s it's like getting the team back together again you know it's a lot of fun let's see so I thought it might be a good time to tell the story about how Pat Lawler got a hold of me and asked me to do the art for dialed in and back in the old days at Williams where everybody Williamson on California and Chicago Pat had an office and really anytime you did it gay for anybody they usually pull you into the office close the door and whisper to you you know what the idea was for the game and that whispering went on all the time because there was a lot of competition not only between companies but between game designers too we were paid at least a lot of us were paid with we were paid you know a basic fee but then we got royalties too so if your game did well you made more money so you didn't want people stealing your ideas so that's the way it happened back then I get pulled into let's say Pat's office and he whisper like what would you say if I said we had the license to the Addams Family and I get all excited and you know and then that whispering would go on you know forever that's that's just the way it was now it's not whispering anymore but I did get a call from Pat like about I guess it was three or four years ago and and we're friends so we talked routinely and we won't have lunch and stuff like that you know but he that was excited you know and I didn't know what was up and it kind of shocked me because he told me hey I'm gonna do a pinball machine and I'm going to do it with Jack with Jersey Jack and man I my draw dropped when I heard that because I really thought Pat was done but he went on to explain it to me just briefly he didn't give me the whole plot until I committed to the game but it was exciting for me and ultimately I committed to do the artwork and then he went into the story just like he used to back then and the game wasn't completely fleshed out there wasn't a name for the game as I recall but he described this futuristic city we didn't know it was quantum city and he described as like a chrome shiny tight place you know and described a corrupt government kind of a powerful evil government with corporations that are corrupt and screwing people over you know and and then he talked about how one of these companies invents this phone that is mysterious and super powerful and can cause natural effects to happen and such you know and I'm tanned by the way the phone could watch you do things you know so like works both ways and I'm thinking 1984 George Orwell and big brother that kind of stuff you know and I'm excited you know I'm on board at this point and then he mentioned that by the way there's going to be fallin on the game and it's going to be interactive and as I recall by that time Ted had already done a test and figured out that the player could communicate with a game with his own cell phone which I thought okay how do they do that you know that's not my job I don't worry about that but it sounds kind of magic so I have to stay an order I'll wander off next slide please oh by the way go back to that one I forgot to talk about that slide at the beginning I didn't have a lot to go on I had quantum city and the corporations and everything but nothing was really locked down but I knew that there was this phone and padded also told me that the phone was lost and found by like an everyday type guy and I'm thinking like Tom Hanks or Jimmy Stewart you know for people to remember Jimmy Stewart you know I'm thinking someone like that you know but so he's not really a big handsome hero type person you know so this is just me doing some blue sky thinking on my own because I wanted to start working you know on these characters try to female the middle guys just looks like a game show no the one down there in the in the corner I was thinking John Belushi and my googled him and he used to do this raise his eyebrows thing you know I can't do that you know but those were all like went by the wayside now you can do the next slide okay so at the very beginning I think Pat was working on a Whitewood I couldn't look at the way what I was living in Illinois at the time I live in Tennessee now so I could go over and check things out but he did send me play field drawing so that's what I was working from and when I started play field it's my philosophy to solve problems in what I call the heart of the play field let me get some more wire here and I consider this area above the flippers valuable real estate and I'm always nervous until I solve that problem I mean I'm really I can't sleep at night I'm just thinking about it all the time so this is where I start all the time so I had quantum city it wasn't quantum city at the time but I just started to develop the look for that city down here that's something I had another thing I'm trying to do some problem solving with inserts but I'm confining my work down here obviously it changes later on here I'm getting into the upper play field a little bit doing things there at quantum cities still there but it's it's pretty simple I'm also simplifying if you look at a play field drawing that has everything on it it's your you'll have like a migraine headache and you'll you know probably fall down and dead you can't figure out what's going on so I simplify it I don't think it's that visible on that shot but I do that immediately go to the next slide maybe you can see that a little bit okay this is a good example of simplifying it just these are plastic parts here elevated plastics or beuter it's simplifying it just so my brain can see the real estate underneath it and I work in Photoshop now I work in Photoshop now I'm freaking myself out see whoa work in Photoshop so I have layers I can turn on and off before mm for me this is all traditional artwork it's all drawn and painted by hand I cried when I had to give that up and my kids taught me how to use the computer along with a couple of other other people that helped me so that's how all this is done I rarely pick up a pencil anymore the quantum city here that you see was sketching and pencils scanned and brought into Photoshop a lot of this stuff is all digital painting but these are some elements I have some of them existed some um and didn't we had a few characters I love these mysterious eyes I just thought they represented evil there could be the head of the government could be the head of the corporation you know and I I kept forcing those in the my artwork and Pat didn't buy it it went bye-bye but in both of these here I'm working right down here in the heart I'm starting to I knew we're going to have spiders all kinds of disaster petulance kind of like the plagues in Egypt you know I was imagining it like that you drones UFOs so just peppering up with that but I really was trying to get this group of characters that ultimately it didn't pan out some of that stuff might be picked up in a future game by the way we had a by now we had another name but I had to remove those names just because that could become another game so I had to be careful what I talk about let's see one thing Pat really zoomed in on right away he liked this area down here Mike and I ultimately call this my hero guy he's the hero guy who finds the phone and ultimately realizes what it's doing it's wrecking his life you know but now I kind of see it as a player I kind of see that guy as the player - that's me next slide please now we're getting tight because I took that hero guy that Pat liked and he's he told me he said take that guy and make him big and put him right in the middle up there and so that's what I did to have quantum city down here I got a sketch of the hero early development on the drones we change later because we have an actual drone toy in the game so my drone had to look like that drone but I kind of like that drone with a big eyeball this by the way represents Bob he was in previously he was down to the heart of the play field and nobody liked my Bob so as a matter of fact there is no physical Bob that you can I don't think there isn't a game now over on the right or excuse me over yon you're right just same thing just getting into some color doing some problem solving trying to in my mind I'm trying to establish a color palette for the game you know there's going to be a lot of red a lot of blue god knows it better not be violet or purple which is fine with me but some people that's not so fine let me get back on track here so I don't forget anything let's see we are okay another big thing is like I say this is the heart of the play field so I got this is my focal point you know I really want the eye to go there also as a play field artist I'm trying to use art to lead the shots to draw the player up into the game to get their eye going that way so I'll use any excuse to make that happen and I try to do that throughout the play field to next slide please a problem for me is always when there's an upper flipper up here because and I didn't do it as much here but sometimes I kind of have a switch like a laser Swisher and energy swish coming across through to lead the player up that ramp but a lot of times that's a problem because it interrupts the whole flow of everything else going up so it makes me crazy here's a rough sketch of the train that was put in and I wrestled with that a couple of ways to ultimately we settled on on what we wanted developing some more features here in the upper play field we had missiles on there but some guy told us to get rid of those I think let's see okay and number it the next one number nine for me number nine for you guys just the next slide this is the final play field as you can see it on the floor today and if you look at it you can see why simplified those early drawings to work on it just saves me a lot of grief trying to figure things out by the way if you have questions at any point because I don't do this for a living and I might like I forgot to tell you what was on that slide and explain it feel free to raise your hand and you don't have to wait till the end okay next slide back to the quiz let's go ahead I saw that guy first I not yeah I thought yeah yeah that's it to the background almost dead center so come on up later on okay next slide please I'm sorry whirlwind that was my first when I when I started working in pinball I was afraid to do a whole game it scared the heck out of me so I just agreed to do back glasses I did Joker's and police force working with Python and then a by then I was addicted to pinball to be honest with you after the first one I was ready I was hungry for another one and another one and then I thought I'll do the whole game you know so I was kind of scared to do the whole game but um and by the way that was my first game with Pat Lawler he was the game designer on whirlwind I think we've done I've done like I've been involved in 37 games whirlwind was the first complete game and I think I've done like you know I don't know how many I've done with Pat but I worked with Pat both at Williams Williams in Bali and then Stern and now yeah I guess I'd have to say Twilight Zone but I have a couple of them I like a lot but that's that has to be my favorite okay I'm losing track of my notes here sorry there we go okay again this is early on in the development of the game and this rep I'm drawing a back glass but our back glasses have LCD screens in them now so you have to live a leave a big open area there for the LCD but what we were thinking was we wouldn't the background art would flow right into the LCD I wasn't concerned about it at this point I had to get a look for quantum city the city the futuristic city so I'm drawing it and adding color I did a whole bunch of these by the way color sketches I'm also thinking Blade Runner I went back with the Blade Runner again and uh trying to get you know the graphics around the buildings and a lot of motion animation going on plus I'm working with John Paul de Winne who by the way he's The Hobbit artist he's in the Netherlands and he was doing our video work and some modeling and stuff so he needed he wanted to see my version of quantum city so he could model it and this is what I sent I sent him these two on the top and then they needed more so they could pan across the city so I had to add on it became a big perspective nightmare for me but let's go to the next one and usually I have a lot of tight sketches for games and I have a lot of loose sketches but I had a flood at my studio and I'm haven't recovered that the notebook that has the drawings for this back glass in it so I have them I just don't know where it's at I did the only important art I lost was for Teletubbies that Teletubbies got dripped on and I did a book and the sketches were destroyed the artwork survived so now I'm trying to get it like a an artist someone who can evaluate my Teletubbies sketches but you call someone and tell them that it goes right with pinball doesn't it Teletubbies pinball tinky-winky block that ball and anyway these are some I do a lot of thumbnail sketches just any where I'm at when I'm thinking of stuff you know so that is what you can see here I love this device up here when you look at the game you barely say they worked on a lot but drew that and then basically painted it in the computer one thing because our game has the LCD and here you you hardly see any of this border space plus it's not illuminated down there around around the screen so that's why I'm showing it I get a chance to show it to someone because they did a lot of work down there these are the you can put things nice thing about doing pinball artwork is you get to inject part of yourself into it so I put some books here in 1984 1984 deja vu a rack that attacks UFOs I have known things like that the button you can barely see on the game but there it is big the button resides right down here if you look really close you can see it on the game for the floor I would I was thinking just like alien spaceships like alien or a really 2001 any of the Star Wars any of that hardware was what I was thinking of when I was designing this but I saw this as one of three things when I first introduced it to because again you have the screen in here which interrupts it but you want to set a stage for it also I saw it as a control room for the government or a control room for the corporation like the corporation that has the phone you know and and they're monitoring the whole city you know really the government makes more sense but it could also be a TV studio from the from the I can remember the the signal or the call sign for the TV station so it could be any of those things which gives you an excuse to see what's going on all over town on these displays next one this is this is the collectors edition back glass which is fun because by this time this is one of one of the last things I did on the game I think I was working on it in December or January so I could pull in a lot of the a lot of what was going on in quantum city a lot of the action I had a lot of artwork that was rendered so I'm basically working with content designing it I don't know how many of you seen that yet but it's all new word work going around next slide please the next one after that one there we go this is John Paul by the way Jean Paul is a young guy from Holland and Greg knows more about this Greg Ferris I don't know if he wrote a letter to you Greg or what but he wanted to work in pinball he's a young guy and he ended up coming to Williams and working as like an apprentice or a gopher or whatever and he worked at Williams for what I don't two years two weeks that's a bit different than two years well he got some pinball cred didn't he so anyway he he was the artist on The Hobbit and now he did our all our video artwork he did the user interface for the TV station did the disaster animations and he also took my sketch that I saw earlier and made this beautiful city like I drew the sketch and I thought oh man I'm so glad I'm not modeling this yeah and like two weeks later I get a city yeah it's beautiful he's easy to work with next slide please anybody know this one not you're not it's not fair Marge go ahead I know yes yeah and by the way who's who do you think inspired me for that one I should have anybody back there a celebrity a singer lives in France yeah there you go so you can get both you guys come on up later on and give me your address next slide you can see Madonna that's the way I remember her next slide please this is the development of a couple of characters Betty and Pat and Ted and me too you know I mean probably anybody from my generation very fond of roadside attractions and and Pat's just fond of this kind of stuff anyway so they mentioned they wanted to have a character in the back and Pat knew right away her name ended up being Betty and I don't know how it happened but somehow I thought she was supposed to be grandma I'm the only one that thought that and I drew grandma here whapping the pinball off the ramp you know and I sent it to fat and he goes what's with the granny anyway so I had a lot of characters to choose from a muffler man type thing yeah go ahead yeah sure did no I I don't someone named her I don't miss Pat I guess they named her Betty I don't know anyway Pat said the Ted had a little bit of research on roadside attraction so he sent me like about a hundred roadside characters which are Santa Claus Uncle Sam there's a lot of bikini clad women too Lumberjacks I don't know how many of you has kids you ate it like a pancake lumberjack place you know that was my exposure to those characters next like The Electric Company guy QED which stands for a quantum electric I can't remember what the D stands for so this is the development for him and at the time I I wasn't sure what we were going for so I tried some thuggish looking bad guys Pat also mentioned back in the 60s there was the electric companies all had a character named Reddy kilowatt who was made out of lightning bolts he was really cool I remember going to play the electric bill with my mom and they the guy would give me little figurines of him so I tried a few of those and masked characters you know whatever art deco people like from Radio City Music Hall in New York so this is I submitted this top these top drawings first then Pat gave me some feedback he has to see more on the Reddy kilowatt type guy and he like this guy with a helmet and this is really where we ended up with this character right here for this is the figure that moves back and forth on the play field that you can whack this guy they just don't come out of nowhere you got a there's loose sketches there's thinking your thumbnail sketches there's tighter sketches and it evolves over like a month or you know and then I can be changed you know like a year later all of a sudden when you're making decals now he's got a name QED you know so you decorate him by the way we have a let me see if it's in here I think we have not I guess it didn't make the cut but our our model maker or toy maker does Dave link he's a Chicago guy who's worked on tons of games across the country probably around the world so we sent him these drawings and Dave modelsim he's done a lot of work in pinball he's a cool guy he's been around a while so he did both Betty he did Betty The Electric Company guy QED and he did the train stations for us as well by the way when we first met him I think Greg introduced me to him David built his own haunted house there was like Disney quality with characters and stuff and it was like I worked on it all the time it was magnificent that was my first exposure to him so this would be the model that they've produced down there there are the the toy next slide please I just have some cabinet stuff here when we worked it this is not a licensed game but when we work on licensed games you get a style guide and a style guide is like for somebody making a Happy Meal you know for our Burger King or clothing or something like that they don't understand you have four foot wide canvases to cover you know play feel the cabinet side of bakbox cabinet front back glass just beuter 'its or plastics there's a ton of real estate so we keep going back to the license or getting more information but this is the biggest piece of real estate on the game and when I first started working on and I realize it's like in Jaws where you're going to need a bigger boat I needed a bigger computer because things have gotten such that the files are huge so you can't have enough RAM can fast enough computer but it's a lot of fun to work at or work on again I have a lot of content here to work on in I sent a million different versions of this here we have Betty up on the Left I wasn't going to have the phone guy in the middle of wishing I'd try other things because you saw him on the playfield Betty's in the middle he's off to the side but in the end the hero guy ends up in the middle getting all the attention cabinet side next slide please back box went through a couple versions of this I'm showing three the hero with a phone I really like Betty so I tried her wherever I could you know and ultimately last minute we went with the UFOs and it was my title piece as well back box is a difficult shape to work with it's not a perfect rectangle least ours is not a perfect rectangle so it's thin you got a lot of time to distort things next slide please cabinet front this basically stayed the same as it was except when you do a game in addition to the usual content telling the story all that stuff we liked all of us all of us artists designers we like to decorate the inserts you know the politican search was places where you need to just have a theme and I kept working with metal and rivets instead I like that look so I went too far a bridge too far with that one at a blast working on it but it Pat said what's that thing on top and I got on man that's going nowhere but I saved it and used it for a lot of other things ultimately we ended up like with a big V Chevron upside inverted Chevron sorry about that forgot to turn that off that's my artist nice living like in an artist commune spired by me I have to get back to her enough said on that another quiz next slide please I thought this guy was going to be here but you're you're already getting one that's not the that's not the question who who is this guy down here the young young person back there you know who the model is Nordmann Dennis Nordmann yeah the original Bigfoot I went over to his house I was working on whitewater I was the artist on that game and I went over to his house because I want I thought he was the perfect model for Bigfoot he's like that tall and so he posed for me and did these drawings and I don't know if that was Dave like I think it was Jerry penslar the late Jerry penciler actually created the toy I'm sorry did what oh no hehe was into it I remember I went over to his house and he liked to work on cars he's been working on an old panel truck since the day I met him it's it's drivable now but there's pieces missing you know and his garage had a pit in it or you could you know like they have an oil change place I thought wow the guy has a garage with a pit I mean I thought that was cool you know my wife would go what so well you already gave me did you you're not yeah okay you know what to do at the end next slide I grew up in a little town in East Ohio and this is what our our Cade looked like we had a really cool part tuskor a park and my mama give us like I'm not kidding 25 cents and we go down there on Saturday morning or any day in the summertime because we were free you know and there was no decent TV on and we'd be gone all day long so you go on the Penny Arcade and that's what it was called was the Penny Arcade because that's what everything cost you know so you go through like ten cents there and then you had 15 cents left over for a hotdog and popcorn and a coke you know you could go fishing and everything but I loved that place loved all the games but there was no pinball in there and I thought pinball was like something evil from you know I think it was the wild one the movie with Brando you know I think they played pinball in it site I didn't know what it was you know I think I was 12 years old before I visited my cousins in Illinois out of Paw Paw Illinois a little farming community and there was a general store there and we went into town when we were staying with that went into town to get some provisions and they had two pinball machines there and I was mesmerised by them it was it was like futuristic stuff you know kind of edgy so that was my first exposure to pinball and it looked like fun you know I had no idea where I would end up doing but next question I like dart and all that from the very beginning so next slide please so eyes about I think I was about 10 or 12 when I met this guy and my life has never been the same since it was like how at last life makes sense you know as a matter of fact I liked him so much nextslide that when I was in high school I started my own comic book it was like a series a comic book series and the characters were the kids in my class and the villain by the way the comic the the series was rat man and boy Rat Fink instead of Batman Batman was on TV then so I had rat man and boy Rat Fink and the villain was my homeroom teacher who happened to be a nun I was a little tiny Catholic school sister eustacia and by the way anybody wanting to go into pinball I suggest they do what I did like you in math class you get your binder out that says some university on the cover and you draw a cartoon when they're teaching you math you draw cartoons all day it gets you in a lot of trouble but it's it's a heck of a lot of fun anyway my villain was my homeroom teacher sister eustacia and I paid enough attention in science class to knew there was something called the eustachian crust of the earth so I thought crust that's the name of my villain crust so ultimately my buddy John TECA was reading the latest installment one day during study hall and he just burst out laughing I don't know what it was but and crust head gore sister eustacia's head goes up and she walks over to him you know looks down on a mr. TECA will you share with me what you have and he goes nothing I got nothing you know she lifted up his desk and pulled out the comic book you know and and I thought oh my god I'm dead because in one scene crust was under the bridge of the Tusk huskeroos River in our town in a nightgown kind of transparent and I had smudged it a little bit you know and the tagline was even I can't imagine crust in a nightgown and I got held after school and I thought everybody by the way when she opened that up every hand in the room turning looked at me like you are so dead I wasn't dead but I did almost get kicked out of school the reason I have this slide up when I was doing gopher is no good gopher is it was a Pat Waller game he called ahead of time and asked me to design a tricked-out golf cart and I'd been doing a bunch of serious illustration for publishers and stuff you know I could not loosen up I was everything I looked at was boring and I just realized you idiot just be that kid in high school again yeah and that freed me to to do it so I you know just started having fun I guess you know same thing down here this is a some art from the background of funhouse where really the artist is free to do what he wants and if they like it it stays in there and I've done by the way I've done a lot of artwork for I started out doing album covers and you did have some freedom there but you had to please the musicians on the record company and then magazines little freedom their advertising no freedom point of purchase product design no freedom you know so pinball is like this big fresher or big breath of fresh air for me next slide I'm still having fun you know there's still places you can do it these are plastics on the game and a lot of times you can't even see things you know when you're playing it because it's underneath a ramp or it might be behind a switch or something like that but it doesn't matter I check things out try to hide things back in there I think Pat said put some eyes in there next slide coming in the stretch in five minutes we're going to start questions if I can fill five minutes apiece bottom arch I really fell in love with these UFOs by the way I drew them and then Jean Paul he modeled UFOs for me you model the drones for me based on my sketches but he really improved them and he sent me I said can you send me angles on those things so just make my job easier you know so he sends me like a gazillion angles it was but it was great so I painted on the playfield there was a mass of drones over on the right and probably like about 80 of them in there you know and I paid a lot of I had a paint he provided the 3d renderings but I painted him an add light to added light and such to him but thank you JP for that final novel yeah the meteor has done enough of that big burst in the middle I try again I'm really pushing that metal whatever fabrication air that just didn't make the cut either but it made it to this show then it next slide please stoppers try three stoppers these are on the I think just the collector's edition as I recall I'm not certain but it's actually this topper is actually layers of Plex transparent Plex that that were printed and illuminated from underneath so it has a dimension dimensional quality to it started out with the QED guy up there with the art deco light a bolts this one I'm not sure but when I worked on slot machines at igt and I worked with Kevin O'Connor and I think he may have done an Addams Family game with that fester doing that on the top I'll have to ask him or maybe I just imagine that but this was like the third choice not in not an order preference but one of the three choices that's what we went with one more quiz next slide what game you got it yeah okay so come on up and give me your information when we're done next slide please we're done you know we're done with it with the informative part now you guys get to ask questions if there's any gameplay questions save them for Jack he's next yeah I like both of them I like working on original stuff but I'll tell you there's a lot of lost leads you know where you going work bad directions because you're developing original characters so at the beginning it's like running through sand you know but like I said before you're free to try things you're free to try anything really and you I think you have a bigger influence on the game your fingerprints are all over the game because of that well yeah yeah you know you know I love a lot of the licensed games I've done though too you know I loved Shrek man I loved I had fun with that but so yeah I liked both on but one's definitely more laborious yeah you and then you see I really like something called a paycheck I think that's you're just shooting yourself in the foot when you you know I mean it's nice to think about all that but maybe it's cuz I come from like a commercial you know more commercial advertising and stuff like that you know you didn't want the clients seeing anything you know if it's fun stuff everybody's gonna see it but I worked on a game called radical the designer was the late Dan Langley and he he had me hide something in a game once I'm not even going to say what it is and I I'm too naive and stupid to even get his joke you know but we had printed parts that we had to change him because of it you know I'm not saying other people don't doing it get away that I'm just too meek I guess I don't know yeah I had a lot of fun doing that for five years and I remember about five of them I think the biggest guy was Rod Stewart and it was pretty cool I was I got hired there almost right out of art school I drove a cab for a few months and I was about 23 years old and he came at a town and was doing a concert at the amphitheater in Chicago and we wanted to do this time exposure like a flip book animation book of him spinning his my current whirling his mic around so I me in a photographer we were sent to the International an for theater to art direct rod and I was gonna say we were the only sober guys in the room but I'm not so sure about the photographer right it was just utter chaos backstage I ran into some old art school friends back back there by the way but it turned out great we built this flip book that was we specialized in complex construction Alma cover constructions that folded out things like that so I did a lot of comps or proposals you know and that was one of them and it bit the dust I don't I don't know what happened to it you know but so that was the biggest uriah heep the people you remember you're right you know the the Allman Brothers I did a almond joy which when I look at it looks like a Peter max illustration you know and it was a best-of compilation we did all the mercury records artwork so they when the Allman Brothers became when they had a hit mercury says we own all their early stuff you know the dingo anywhere so let's put it out there you know and make money on it so I did a lot of early albums like that Keith that were sent from Emerson Lake in the pot Emerson Lake and Palmer a lot of country artists Jerry Lee luck for Jerry Lee Lewis he was fun to work with some Motown stuff a lot of comedians moms Mabley knowing anybody in their own remember mom's I had a great I would have great conversations with them on the phone you know they treated me like their grandson or something you know Jerry Lee we did he was I did a couple I Illustrated one and then designed some but a cool story about him was my boss he too I didn't I wasn't involved in this but my boss went out to Las Vegas to do a photo session of the Jerry Lee and Jerry Lee didn't show up but they were supposed to meet pull site for this session Jerry Lee didn't show up it was 10 o'clock you know he's supposed to be there at 10:00 you know it was new and finally Jerry Lee shows up and he's got stitches in his eyes in his hands you know he'd been in a fight with Elvis's drummer the night before that was Jerry Lee and then my boss too does another story about death Strobel another late great guy death Strobel desolace having lunch with him in Vegas at another because you had to pitch your ideas to these guys so you had travel to where they were performing and you'd show them sketches or what and in the course of the conversation des said something about Jerry Lee's mother that Jerry he's a southern guy you know he stood up he says stand and defend yourself to my pause does this look like John Lennon my boss so yeah the album covers I have a million stories about that stuff stood outside in a hallway with Smokey Robinson having a making small talk for two minutes one day then got invited into was the guy from the big guy from berry gordy got invited into his office with smokey and he says Oh John I see you in bed smokey there's only one smokey so a lot of little brushes with those guys but it was fun and that's probably the closest thing to a back glass to it twelve by twelve album cover because you did have that freedom and when I saw when I was asked to do those first back glasses I just thought I'll just pretend I'm doing an album cover and that dad just got me comfortable and gave me the confidence you know more questions Martin oh okay good point I just I just put it in us nobody says take it out it stays oh by the way the question was did dialed-in always have an exclamation mark or where did that come from it just it's pinball you know it should have an exclamation mark I think so nobody took it out it stayed I want to make sure I get people back there but go ahead I didn't change many games but art is the big thing there would that I can think of when you say that is the playfield layout of inserts the plastic inserts that are illuminated when I when I would get my most of my play field designs the inserts were there they were in place and that heart of the play field down there it's important a lot of designers would just say move them wherever you want amor if you have something important will change him you know but Pat you know he usually has his inserts had a meaning there so I haven't moved many inserts I changed the shapes you know things like that but that's the main thing that comes to mind I guess you know so at the very beginning I when I'm thinking back the fun house and whirlwind at the very beginning of those games like Rudy and important funhouse he was a talking guy and he you know we didn't know what he was going to do so I I was on my way to do a press run for I think it was radical and I sat out my truck between press runs and drew a bunch of themes for him like one where he had captured a bunch of guys and had a carnival and they were underneath his truck and he's going down the highway with some hot girls in the convertible next to him that was a little bit too twisted but I go ahead another question am i go ahead thought I was out of here you it was a very excited adrenaline rushed feeling and it's a little bit of fear in there too you know the fear is good because it wakes you up you know at night and then the next morning you go I got to get to work that kind of thing but I Twilight Zone I was super excited with what I was called in on that one and a little thing about that I was working on another game I can't remember I worked on Pats games at least the first one he did two before me Earthshaker and bonds I run but I think I've done every one since then but I was working on another game in between and he called me and I already knew we were doing it but he and he said um we need a quick back glass idea to send viacom was the license holder and Carol Serling Rod Serling's Widow she really was calling the shots so we just felt if we got her to sign off on something she didn't know she wanted to be involved in pinball if her husband's name should be in pinball so I had a weekend to do a rough sketch I've shown that at other shows and I went out and I bought a book called The Twilight Zone companion and I in my head I had all those episodes anyway so I just started drawing for like the whole weekend you know staying up late and everything sent it to her and she only made one change and in my illness and my sketch I showed rod with a cigarette and rotted died of lung cancer and she said remove the cigarette other than that I like it so that's a long answers I own one game but I'm getting more I'll be getting some more I have a fun house you know I sold my games to pay for something called college tuition and then you know none of my two sons neither one of them have college debt but at one time we had a ton of games in our basement we had a outdoor deck with games out there was a popular place for parties you know it's very noisy yeah I keep forgetting or we repeat those questions questions that was a question about the research for the game for this game for fun house the research okay Pat at the very beginning we had the concept of Rudy when I was brought in we a about John Crutcher was the mechanical engineer and he showed me like the mechanical device that would be Rudy and Pat said he had seen a movie Anthony Hopkins and I think it was called magic that involved a ventriloquist and a ventriloquist dummy so I boned up on all that stuff and my kid had a Charlie McCarthy dummy so one of the first things I had to do was sketch a head that would work around that box so yeah let you know I love research one of my problems is I have to like hit myself on the head and say stop doing research and start drawing you dummy you know with everything you know it doesn't matter it can be doing tire illustrations I'll look at a million treads and patterns of treads and things next question yeah okay could you come up and repeat that to me you just know you're in for a lot more at the beginning but at the beginning like I mentioned before I really try to simplify that playfield or it's impossible to work on you you can't even see it I'm kind of advising another artist right now and I sent him what I do how I simplify it at the beginning it gets very complicated but it's important to remember I should have repeated your question you know basically saying what's the difference between designing a play field back in the old days when they're rather simple and today when they're loaded with stuff you know and my answer was I simplify it at the beginning but always be aware of that stuff because you don't want to put something important underneath a talking head or a train station or something it's got to be visible and you're responsible by the way the artist is responsible for doing sketches you know giving that a look so there may be a model maker that comes in and carves those toys or buildings or whatever but at least in my case I've always had to noodle that stuff out ahead of time anymore yeah great okay purple in my opinion there's nothing wrong with purple I like purple well I was just told not to maybe it maybe have a mixed up of green don't do a green cabinet don't do a purple cabinet that kind of thing you know yeah I worked on old Chicago and like whatever that was 75 76 I was a few years out of art school and my roommate Ken QP it's my old roommate when I first got out of school he worked at Valley and Dave Rick Dave Christensen was there the great Dave Christensen who you know I couldn't hold his pen but I did draw it does you know basically drew the artwork and everything designed the art and inked it and then I don't remember what he told to me but he didn't he wasn't happy with the quality of the inking and he ranked it and he was right to do that you know so I worked on it but it's what you see on the game was his final artwork I'm a crust when I got called in after school that day sister eustacia she was sitting at her desk with her granny glasses and I'm not kidding I'm not joking I felt like I always felt like I was in prison and they were the guards and I wasn't the only one they were hard on us physically hard on us and she's sitting at her desk you know and she had her arms kind of folded into her robe and I come in and I sit down across the desk or face to face that I'm waiting for my sentence I thought for sure I was out of there was two months before graduation and she looks at looks at me and she says this is good this is good I thought what yeah I got my okay I got my punishment but briefly she tore all the pages that had her in it and gave it back to me and I still have it somewhere but without crust thanks for coming and listening to the artwork this is [Applause] [Music] I don't think I've ever been this lost before

Channel: balliswild

Views: 330

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Id: JRqCsNCQ5_M

Length: 61min 31sec (3691 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 10 2017