# Episode 45 - Pinball Art Director w/ Greg Freres

**Source:** Wedgehead Pinball Podcast  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2024-08-26  
**Duration:** 73m 32s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** Buzzsprout-15571719

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## Analysis

Greg Freres discusses his landmark work as art director at Williams/Bally during the post-1988 merger era, covering collaborations with legendary designers Dennis Nordman and Steve Ritchie, the development of iconic games like Elvira and the Party Monsters and Star Trek: The Next Generation, and the evolution of pinball art from illustration to digital production.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] Elvira and the Party Monsters won Best New Equipment (pinball) at the 1989 AMOA show for the first time in seven years; prior years video games had dominated the award — _Greg Freres directly stated this as a proud accomplishment; specific award and timing provided_
- [HIGH] Police Force outsold Elvira and the Party Monsters despite Elvira being the superior game; Bally name was still tainted from company troubles — _Greg Freres attributed market performance disparity to operator reluctance to buy Bally products, not theme reception_
- [HIGH] Williams art department received their first Macintosh computer in the mid-1990s shared among six artists with a sign-up list — _Greg Freres described this from direct experience; noted video game artists also used it at night_
- [HIGH] Greg Freres was hesitant to embrace computer art technology and took years to fully embrace it, unlike younger hires Linda Deal and Paul Barker — _First-person account of his learning curve and generational difference in adoption_
- [HIGH] Greg created original pencil sketches for Medieval Madness composition but John Yowsey completed final art; Greg was overseeing slot machine work and flying to Vegas three times a year — _Direct explanation of workflow and time constraints; explained collaboration model as 'Yowcify' approach_
- [HIGH] Steve Ritchie is difficult to brainstorm with, immediately rejecting ideas until one finally resonates enough for him to say 'I can't hate that' — _Greg Freres described specific working dynamic with Star Trek TNGS designer based on direct experience_
- [HIGH] Cassandra Peterson was receptive, understood pinball, and wanted to be involved in all three Elvira games — _Greg Freres' direct working relationship with her; confirmed three-game series_
- [HIGH] Dennis Nordman originally suggested party animal theme before Elvira was licensed; concept evolved from Spuds McKenzie era and became seed for Elvira game — _Greg Freres explained origin of party concept and credited Dennis with jukebox inclusion idea_

### Notable Quotes

> "Roger Sharp came through engineering and said, hey, we've got this opportunity...When it got to Dennis and I, Dennis and I weren't working that closely together yet."
> — **Greg Freres**, early in episode
> _Explains how Elvira licensing opportunity was pitched to art team_

> "We threw the double entendres in there immediately...We just had fun with it."
> — **Greg Freres**, discussing Elvira creative process
> _Reveals deliberate comedy/innuendo strategy in game design_

> "I don't know what the hell you guys are talking about. It sounds good to me. Let's go with it."
> — **Steve Kordek (paraphrased)**, Dr. Dude pitch meeting
> _Shows legendary designer's openness to experimental themes; demonstrates creative freedom at Williams_

> "He's never been good at brainstorming...you spill it out, and he immediately goes, no...it wasn't until you got to the point where he would say, I can't hate that, that you knew you had something."
> — **Greg Freres**, discussing Steve Ritchie work style
> _Characterizes Ritchie's collaborative approach and personality dynamic_

> "It took me many years to really full fledged get into it. But the good thing is I had hired some younger people."
> — **Greg Freres**, discussing computer technology adoption
> _Acknowledges his resistance to digital art and reliance on younger staff to teach him_

> "I worked from photography...but I did not sit there and put photographs on the illustration board...I did not sit there and put photographs on the illustration board and then airbrushed on top of them like some other artists at that time were doing."
> — **Greg Freres**, discussing Star Trek TNGS art technique
> _Clarifies his illustration method vs. photo-based approach; addresses misidentification as photography_

> "Why did you opt for photography? I said, pardon me? He goes why did you use photographs of the characters...I was like I didn't...I tried to explain...he was like, oh okay...I might have lost sleep that night."
> — **Greg Freres**, Star Trek art package debut
> _Shows emotional impact of having painstaking illustration work mistaken for photography_

> "I need to keep my hand moving. I need to keep active in the design process."
> — **Greg Freres**, discussing manager vs. artist dual role
> _Reveals his artistic philosophy and resistance to pure management role_

> "You can Yowcify it for me...I'd love to work with you, collaborate."
> — **Greg Freres and John Yowsey (paraphrased)**, Medieval Madness collaboration
> _Introduces collaborative workflow model where Greg provided sketches for Yowsey to complete_

> "This could have been one of the biggest mistakes of my career, but it just felt juvenile."
> — **Greg Freres**, discussing TMNT licensing decision
> _Explains why he declined TMNT opportunity and created Dr. Dude instead_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Greg Freres | person | Legendary pinball art director and illustrator at Bally/Williams; subject of podcast interview; designed art for Elvira trilogy, Star Trek TNGS, Dr. Dude, Party Zone, and others |
| Dennis Nordman | person | Legendary pinball designer; collaborated with Greg Freres on six games including Elvira and the Party Monsters, Dr. Dude, Party Zone, and Whitewater |
| Steve Ritchie | person | Williams pinball designer known for competitive personality; collaborated with Greg on Star Trek: The Next Generation and No Fear; difficult brainstorming partner |
| Cassandra Peterson | person | Actress/performer who played Elvira; receptive to pinball collaboration; involved in all three Elvira pinball games |
| John Yowsey | person | Pinball artist who completed final art for Medieval Madness and Monster Bash; resisted computer art adoption, preferring airbrush |
| Pat McMahon | person | Bally/Williams pinball artist; created whiteboard caricatures of daily design drama; did artwork for Party Monsters |
| Linda Deal | person | Younger pinball artist hired by Greg Freres; embraced computer art early and helped teach Greg digital techniques |
| Paul Barker | person | Williams art department manager; early adopter of Macintosh technology; mentored Greg in digital art |
| Roger Sharp | person | Williams executive who pitched Elvira licensing opportunity; instrumental in securing the license despite initial skepticism |
| Kevin O'Connor | person | Freelance pinball artist; inked playfields from Greg's pencil sketches; created Monster Bash art package |
| Margaret Hudson | person | Freelance pinball artist specializing in rubylith color separations; worked on playfield coloring |
| Steve Kordek | person | Legendary Williams designer (80-81 years old during Dr. Dude pitch); gave final approval on experimental Dr. Dude theme |
| Thomas Blackshear | person | Professional illustrator whose work Greg studied for Star Trek TNGS character portrait techniques |
| Larry DeMar | person | Williams programmer who brought sophisticated programming to pinball (Addams Family); pioneered programmer-as-co-designer role |
| Brian Eddy | person | Williams designer who wanted Greg Freres to work on Medieval Madness |
| Elvira and the Party Monsters | game | 1989 Williams pinball game; Greg Freres' art direction with Dennis Nordman design; won Best New Equipment award |
| Star Trek: The Next Generation | game | Williams pinball game with Steve Ritchie; Greg Freres did realistic character portrait artwork instead of cartoons per Ritchie's requirements |
| Dr. Dude and His Excellent Wild Ride | game | 1990 Williams game with Dennis Nordman; Mad Magazine-influenced comedy theme; inspired by Earth Girls Are Easy and The Nutty Professor |
| Party Zone | game | Williams pinball game with Dennis Nordman; escalation of party theme concept; Greg's wife insisted on vacation after completing it |
| Whitewater | game | Dennis Nordman-designed pinball; Greg Freres helped ideate and designed topper; described as host's favorite game of all time |
| Medieval Madness | game | Williams pinball; Greg Freres created original pencil sketches and composition; John Yowsey completed final art package |
| Monster Bash | game | Williams pinball; Kevin O'Connor created art package; referenced as part of workflow discussion |
| Williams Electronics Manufacturing | company | Major pinball manufacturer; acquired Bally in 1988; employer of Greg Freres during 1989-1990s era |
| Bally Manufacturing | company | Historical pinball manufacturer acquired by Williams in 1988; employed Greg Freres before merger |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Pinball art direction and illustration techniques, Game design collaboration between artists and designers, Williams/Bally post-merger era (1989-1990s) game development, Transition from traditional to digital art in pinball
- **Secondary:** Competitive dynamics in game design teams at Williams, Licensing strategies and character approval (Cassandra Peterson/Elvira), Pinball industry history and designer personalities
- **Mentioned:** Art workflow and freelance collaboration models

### Sentiment

**Positive** (0.85) — Greg Freres speaks fondly of his creative collaborations, proud of accomplishments, and respectful of colleagues despite acknowledging personality conflicts. Some regret about time constraints and missed opportunities (Medieval Madness full art package) but overall warm, nostalgic tone throughout.

### Signals

- **[business_signal]** Williams art department workflow evolved to include freelance specialists (Kevin O'Connor for inking, Margaret Hudson for color separations) to manage production pipeline; comic book-style division of labor (penciler/inker/colorist) (confidence: high) — Greg: 'Kevin would ink the playfield from my tight pencil...Margaret would then cut the rubylith color separations...we kind of adopted that mentality of how to break up the workflow'
- **[community_signal]** Medieval Madness and Monster Bash development involved skill specialization; Greg created concept sketches and direction while specialized artists (John Yowsey, Kevin O'Connor) completed final execution due to Greg's competing responsibilities (slot machine work, Vegas travel) (confidence: high) — Greg: 'I was kind of...adding to my workload...flying out to Vegas probably three times a year...my time was being stretched into other endeavors. And I really, really wanted to work on Medieval Madness...I said, John, would you mind if I worked as like a heavy-handed art director'
- **[design_philosophy]** Star Trek: The Next Generation backglass art mistaken for photography despite painstaking illustration technique; Greg studied Thomas Blackshear and Drew Struzan methods to achieve realistic character rendering (confidence: high) — Greg: 'Somebody came up to me and said...why did you guys opt for photography...I tried to explain...the painstaking process...he was like, oh okay...I was like, damn was that a compliment'
- **[design_philosophy]** Greg Freres and Dennis Nordman deliberately incorporated comedy, innuendo, and Mad Magazine influence into games (Elvira, Dr. Dude, Party Zone) as stylistic differentiation from standard licensed themes (confidence: high) — Greg: 'We threw the double entendres in there immediately...just had fun with it...Dennis was really receptive to comedy. And the goofier, the better.'
- **[licensing_signal]** Cassandra Peterson (Elvira performer) actively participated in game development across all three Elvira titles; provided character approval and creative input; understood pinball medium (confidence: high) — Greg: 'Cassandra, was the most receptive person we could have ever worked with...She was totally into pinball. She understood the product and wanted to be part of it.'
- **[market_signal]** Bally brand reputation remained weak post-merger despite quality products; Police Force outsold superior Elvira and the Party Monsters due to operator hesitation toward Bally brand (confidence: high) — Greg: 'There was still a reluctance at that point in time for operators to buy into a Bally product...Police Force outsold Elvira and the Party Monsters...not because of the theme, but because of the Bally name'
- **[community_signal]** Greg Freres' creative vision and thematic influence extended across multiple games during Williams post-merger era; established himself as key art direction voice alongside designer collaborators (confidence: high) — Multiple games credited to Greg's art direction and creative input; described as having 'distilled Greg Freres style' in Elvira; credited with creating foundational sketches for Medieval Madness
- **[personnel_signal]** Steve Ritchie known for difficult collaborative style; rejects most brainstorming ideas immediately until finding concept worthy of 'I can't hate that' reaction; opposite personality type from Greg Freres (confidence: high) — Greg: 'He's never been good at brainstorming...he would say, no...it wasn't until you got to the point where he would say, I can't hate that, that you knew you had something'
- **[personnel_signal]** Greg Freres served as art department manager/art director at Williams from ~1982-1983 onward, balancing dual role of management and active artist participation (confidence: high) — Direct statement: 'I was like the art department manager since like 82 or 83 when Kevin left...I was always the art department manager or slash art director'
- **[announcement]** Elvira and the Party Monsters achieved significant industry recognition, winning Best New Equipment (pinball) at 1989 AMOA show—first pinball game to win in seven years (confidence: high) — Greg: 'It won best new equipment, pinball, won best new equipment for the first time in seven years. Otherwise, video games had taken best.'
- **[technology_signal]** Mid-1990s adoption of Macintosh computers in Williams art department marked significant workflow change; initial single Mac shared among six artists with sign-up list; older artists resisted adoption while younger staff embraced digital tools (confidence: high) — Greg: 'In the mid 90s...we only had one Mac...we had to have a sign-up list...I did not readily embrace it. It took me many years...the good thing is I had hired some younger people...both of them taught me'

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## Transcript

 Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Wedgehead Pinball Podcast. I'm your host, Alan, joined by my co-host, Alex the Waterboy. I'm doing great. Today we are once again joined by our recent, you know, hopefully you've listened to the previous episode, the very talented illustrator, art director, very friendly guy for spending his time with us, Greg Freres. Greg, how are you doing? I'm doing great. The last episode we spoke about your entrance into the pinball industry, the wild times of the late 1970s, early 1980s, and the ballet art department. But we're going to start this episode with the merger, because in 1988, Williams bought ballet and midway, which was kind of a coup, it seemed at the time, and I think was a very interesting time, which we want to ask you about. It's the era of pinball that a lot of people, myself included, are very nostalgic for. It marked another big upswing in pinball, and the game started to become more interesting From a mechanical standpoint, we started getting a lot more licensed games, rule sets were becoming deeper, and of course, the art was also changing. No longer was it kind of the swords and sorcery. High fantasy art became much different during this era. So I think I want to start this era off with, or what I associate with, and I think a lot of other pinheads associate with, which is professional collaborations with Dennis Nordman. You and Dennis worked on a total of six games together, but I want to start with your first game together, which ended up spawning a trilogy of games. and that's Elvira and the Party Monsters. I know Roger Sharp has said that when he was first floating around the license opportunity for an Elvira game that he was met with kind of a frosty reception from the other design teams until he ran it by you and Dennis. What were your initial impressions about making an Elvira game? And can you tell the listeners about collaborating with Cassandra Peterson? Sure. As you noted, Roger Sharp came through engineering and said, hey, we've got this opportunity. And he goes, I believe we should take it. When it got to Dennis and I, Dennis and I weren't working that closely together yet. I mean, I had worked on Blackwater 100 with Dennis. I worked on the Playfield art. Tony did the Backglass art. That was back in Bali. But after the merger, we, oh, by the way, I'm going to interject this here too. Back before the merger, Dennis was working on his next theme and he was, you know, pondering different themes. I had suggested because of the Spuds McKenzie era, I said, how about a party animal? Would you ever consider that as an idea? And he said, absolutely. So he started work. It was his idea to put the jukebox in there and all that kind of thing. So really, that was the seed. I didn't work on the artwork because Pat McMahon did a wonderful job with that game. So that was really the seed that led to Elvira. And when we thought about Elvira, all we knew about her, because we didn't live, we didn't grow up on the West Coast. Dennis grew up in Ohio. I grew up in Chicago. We didn't see Elvira on TV. So we weren't really that familiar with her whole shtick, you know, as far as being a host of a horror show. What we knew her from at that point was Coors Beer. She was the Coors Beer spokesperson for Halloween. So we thought, well, this whole party idea, you know, kind of works for her because we could do something that was a party at her house, you know, haunted house and have all these, you know, monsters there as party guests. So we did some sketches and we threw it in front of the powers that be and everybody loved it. We threw the double entendres in there immediately, you know, as far as what we could do, what we could get away with. And we just had fun with it. Now, the next step was to get her to buy in. And so we did the same thing. We put a sketch package together. And she, Cassandra, was the most receptive person we could have ever worked with, obviously, three games later, right? First of all, she was totally into pinball. She understood the product and wanted to be part of it. By throwing the sketches over the fence, so to speak, and getting her buy-in, that just led to putting together a package that just worked for the time. Our proudest moment was when we took that game to the AMOA show that fall, and it won best new equipment, pinball, won best new equipment for the first time in seven years. Otherwise, video games had taken best. Oh, wow. That's awesome. That had to feel good. If we didn't hit it with sales, because there was still a reluctance at that point in time for operators to buy into a Bally product, because they had seen the leaner days of Bally when Bally Midway was going on. So it was a little bit of a struggle to get sales off the ground with that theme, not because of the theme, but because of the Bally name. The Bally name kind of was still a little tainted. And so I think Police Force outsold Elvira and the Party Monsters. Oh, that's a shame. They were going with a known, you know, entity. Yeah, right. Nothing against Police Force. It was a great game. We just felt Elvira and the Party Monsters had it in personality. Yes. Well, I think history has shown that Elvira was a much better game than Police Force, although Police Force has a pretty cool art package. I love the art package on it. Absolutely. Moving on from Elvira and the Party Monsters, you continued to make a run of party-themed games with Dennis, Dr. Dude and Party Zone, which are kind of that same Spuds McKenzie party animal type theme kind of going on. And in the past, you stated that's kind of where your influence of Mad Magazine started to show through in your work or the influence of Mad Magazine, I should say. That's one thing that kind of defined you and Dennis's games together, were that you weren't afraid to lean into the goofy, campy comedy side of things, which wasn't too common in pinball at all before then, but very much became a recurring thing, especially on some of the really successful games we see into the 90s. Can you just kind of tell us what it was like being able to create, the process of creating these characters and stories, in how different that experience was versus on working on something like Star Trek or a licensed theme? Just as a sidebar to that, I'll start with Steve Ritchie instead of starting with Dennis. And I'll say after I had done some of those games with Dennis, Steve Ritchie came to me and said, hey, I'd like to work with you. Or should I say he said, hey, I'd like to work with you. he also put the caveat on there and said, but I don't want any funny stuff. Okay, no funny stuff. I said, so what's your theme? What are we working on if I join you? He goes, Star Trek The Next Generation. I said, oh, no problem. There's no funny stuff in that. I said, it's hardly a comedy. And he goes, yeah, we're going to do it really straight, and it's going to be great. So I did a quick sketch of Captain Picard at the, you know, captain's chair. And I had him, it was a cartoon. And I had him saying, make it so it's not funny. And, and I showed that to Steve. And he goes, Yeah, yeah, you get it. Okay, now that's it. You're not doing anything else like that. I wish I still had that sketch. I don't know if I do. I would have to dig for it to see if I saved it. I kind of wish I had that sketch. Anyway, but with Dennis, Dennis was really receptive to comedy. And the goofier, the better. I think at one time we might have even floated the idea of doing a game called Goofball. But we never did it. That's how goofy things got. We just wanted to be very cartoonish and Mad Magazine-ish, you know, and that kind of thing. So playing off the Mad Magazine influence, I just, you know, Dr. Dude, for instance, not really a party-themed game. It was kind of in that direction of where we didn't want to do, you know, a standard-themed game, you know. I don't even know how – that's probably not a great way to describe a standard-themed game, what is it? even mean. Dennis had the opportunity to work with the licensed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Never heard of it. Right. And at the time, it was still basically a comic book, but with the word out that there was going to be a movie, but the movie hadn't been released yet. And to me, it just felt, this could have been one of the biggest mistakes of my career, but it just felt juvenile. It felt like, is this our target audience in my little pea brain anyway? And so I went back to Dennis and I said, why don't we do our own comic book theme and come up with like a character that is cool? You know, he comes back to me, he goes, oh, like Dr. Doom. I said, well, he's already a comic book character, but let me think about that. And, you know, I love alliteration. If you couldn't tell i've worked on uh so many games that use alliteration in the title and i came back to him probably a day later and said how about dr dude and he was like oh sounds cool and i think i'd just seen earth girls are easy which is like oh yeah who's ever seen that movie classic cult comedy there was a small moment in that movie where i think jim carrey actually was playing the role of a Martian, I think, or something, some kind of alien. And he actually utters the words Dr. Dude. I think that influenced me. And I grabbed onto that and went from there. And then it was just a matter of putting together the idea of one of the best movies of my childhood was the Jerry Lewis movie. Now I can't think of the name. Yes, you're talking to an old man. You're retired, Greg. You don't have to remember any of this. Yeah, right. The Nutty Professor, the actual original Jerry Lewis movie, big influence on me as a kid. I took that and combined it with a couple more ideas. And we came up with this character that was a nerd and then became this cool, outrageous guy. And we just went with it. And I remembered we had to describe the theme that we were going to work on at a meeting with Steve Kornick in the room. Steve was kind of the figurehead of game design at Williams at the time. He was probably 80 or 81 at the time. God bless him. We described like we did a whole pitch thing, right, with Molecular Mixmaster and, you know, the whole thing. And Steve just sat there and listened intently. And at the end of it, he went, I don't know what the hell you guys are talking about. It sounds good to me. let's go with it that's awesome that's a cool steve kordek story pitching doctor dude to 81 year old steve kordek's incredible it was fun it was fun so yeah that then obviously led to the party zone which was the cap i mean we we couldn't take that any further than taking it out to the party zone yeah taking it on a rocket ship right it was like that that's we're done and then my wife said, yeah, you are done because we need to take a vacation because I was going to jump immediately. I did jump immediately into Whitewater with Dennis and sat there and ideated with him and threw a lot of ideas up on the wall, helped design the topper for Whitewater. And then I got unplugged and went on vacation with my family to Disney World. That's awesome. Whitewater is my favorite game of all time. I speak about it a lot on the show, but I spoke about it to Dennis when I got to meet him at the Texas Pinball Festival one year, and it probably is one of my favorite art packages of all time, which John Yowsey ended up doing, correct? Correct. Yeah. Which brings me to this next question is some of the technology. We talked about it in the first episode. In this time, I heard you, again, pulling from your talk at the Northwest Show, that sometime in the early 90s, around this time the bally williams art department received their first computer which you said was like a single macintosh but you shared it amongst six different artists or something did you readily embrace the new technology how did it change the work and were there any holdouts in the art department because i thought i heard John Youssi himself say that he had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the computer art era clutching his beloved airbrush close to his chest where were you were on that spectrum of like do you embrace the computer immediately like did you fight for screen time there how did that all go that's that John Yousi sums it up pretty good so in the mid 90s i was uh 40 ish right yeah it was tough we eventually broadened our scope and got more Macintoshes. But the company was being very frugal by saying, let's start with one and see how much you guys use it. Well, not only did we use it, but we had to have a sign-up list for the guys that worked over in the video game area because they would work on it late at night. And that thing was running 24 hours. And so the video game artists would come over and work on it. And, you know, for whatever needs they had. And so, yeah, we only had one Mac to begin with. I did not readily embrace it. I hate to say it took me many years to really full, full fledged get into it. But the good thing is I had hired some younger people. So we had Linda Deal, who became legendary artist in her own right. And we had Paul Barker, who was our manager of like production art. And both of them like fully embraced it. And both of them taught me like how to transition and use the Mac as a positive tool rather than something that was, you know, going to end my career. Oh, were you looking at it like a Luddite? You were like, I don't trust this piece of machinery or. And here we are, you know, how many years later with AI looming. I know, right? Yeah, once I learned that, yeah, it's a useful tool, but it took me a while. It took me a while to embrace it, for sure. So I do want to cover this in this episode because I've heard lots of people who worked at this company, which is now Valley and Williams are combined. You're under Williams, but you're still releasing games as Valley titles. But it's said by a lot of people that worked at this time that the work environment was extremely competitive. like even likening i think george gomez said likening the work environment to a situation where the different design teams acted like rival street gangs george always says shark tank like every single yeah he likes to say that too can you describe this and and how was it different from when you were working only at bally or later on at stern and did it reach the artists at all or was this more of a symptom of like the designers themselves the programmers the engineers being competitive? Like, was this a part of the art department too? Or what was your experience working there at that time? I would say the art department was shielded from that. Our area was further down the hall in engineering. So we were a bit shielded by it all. We didn't always get to see the sparks fly, so to speak. And it was competitive. And probably that's a good thing because it just kept everybody trying to, like, do better than the last thing, right? And you always want the next game to be better than the last one you produced, whether it's as a designer, an artist, a programmer, what have you. You've got to remember, too, this was the onset of where programming for pinball machines really flourished, right? It really, you know, Larry DeMar really brought it to the table with Adam's family and that kind of thing, you know. So this was the era of the programmer coming into play as being almost like the co-designer of the game rather than just a guy that does the layout and maybe a couple of thematic flourishes. Now it's like two main designers, you know, working together to make the game as good as it can be and to make it even deeper than anything you saw previous to that So I think with all that said the competition between the game teams was strong And I think that what made the game so good at that time Now, back in the art department, we had Pat McMahon. Literally, we had a whiteboard in the entry to the art department. And Pat would do a daily caricature scene of what was playing out in game design or engineering. Nobody escaped like being part of Pat's whiteboard. And he would come up with some really scathing like scenarios, you know. And it was awesome. And every morning, people would come down the hall with their coffee cup in hand just to see what Pat was working on on the whiteboard. And it was stuff made of legend. And unfortunately, all we had to record it back then was a Polaroid camera. And so I've got a bunch of foggy Polaroid pictures of some of Pat's handiwork that someday may end up in print if we can figure out how to, you know, enhance it through AI, maybe. I will clean that up for you. We kind of just kept to ourselves, except when, you know, a game designer would walk in and, you know, start an argument. No, I'm just kidding. But not really, but sort of. Yeah, it was a fun time. And Pat made it that much more fun. Right on. So after three games in a row with Dennis, just kind of moving chronologically still, three games in a row with Dennis, you were paired up with Steve Ritchie, which you touched on a little bit with NextGen and then following that, No Fear. Can you just describe what the experience working with Steve was like? It's kind of well known that he would butt heads with programmers and kind of be hard on the other collaborators, it seems like. But it's hard to tell how much of that's exaggerated if that translated to working with him on the art. Yeah. What are you willing to tell us about Steve Ritchie? What can you tell us about Steve Ritchie? We became fast friends. You know, I had heard things through the grapevine that, you know, Steve was hard to work with and blah, blah, blah. But, you know, we're kind of opposites when it comes to personality types. I mean, he's like triple A personality and I'm more like a B, you know. So I'm not a doormat by any stretch, but I can, and doormat is probably a word I learned from Steve. He is unique to work with, and he's got strong opinions. I will say that, and he might not agree with me, but he's never been good at brainstorming, because this is how a typical brainstorm session goes with Steve in the room. Hey, Steve, what if we did, and then you spill it out, and he immediately goes, no. Okay. Not a great collaborative environment. How about this then? Nah. No. And then it wasn't until you got to the point where he would say, I can't hate that, that you knew you had something. So that's what working with Steve is like. You just kind of chip away and you throw the bad ideas out there, even though they're not bad ideas. Right. But once you find the thing that hits the right nerve, then he'll say, I can't hate that. And things can progress forward. Steve is such a funny character to me. I've met him at shows and he's it's weird because I've heard him described as being super, super serious. is but he also has like a he does have like he gave my business partner gave him go to goes to give him a high five and then steve hits the high five and then does like a pratfall on the ground and then he gets up and he just shouts out to the whole concourse of people he goes that guy hit me that guy hit me did y'all see that that guy hit me the few times i've met him he's been kind of funny but he's also very serious like so i guess we're just he's like an enigma is like i'm trying of wonder like what it all is to work with Steve Ritchie and I'm sure he contains multitudes it seems but as most pinball people like I love his games I I love Steve Ritchie for everything he's done for pinball so we just we love talking to people who worked with him like I said he's unique he knows what he wants well he knows what he doesn't like he may not know what he wants but He knows what he doesn't like, and it just takes some time and patience to get to a point where you get it to finally have him say, that's bitchin'. So you can get something besides that's not bad out of him. Right. I can't hate that goes to, that's bitchin'. And then, okay, we're done. Sign it. Just ship it. Well, I want to bring it back to you. I'm a fan of the artwork through all the years that you've done, Greg. But I think from this post-merger era, my two favorites, the first Elvira game and Star Trek The Next Generation, which are two wildly different takes. Elvira and the Party Monsters just seems like distilled Greg Ferrer style to me. I don't know how you feel about it, but it just feels fully matured. You're drawing on your love of campy Mad Magazine type humor. our fascination, you said, with the Universal Monsters and the Weirdo model kits. And Star Trek kind of seems like a stylistic departure. In your Northwest Pinball seminar, you briefly touched on a technique that you use for the character faces on the back glass. But can you describe that for our listeners? Because it's, you know, it's more realistic, you know, it's less cartoony. Yeah, it is. So at the time, like I said previously, no funny stuff. That was Steve's edict, right? Yeah. So I knew I wasn't going to be able to do a caricature version of the Starship fleet, right, with the crew. I was going to have to figure out how other illustrators made what they did so great. So I literally took a class. I took an intensive four-day seminar. and fortunately at that seminar there was an airbrush artist that had done a lot of work for Star Trek so he had rendered the Starship Enterprise numerous times so I glommed on to that guy and I said dude you got a brain dump on this one so hard because I've got to be able to you know, accurately describe in illustration the Starship Enterprise. And I said, and I know the rabid fans out there, you can't get away with sloppiness. Yeah. And going back to the portraits, you know, again, I wanted to render these people as close to what I could at my skill set at that time. I was pushing myself pretty hard to really come up with something that was completely different than anything I had ever done. I learned from an artist, Thomas Blackshear, I think is his name, an illustrator. He had done a lot of work for Star Trek. And I looked at a lot of his pieces. And again, no Internet, no Google. I did my own research and saw his work, and I said, that's what this needs to look like. But we can't hire Thomas Blackshear to do this game because he'll be too expensive. And he'll go, well, Playfield, what is that? How do I do this? Right. So I took it upon myself. Again, here I am, you know, aping yet another artist. I don't have my own style, probably. I really studied his work and learned that he starts, as does like Drew Struzan, with a pencil, tight pencil drawing on the illustration board. And so I developed all the characters tightly, brought them to the illustration board, literally drew with pencil all the values, you know, all the darks and lights and got them all on the illustration board where I wanted them. This is way after I developed like the actual layout and composition and then went in and layered, painstakingly layered watercolor and acrylic and airbrush and color pencil. And I threw everything at it to try to replicate that Thomas Blackshear, Drew Struzan kind of, you know, quality to the work. Probably not as loose as Drew, but definitely, you know, closer approximating the Blackshear work. So that's something that pushed myself hard, and I'm proud of the finished product. But at the trade show when we debuted the game, somebody came up to me and said, so you worked on this package? And I said, yeah. He goes, it looks great, but why did you guys opt for photography? And I said, pardon me? he goes why did you use photographs of the characters I was like I didn't wow I tried to explain to him you know the painstaking process I went through to create that illustration he was like oh okay he goes I thought it was photographs he walked away and I was like I didn't know what to think I was like damn was that a compliment or did I just get dissed really hard I was like I, you know, I might have lost sleep that night. I don't know. But I just felt like, wow, that's a weird thing to say. But OK. I mean, I worked from photography. I but I did not sit there and put photographs on the illustration board and then airbrushed on top of them like some other artists at that time were doing. I think it's a great art package. I mean, I love the cabinet, especially just the play field. And I mean, yeah, it's one of my favorite games. I think that game just came out beautifully. Yeah, the team, it was a team effort. I mean, Dwight, Steve, me, I mean, there was a lot of late nights and a lot of collaboration. And me being the non-Trek person, I think that kind of helped because I had to learn a lot, awfully quick, about the Star Trek universe, right? It was a fun project to work on. So at this point in time, like we're in the early mid-90s, how long did the average game take you to fully illustrate? Like how'd that compare to doing it back in the early 80s? And I guess what was the workflow like? Were you working on multiple games at the same time or just one at a time? No, it was one at a time. You got to remember, I was like the art department manager since like 82 or 83 when Kevin left the art department to go work for Midway. I was always the art department manager or slash art director, whatever you want to call it. So I was kind of balancing both sides of the fence. In fact, we had time management people come in one time at Williams, and they said, if you have a job where you're doing one thing full time, but you're doing another thing kind of part time, got to lose the part time thing. They meant at work, you know, you can't have a hobby at work. So you have to devote yourself. So if you're a manager, you shouldn't be doing other stuff that people work for you should be doing. I was just like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not, I can't, I can't do that. I need to keep my hand moving. I need to keep active in the design process, you know? And suits just don't understand artists ever. That's like the tale as old as time. Like the suits just do not understand the artistic mind and the creative mind at all. One thing that was a little bit different. So by this time at Williams, Kevin O'Connor and Margaret Hudson were freelancers. OK, Midway had collapsed and Bally sold everything. So there we were. When I would do a play field, for instance, I would do a tight pencil drawing of the play field and I would call Kevin and go, I got another play field for you. And he would ink the play field from my tight pencil. And there was no interpretation. It was very much like the comic book industry, whereby you have a penciler, and then you have an inker, and then you have a colorist. So we kind of adopted that mentality of how to break up the workflow so that we could get these games through the process faster. Kevin would do the ink. He would send that back to me. I would do a color sketch. I would send that over to Margaret, and Margaret would then cut the rubylith color separations for the project back to her days back at Bally. What she learned there, she was now using in her freelance days as a way to earn money. That was a way to break up the amount of work that was being done, where other artists like Pat McMahon or Linda, they might have been inking their own playfields, or Doug Watson might have been inking their own playfields, whereas I was offloading it so that I could weigh my time as a manager and not be, like, you know, caught buried, even though I did spend a lot of hours, you know, still doing artwork. Basically, yeah, back then it was one project per artist at a time. And what were your timelines on a project? Oh, yeah. How long did the average game take? Average game, probably nine months, maybe nine to 12 months, but 12, that's a year. So that's pushing it. So I would say, yeah, probably like nine months total. I think some other things that I heard about your time here was you created the original pencil sketches for the composition, which became Medieval Madness. But John Yowsey ended up completing them and doing the final art package for Medieval. This is exactly what we were talking about at the beginning with you. And we kind of credit it with you and Dennis and your games. It's like it's still full of like silly, campy humor. So it feels like a game that you would have loved to have done. Is there a reason why you didn't end up doing the full art package? and John did, and similarly with Monster Bash and Kevin O'Connor doing that art package? There was a good reason for that. At the time, pinball was fledgling, right? And so, but WMS was also making slot machines. I was kind of not reassigned, but adding to my workload, they kind of had me overseeing some of the slot work too. Not all of it, but some of it. And so I was flying out to Vegas probably three times a year and learning more about slot machines at the time. So my time was being stretched into other endeavors. And I really, really wanted to work on Medieval Madness. And Brian wanted me to be part of it, to bring some of that vibe to it. It was important for me. Working with John was always wonderful. I'm a great admirer of his work. and he was always a very humble guy for the amount of work that he did and just the beauty of his finished work. So I figured we could work together really well. So I said, John, would you mind if I worked as like a heavy-handed art director on this and gave you sketches as like idea jump off points and then you can take it from there? And I came up with a term. I said, you can Yowcify it for me. He said, I'd love to work with you, collaborate. Yeah, we did just that. And I went through the whole process, like we described earlier, of thumbnails and pencil sketches and the lockup or the word, you know, the whole Medieval Madness logo, title logo. I brought that to fruition. I did a color sketch of the cabinet. I did just a pencil sketch of the layout of how I envisioned the king coming out of the castle with his two troll henchmen side by side with a nice, you know, fisheye lens of the castle, you know, behind them and throwing the dragon up on top and gave that pencil sketch to John. I said, here you go. And then literally the team sat in a meeting, the entire design team, and we came up with a hit list of sight gags for the backlast. And we said to John, this is kind of what we want to include in the backlast. And the list was like probably three pages long. And he said, I'll try to work some of that in there for sure. And I'll be damned if he didn't hit his mark. There's a lot of what was on that written page in John's final artwork. And he also came up with a few of his own. I was more than impressed by his finished work. Like the idea of the flaming arrow with a marshmallow on the end of the arrow, that's my idea. It wouldn't have been nothing without John's rendering and his ability to render that into something that was just beautiful. So exciting to work with somebody that you trust and you both trust each other and then to see it come to fruition, I was just amazed. So was this kind of a callback kind of how Paul Faris brought you in and did a similar thing Like you were talking in the last episode about how he kind of did that to you with Fathom a little bit like he was a little bit of a heavy handed art director and being like this is kind of what I envisioning And then you executed it Then you got to kind of do the same thing with John later. There's a lot of similarities there for sure. I never really thought about, but yeah, for sure. You know, and in some cases, some art directors, that's how they do their job, right? They literally give a layout to somebody and say, here's kind of what we're thinking, you know? I've always tried to let the people that work for me have their say in how they envision artwork on a back glass or a cabinet or a play field to be, and I just tried to guide them or support them or fight for them when needed instead of being a heavy-handed art director. Before we close out this section and your time at Bally Williams, we just wanted to ask, you know, we'd be remiss if we didn't, if you have any good stories about working with Python Anghelo, the late Python. You know, he's kind of a man of legend at this point. I feel like any opportunity we have to ask somebody that worked with him firsthand, we got to. Python, may he rest in peace. He was the most interesting character I've ever worked. And I say character because he just was a character. There's no better way to describe him. He wasn't always easy to work with. And he said it best at one of the pinball expos. He gave me an award. He got up to speak. This is near the end of his life, too. So he had already been treated for cancer and was going through all that stuff. He did a whole seminar of design awards in his own way. And he started with me. And the award was an actual seashell because of the marvel that is the seashell. And only he could describe what was happening, you know, with the design, the natural beauty of a seashell and the fact that it's probably based on the Fibonacci, you know, I can't remember everything right now, but there's a lot to all that. And anyway, he used a seashell as the actual award. And he said it best. He said, Greg was like the British Navy and in comes the Python pirates, right? The British Navy had to figure out how to either dispatch these guys or work around them or work with them so that things could turn into a final product. But my first day at Williams was a telltale sign. And I've told this story many times. So it's nothing new. But Ken Fedesna came to me. He was the GM at the time. And he goes, Greg, I know it's your first day on the job here at Williams, but we can't find Python. If I had a dollar for every time somebody said, we can't find python i i'd be a wealthy man right now and i could have probably retired uh much earlier no no that's not true i heard he was like a feral cat i have heard that before like he kind of came and went and he was just he was on his own time he knew what he had and he was a smart man that way and he would get most of his work done in a big hurry at the end of the project I knew I could see what he was capable of doing because a lot of times he would do these magnificent sketches on a wall at night, you know, by some probably infused by some chemical of some kind. He would do these amazing things on a wall or on a large sheet of paper, you know, and the next day you'd come in and look at it and go, wow, that's that's incredible. I'd be like, why don't you put that on a pinball machine? And he'd be like, Magoosh, the pinball machine is just a vehicle for, you know, it is a way for people to have fun and put their money somewhere. They work hard and they play hard and so they have to put their money somewhere. So why not a pinball machine? But it is not worthy. It is not worthy of my artwork, you know. And so I do the artwork for the pinball machine. I was like, okay, whatever. Yeah, like I say, character, you know, that's all he was. He knew he was a character. He did what he did, but he was not always easy to work with. Yeah, he sounds like a tour de force, but I'm grateful. There's something about his art packages that there are some that I love, and there are some that, like, make my skin crawl. There's, like, an uncanny valley to some of them. They're all uniquely Python. Yeah. And I just, it hits me though. Every Python package hits me. So, and that's a special gift. Yep. But we want to talk about after this time kind of pinball sort of collapsed for the narrative here. You had to leave and you went and worked in video games and you had to do some freelance work, but we are a pinball podcast. So we're going to skip over a decade or so of your life here. Yeah. Not to downplay it, but you know. Did some cool work, but we want to talk about when you and Dennis got back together and you built your own machine, which ended up becoming Woe Nelly. And the whole game is built to look and play like an old EM machine from maybe the 1950s, early 1960s. It's got the short flippers, like the bullseye targets, and the original prototypes you built even had like gobbles. And Stern eventually made a run of these games. Can you tell us the story of what sparked the interest in doing an old school EM style game in the first place? Yeah. So Dennis and I had been out at the Northwest Pinball Show and we heard a lot of talk about like one off custom games. We saw the results of, I think, one at the time. I forgot which one it was, but it sparked an interest for me because I was newly unemployed at the time. I was trying to figure out what my next steps were. And I had never freelanced before. So freelancing was all new to me. And at the time, we were in literally what they called the Great Recession. When I'd call different game companies and stuff, it was like, yeah, we're kind of not doing much either here. So thanks anyway. You know, that kind of thing. Or if I'd give them my hourly rate, which I thought was very fair, they'd be like, oh, we never pay that much. It was not a fun time. So I tried to figure out how am I going to make this a fun time and maybe earn some money somehow. So I told Dennis, I said, what do you think about like just putting our heads together and coming up with something that has the look and feel of a custom game? And he loved the idea right away. We just kind of took off from there and put our heads together and started writing down some ideas. we came to a point where it was like, okay, what if we take, whether it was he or myself, what if we take an old EM game and turn it into something different? We know enough people out there that are into EM games that maybe we can do something here. He actually said, well, I have an EM game that I'm not sure what I was going to do with anyway. So maybe we could use that as like the donor game to get started. I'm sorry, I haven't thought about this, but I forgot the name. Oh, Continental Cafe was the game that he had, an old Gottlieb game from, I think, the 50s, late 50s. And so we employed Mark Wehner, who has an extensive collection of games, and he had worked at Williams. So we already knew Mark. Oh, boy, my names are escaping my brain right now. We put together a team. I'm sorry. I know what you guys can do. You can edit this part, and then I can come up with the name later that I want to give you, and then we can slice it all back in. Yeah, right. Slice it all back in. No, I'm just kidding. But not really, though. I was just kidding there, by the way. My mind is as sharp as a katana blade. It's a little joke I like to play with Ken Walker, who was an integral part of taking Continental Cafe apart and helping to teach Dennis about the workings of all the EM parts and getting them all to work on the new playfield design. This is my real voice, by the way. My other voice has been a bit that I do to mess with silly podcasters who ask me dumb questions, which I will now revert back to for funsies. So anyway, I'll do a nice voiceover. It won't sound anything like you, but I'll voice it over. Don't acknowledge it at all. I'll do that. I give you full authority. I give you full permission to do that. So we came up with this idea to tear apart his EM game, and literally it was painstaking. He created a new unique play field, but we kept all the pieces of that Continental Cafe, including the gobble hole, and just reconfigured it into a more modern, well, if you want to call it a more modern layout. Yeah, like a mid-60s layout instead of a 50s layout. Yeah. Right. From there, we decided, okay, now that we have this, he was the guy that said, let's do, he goes, I love fruit crate art. I was like, cool. And then I said, why don't we do a mashup of like, you know, old pinball art and fruit crates and farming and, you know, a little pinup action. And I said, you know, it could be really fun to work with. And I think he came up with Wonelli or he came up with sweet, juicy melons. And then I said, okay, let's give that a brand. It's got to sound more like a brand. So let's, how about Woe Nelly, Big Juicy Melons? And as soon as I said big, I said it by mistake, I think. He was like, ah, yeah, let's do that. So it started to flow from there. I really love this game. I mean, my bar is called Wedgehead, named after the single-player Gottlieb EM games. My business partner and I are, we love EM machines. A lot of it has to do with the art, but also just kind of the game times and the way they would mess with like the lower third of the playfields and change shit around. And I really and I just didn't. I love EMS. Yeah, they're unique always. And the art styles of like artists like Roy Parker and Christian Marche and Gordon Morison in particular. It's funny you mentioned fruit crates because like I've worked in a kitchen. I've been employed as a chef for many years, and there are certain packages on fruit, even to this day, where they're not in wood boxes anymore. But some of them are really good. There was one called Fat Boy Lemons and Limes that I just got the other day that's like a fat kid and his belly's hanging out. He's got like a spinning hat. And I took a picture of it and posted it on our social media, and everyone messaged me like, what is this? This is awesome. I was like, there's some cool art on fruit packaging, and you wouldn't understand why it's there, but it's there. I love this game. I love the way it plays, but there was like something of a backlash due to kind of your use of goofy double entendres. And there were some people in the community that were, you know, just it was clearly a campy and over the top rendition of an original fruit farm theme. And it wouldn't have been considered controversial over much of your earlier career, especially in the ballet art department of the early 1980s. Or when you're doing Elvira games with the queen of campy sexiness, Cassandra Peterson. But my question, I guess, is did this backlash surprise you in any way, seeing as it was part of your work that was highly celebrated before? Or how do you feel about it now? What backlash? I'm just kidding. I'm like, oh, maybe you never heard. Okay. Oh, no. We heard. Yeah. So it was interesting because here's why I see it to be interesting. When we, Dennis and I, were just shopping this thing around and showing iterative stages of it in development at Midwest Gaming Classic and stuff like that, you know, people were seeing it piecemeal. You know, at first they saw at Expo an idea of what the base of the game was going to look like with the playfield cabinet part on top of it. And everybody was scratching their heads like, what the heck is this going to be? So as Dennis and I kind of went through, because we started in 2009 with sketches and first showing, I think, of anything was at Expo with just not even a finished cabinet. We didn't get the direct backlash that we got when Stern said, we're going to build this for Whizbang Pinball. Right. So it's when Stern, the corporation, released to the world that they were supportive of this product. That's when I think the majority of the backlash happened because ahead of that, we had done T-shirt designs and people were buying them. But we also were doing some marketing research at shows by seeing people's reaction to it. most people would walk up to it, look at it, have a giggle, play the game, walk away, or come over and say, wow, that's pretty fun. And I didn't think an old game like that would be that fun or whatever, right? Yeah. And some people would look at the T-shirts and go, I love that design, but my wife will never let me wear that in public. And my wife would be there helping to sell games or sell T-shirts. And she'd say, well, really? It's not that risque when you think about pinball art in general. Oh, definitely not, especially from previous eras. It's tamed by previous eras. Right. She worked in the industry in marketing. You know, she worked for Tom Neiman for a couple of years. And so she knew what the world of pinball was. She would explain to people, you know, this is tame compared to things that were happening back in the 80s. So I don't, you know, I don't have a problem with it. Like I said, we never got maybe that's because of the Internet. The Internet allows people to be more vocal. Sure. Yeah. I refer to it as the world's largest microphone because people can sit at their keyboard and, you know, either say what they want or critique what they want in their own way with their own words. But in front of you, they probably wouldn't behave the same way. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I felt bad. I genuinely felt bad, like I was a bad man for thinking of this idea when I saw some of the comments at that point. And I was like, wow, this is getting such a strong reaction. And I just maybe it's the era that I grew up in or the era that I was most associated with. But it just, I was flabbergasted by it all and felt, genuinely felt bad for whomever was feeling what they were feeling from the look and feel of the game. Anyway, I go on record as saying I'm sorry to anybody out there that didn't appreciate it for what it was. And that was just a fun mashup of styles of, you know, from pinball, from pinup eras and, you know, from fruit crate art. That's all we were doing was just trying to have a little fun. I enjoy the game. Like I said, I we don't have like a woe Nelly in town, but we play the reskin copies of the game. And it's a shame because, like, I remember the first time I played that game was going to the Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas. And they had the actual fruit crate version balanced on beer cans. And I was like, this is so cool. Like, I love the whole fit and finish of the game. Like, the fact that it looks like a fruit, it's everything to me. It's like a standalone art piece. And I understand that, like, people are going to take offense to that. But I'm also like, man, look at some of the most popular TV shows. People go home and watch Smut on HBO. Like, they're watching Game of Thrones, man. And they're like, how is this not? Whatever, you know, to each their own. You got to look at it from a design standpoint, too. because Dennis was always interested in the cabinet. He always wanted to redesign the pinball cabinet into something more interesting. Yeah, that seems to be his mission. This time, it was him having full control over how that cabinet was going to be put together and create a piece that it's as if the farmer had these fruit crates laying around and just cobbled it together. And that's how we went into it from a design standpoint. That's where the beer can idea came from, to a crushed beer can, just to give that little extra angle to the play field to make it just so. It's so cool. Just from that pure design standpoint, it was an opportunity to do something that nobody had tried before. and then to have Stern take it on for George to have the foresight to go, okay, I think we can do this, and I think we can replicate it very faithfully to what you guys have done here. It's not going to be cheap, but it's going to be unique, and we're going to be able to capture that. And by golly, he did it. Grateful for that. Speaking of Stern that game got made by them for Whizbang And then was that before or after you came on as the new art director there It was the same time. Okay. And then when you moved over to Stern full time, so that was kind of coming off of Stern's era of fully digital photo collage art packages. And you came in very shortly after we started to see games like X-Men and Metallica with illustrated, hand-illustrated artwork again. There were still some photographic digital art packages in between, but we started seeing games like Kiss, Aerosmith, Spider-Man Vault, Ghostbusters, which are gorgeous games and kind of ushered in this new era. By 2016, it seems like the pendulums kind of swung back to fully illustrated art packages. But can you describe that change in art philosophy that me and Alan anyway see it very much as you came in to Stern? And within a couple of years, like it became illustrated again. Yeah. And the art got good. Yeah, really good. Well, thanks. I appreciate that. It was funny because when I was still freelancing or the Wonelli thing was still in its infant stage, when people did find out that I was going to work for Stern eventually, they were all like, oh, when you get there, is there any way you can help to get illustration back on pinball machines? And I said, well, yeah, I hope to be able to do that. I don't know how that's going to be viewed, but that's my hope, too. So, yeah, when I first started, Metallica was the first game. Well, Avengers was actually the first game that was happening when I first stepped in. Metallica was also being worked on by Dirty Donnie. And so I was excited for Donnie because he had worked with them on a one-off Metallica game because he knew those guys. And so it made sense for Donnie to work with them again on the Stern version. So it was cool to see Donnie's process, that whole package come together. And then from there, I just got lucky when I saw the work that Jeremy of Zombie Yeti was doing for John Papadiuk that never really saw the light of day. I saw, you know, the mock-ups of Kiss that he had done, the more recent thing that's happening now that I see on the Internet with Alice in Wonderland. Thank you. Thank you. When I saw that stuff, I was like, wow, who is this guy and how do we find him? As it turns out, we found him. And, you know, thank God for that, because Jeremy has done amazing work from day one, even though he won't agree with that at all. But he just came in. We've become great friends. And, you know, he's done some wonderful work. I was able to bring Kevin O'Connor. Kevin O'Connor never really left. He worked for Stern during all those years doing packages for Gary. He's done some unsung work that maybe a lot of people aren't even familiar with that might have been his project. I might not even know which projects he worked on during the 2000s, so to speak. You know, he was part of the fold that we, you know, made sure to bring illustration back. And not every license allowed us to do that. So, for instance, Game of Thrones, we couldn't use illustration until we showed them what we were capable of doing, not through another product or project, but through their IP. We had the artist do a piece that they could then see, oh, maybe illustration is okay. So the LE package, Bob Stavlik is the project artist for that game. He did a great job on the LE by producing a back glass that still fits in their corporate format, but is more illustrative than the other packages. That whole era, you know, it's just so wonderful to hear from the world that, yeah, that's what Stern product needed. It needed to be more cohesive and definitely back to illustration. Yeah, like I love that Gary kept Pitball alive. I think that's an impressive story during the lean 2000s. And I think that there's some very good games throughout all of Stern's history. But the criticism was that a lot of them were pretty ugly at the time. And they had a massive glow up. It's no coincidence. I mean, we were looking at the list doing this episode. We're like, oh, it's kind of like when Greg gets there and it gets a lot better. I had never realized that you stepped in as the art director or manager. And then suddenly it was like, oh, that was the missing piece, which is funny to me because I think, again, not to downplay your earlier work or anything, but I think the work you did at Stern had probably more of an impact than, you know, your individual work on games. Like you absolutely did beautiful games before, but it's like you just changed the industry when you stepped into the position at Stern, it feels like, and made everybody else level up. All the games just look so good now. And I know you're an artist, so there's a bias here, but I want to ask you, like, how important do you think, as pinball is a product, like how important do you think art is to the final product and like to a game's overall perception in a marketplace? I think it's very important. Yes, I am biased. I think we've convinced enough managers and upper management throughout the years that art is a very important element of every game. And especially now in the years when most games are licensed products. You know, sometimes the licensors don't understand how important and the legacy of pinball and how important illustration is to our product because people expect that of pinball. And for the avid player and or buyer, they expect a high end art package every time. and it's important. It is, like I said earlier, the point of purchase. You know, it gives you, depending on theme, you know, people buy themes because they like that theme. They want the art package to live up to that, the license, the IP, you know, so they definitely want that satisfaction of having this new piece of art in their house that people look at and go, wow, that's pretty cool. And when we do our job right, our main goal is to hope that everybody can go, even if they're not even into the theme, to go, wow, that's a pretty cool-looking game. So tell me if I'm wrong, Greg, but the workload that today's pinball artists are under seems pretty damn hectic. You talked about Zombie Yeti, but with Stern, you guys create three models of each game. Doesn't that just kind of mean like it's three times the work as what artists used to do per game? That's exactly what it means. Okay, okay. I was wondering if I was missing something. Like somehow this art just came out of them freely. Like they draw with three hands at the same time. On the nosy. Man, it's bone of contention throughout the last ten years, right? It's like there's just so much art for every game. And thank God there's one play field for every game. because there's no way we could be doing multiple playfields and not with one artist at the helm. Right. Upper management will argue, well, can't we get more, just throw more artists at it? And we've had to do that at times. Star Wars, sorry, Star Wars, for example, at Stern became, we had Bob Stavlik working on the concept work, but then Lucas came in and said, oh, you guys have gone too far. We didn't expect you to be this far along with your concept work. We want to have a hand in this, so we need to kind of start over. And so with that restart, we got put into a situation where the one artist idea wasn't going to fit with the time frame when we needed all the art done for printing purposes. So we ended up getting multiple artists, illustrators working on this, which was a bit of a task on my behalf to go out and find people with the help of Lucas. They gave me a list of a large list of people that might be able to hit the mark. But I went out and found these illustrators to help get us to the finish line. And basically going back to Drew Struzan's name, I told them, I said, if we all work together and make this look like Drew Struzan had something to do with this art package. That's kind of what we're shooting for. And we gave them a sample of Bob's work to kind of guide them. And I think I had seven different illustrators help to get Star Wars over the finish line. So most of the tasks are put on the project artist, whether it's Randy Martinez or Zombie Yeti or whoever it is, it's most of the workload is put on them. And then we have an in-house group of people that take over. And when I say people, it was me and Steve Martin. We are too wild and crazy guys. and Justin Freight that would help take the art from the illustrator and turn it into printable art for each and every vendor, printing vendor out there. Right. You know, there's a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff going on. The three-in-one package thing is a heavy load. That also makes it difficult to find illustrators interested in working in pinball because of the time that it creates to go from start to finish and be able to cover that whole spectrum of parts that need to be covered with art. You know, it limits us as to who might be interested in giving up a year of their time, come out and play pinball with us, so to speak. Yeah, it's not like you can exactly moonlight on something else while you're doing this. Oh, it seems like it's brutal. Like, it seems like a brutal schedule. I'm just blown away at how many packages Jeremy put out over the last few years. Oh, my God. Workhorse. You must not sleep. Right. He needs a vacation. He needs an extended vacation, and then he needs a vacation. So I want to end this episode. You touched on it a little bit earlier where you called the Internet the world's biggest microphone. And I think that's very interesting because you see it when it comes out. I don't know how, I'm sure you were cognizant of it at Stern, but you sure tried to ignore it as much as possible. But how do you or the other very talented artists deal with the rise of the internet, with the increased scrutiny and sometimes heavy criticism of the work that everyone does? Like, is it difficult to hear the noise from a bunch of angry pinball nerds with zero artistic talent or background picking apart design choices and waxing poetic about color theory and things that the licensor wanted that they know nothing about? Like, how do you deal with that? And calling us lazy in certain cases. Yeah. Yes. The answer is yes to all of that. It's I've tried over and over to tell my artists, please don't read that stuff. Please, when your game gets released, don't bother going to look to see what people think, because the first week it's going to play out like this. Week two, it's going to play out like this. Week five, they actually might like something. you know so it's like working with Steve Ritchie you gotta keep you gotta get like the internet keeps going no no no and then they're like i don't i can't hate that yeah then they actually see it and they go it's bitching yeah right but yeah there's it's just it's noise that we don't need because each and every one of these people whether it's my artist or whether it's It's, you know, the engineers, you know, the game designers, the programmers. It's just everybody is doing the best they can at the top level of their game most often. And it's like, you know, under time constraints. Yeah, and licensing constraints and lots of constraints and monetary constraints and, yeah, all of those things. You bet. All those things. And so it's very difficult when you start to see, you know, people's opinions and that's what they are, their opinions. But it hurts when some well-respected people consider something to be a lazy way out when you don't know. You don't know. We're not lazy. We're not lazy by any stretch. You don't know what you're talking about because that's not how that happened. It wasn't from somebody going, I don't give a shit about this, so I'm going to just phone it in. That never happens. Never. Yeah. Sometimes the Internet pinball discourse is very embarrassing to myself as a member of like as a longtime pinball fan. I own a pinball bar, pinball operator. and it's just sad i mean i don't i think what i want this podcast to be in part is that when we speak to industry veterans and legends like yourself it's i just wish that there was a little more overall respect shown to the people in the industry and they know that they're pinball people too and they're trying to do the best games possible and to be fair like stern games objectively are really good looking. They look really good nowadays and they play really well and they're very reliable and they actually are very competitive, very good price point for what you get as far as quality. I'm speaking as an operator and they do very well on location. So there's not a lot to complain about. And you know, that's not gonna stop people from complaining, Yeah. But I just wish people would understand a little bit more. And I hope that they're nicer in person at the shows when they interact with all you guys. Yeah, absolutely. That's what I was saying earlier. Face to face, it's a different world. But the Internet allows you to, for some reason, have some kind of special card that lets you say whatever you want. Yeah. And it's, you know, it's too bad. But, well, I will say that I saw at the Texas Pinball Fest, I saw some people be unbelievably rude to Dwight. And Dwight took it. I couldn't even believe it. Like, I was like, I don't know why he's – Dwight was so nice and gracious. It was insane. Like, I couldn't even believe it. That's good for him. I could not even believe it. Like, I would have hit that. Like, I was like, if you would have spoke to me like that, I was just dumbfounded. That's sad. And because Dwight is so like, I love talking to Dwight when I was at the show. He was one of my favorite people to talk to because like you can, the passion explodes out of him. And some of my favorite pinball moments were playing Dwight games. So a little coda here to the end of this episode is be nice to people. You know, pinball is full of great people, passionate people doing this thing that we love. The message usually is at the end of the show is to go out and play pinball. and I want you to go do that. Play some of these Greg Ferreros games that we talked about. We have some of them on the floor, always at Wedgehead. I think we have the Elvira House of Horrors right now. What else do we have on the floor right now? We have a No Fear in Alex's Basement that we're going to go play right now. That's all I was going to bring up. So we're going to go play that. Nice. But yeah, for everyone listening, we want to thank you, Greg, once again for joining us for another episode of the Wedgehead Pinball Podcast. We appreciate you. Thank you. And for everyone listening, until next time, good luck. Don't suck. My My internet is fluctuating. Okay, well. Xfinity, you know, you think you pay them enough money, but no, it's not enough. Oh my God, I talk to this with my wife all the time. I was like, whenever she starts complaining about it, she's always like, think about the poor Comcast family. Okay, they're going through rough times. They need more money. They need more of our money. We're not paying them enough is probably the problem.

_(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 12a5ce39-bad8-435b-9482-63ea9527f943*