# Episode 38 - Greg Freres & Steven Martin (Art Dept. Stern Pinball)

**Source:** Special When Lit  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2019-02-13  
**Duration:** 67m 9s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://specialwhenlitpinballpodcast.com/episode-38-greg-freres-amp-steven-martin-art-dept-stern-pinball

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## Analysis

Greg Freres (art director at Stern Pinball since ~2017) and Stephen Martin (production art manager since 2013) discuss the behind-the-scenes art workflow at Stern, including collaboration with external artists, licensor management, multi-tier art packages (Pro/Premium/LE), and notable projects like Star Wars, Munsters, and Supreme. They detail the technical process of converting artist sketches into producible artwork, the challenges of managing multiple art variants, and the evolution from photoshop to hand-drawn artwork.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] Greg Freres has been in the pinball business since 1978 — _Greg Freres stated directly in interview: 'I've been around since 1978 in the pinball business'_
- [HIGH] Greg Freres worked on Wizard of Oz playfield art for Jersey Jack before joining Stern — _Greg Freres: 'he would like you to do the playfield for us on Wizard of Oz I said yeah it sounds great'_
- [HIGH] Greg Freres has been at Stern Pinball for almost seven years — _Greg Freres: 'And I've been here for almost seven years now' (statement appears to be from 2020 or so based on context)_
- [HIGH] Stephen Martin joined Stern Pinball in 2013 as production art manager — _Stephen Martin: 'I joined Stern Pinball in 2013 and was hired as the production art manager'_
- [HIGH] Converting plastics from mapped version to nested version takes 2-3 days per set — _Stephen Martin: 'Probably two to three days maybe for just one set of plastics'_
- [HIGH] Stern ships physical sample games to new licensors to help them understand pinball terminology — _Greg Freres: 'We've actually shipped out games, too, like when we were submitting to new licensors like, hey, here's a game'_
- [HIGH] Ghostbusters had a spelling error ('reinforcement' missing an E) that went through multiple print runs undetected — _Stephen Martin describing Ghostbusters: 'reinforcement somehow got by missing the E'_
- [HIGH] Star Wars required collaboration with six additional illustrators beyond the lead artist Bob Stevlik — _Greg Freres: 'I had to contract, I think, six other illustrators' for Star Wars_

### Notable Quotes

> "I've been around since 1978 in the pinball business and currently at Stern Pinball as art director."
> — **Greg Freres**, early in interview
> _Establishes Freres' deep pinball industry experience spanning 40+ years across multiple manufacturers_

> "It just moves and keeps moving at a faster clip every year."
> — **Greg Freres**, discussing pace of pinball industry
> _Reflects on how fast the pinball business moves even after decades in the field_

> "We've got Pro, Premium, and LE. That pop filter is attacking you all night here."
> — **Greg Freres**, mid-interview technical aside
> _Humorous moment showing the technical challenges of podcast recording on-location at Stern_

> "When he was working in his prime – not prime, but in the heyday of pinball – they only worked on one package as far as the art goes."
> — **Ken Cromwell or Bill Webb (host)**, discussing historical pinball art practices
> _Contrasts historical single-package focus with modern three-tier approach, showing increased workload_

> "I had to contract, I think, six other illustrators. Wow. Yeah. So this is a lot more as far as a collaborative effort than what normally would happen."
> — **Greg Freres and Ken/Bill**, discussing Star Wars project scope
> _Highlights the exceptional scale and complexity of the Star Wars pinball art project_

> "It was a lot of work, and we got – as art director, it's like a symphony. It was really a split, and trying to keep it all look like it came from the same brain."
> — **Greg Freres**, describing Star Wars art direction challenge
> _Illustrates the challenge of maintaining artistic cohesion across multiple illustrators_

> "Just thinking about it right now is giving me a little headache."
> — **Greg Freres**, after question about 'alcohol-fueled evenings' during Star Wars
> _Humorous acknowledgment of the stress involved in managing such a large collaborative project_

> "We're used to now seeing like a Zombie Yeti art package or a Dirty Donnie art package or a Christopher Franchi art package."
> — **Ken Cromwell or Bill Webb**, discussing contemporary pinball art styles
> _Shows recognition of individual artist brand identities in modern pinball_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Greg Freres | person | Art Director at Stern Pinball; 40+ year veteran of pinball industry; previously worked at Bally, Williams, Midway; did playfield art for Jersey Jack's Wizard of Oz; known for work on Elvira series, Scared Stiff, Fathom |
| Stephen Martin | person | Production Art Manager at Stern Pinball since 2013; hired as art department completed the two-person art team at Stern; handles plastic conversion and technical art production |
| George Gomez | person | Stern Pinball leader who recruited Greg Freres and conducted final interview; offered Freres full-time position |
| Christopher Franchi | person | Contemporary pinball artist who works on multiple Stern projects; created color sketches for Munsters that were converted to black and white |
| Dwight Sullivan | person | Stern designer known for detailed/wordy insert text; involved in Ghostbusters and Munsters design decisions |
| Bob Stevlik | person | Lead artist on Star Wars pinball; local artist who previously worked on Game of Thrones LE backglass and cabinet |
| Chris Franchi | person | Artist who created original color artwork for Munsters; converted color designs to black and white per Greg's creative direction |
| Stefan Jensen | person | Former art director at Stern; stepped aside to start Warnstar apparel company; still does photography for Stern games |
| Jeremy Packer | person | Stern pinball artist; mentioned as one of the external artists Stern collaborates with on game artwork |
| Kevin O'Connor | person | Stern artist/designer who collaborates with art department on game packages |
| Dennis Nordman | person | Collaborator with Greg Freres on Wacky Nelly with Whizbang Pinball during his freelance period |
| Jack Schult | person | Jersey Jack Pinball founder who invited Greg Freres to work on Wizard of Oz playfield art |
| Stern Pinball | company | Major pinball manufacturer based in Elk Grove Village, Illinois; Greg Freres joined as art director ~2017; Stephen Martin is production art manager; art department completes Pro/Premium/LE variants |
| Jersey Jack Pinball | company | Pinball manufacturer where Greg Freres did freelance work on Wizard of Oz playfield art before joining Stern |
| Williams | company | Historic pinball manufacturer where Greg Freres worked; Greg recalls misspelling SHIELD on Star Trek Next Gen prototype games |
| Bally | company | Historic pinball manufacturer where Greg Freres worked early in his career |
| Midway Games | company | Video game company where Greg Freres worked for ~10 years in video game design before bankruptcy |
| Supreme | company | Fashion/apparel brand that licensed pinball; wanted minimalist aesthetic with name spelled vertically on backglass; required white cabinet handling with gloves |
| Lucasfilm | company | Licensed Star Wars to Stern; heavily involved in art approval process; required specific plastic sets for each product tier |
| Warnstar | company | Apparel company founded by Stefan Jensen after leaving Stern art director role; still provides photography services to Stern |
| Ghostbusters | game | Stern pinball game that had spelling errors in reinforcement text and insert text; screw hole adjustment required moving Sigourney Weaver's face |
| Munsters | game | Stern pinball with black and white grayscale art package with selective color touches; Christopher Franchi converted color artwork to B&W; featured Munsters logo in green |
| Star Wars | game | Stern pinball with complex collaborative art; required six additional illustrators beyond lead artist Bob Stevlik; three sets of plastics for Pro/Premium/LE; influenced by Drew Struzan visual style |
| Wizard of Oz | game | Jersey Jack Pinball game where Greg Freres did playfield art during freelance period before joining Stern |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Art department workflow and process, Licensor management and approval processes, Multi-tier product strategy (Pro/Premium/LE) art variants, Collaborative art direction on large projects
- **Secondary:** Evolution from photoshop to hand-drawn artwork, Historical pinball art practices vs. modern approaches, Quality control and error detection in artwork, Stern Pinball's organizational structure and personnel

### Sentiment

**Positive** (0.82) — Both interviewees speak positively about their work, the creative process, and their colleagues. There is pride in their accomplishments, especially complex projects like Star Wars and Munsters. Minor frustrations acknowledged around workload and process complexity, but overall the tone is enthusiastic and collaborative. Hosts express genuine appreciation for the behind-the-scenes work.

### Signals

- **[personnel_signal]** Greg Freres, legendary pinball artist with 40+ year history across Williams/Bally/Midway/Jersey Jack, has been stable at Stern for ~7 years as art director (confidence: high) — Freres stated he's been at Stern 'for almost seven years now' and recruited by George Gomez for full-time position after Jersey Jack freelance work
- **[design_philosophy]** Stern's approach to art direction emphasizes close collaboration with external artists (Zombie Yeti, Christopher Franchi, etc.) and licensors; art director orchestrates multiple illustrators to maintain stylistic cohesion (confidence: high) — Star Wars project contracted 6 additional illustrators; Munsters involved color-to-B&W conversion by Christopher Franchi; systematic licensor feedback at milestone stages
- **[product_strategy]** Stern strategically differentiates Pro/Premium/LE tiers through distinct art packages; Pro features broad spectrum of license, while Premium/LE focus on narrower themes for enthusiast appeal (confidence: high) — Greg Freres: 'on the Pro, for sure, they want to have, like, the broad spectrum of the game... with an LE or Premium, you kind of want to narrow it down to some kind of theme'
- **[design_innovation]** Munsters Premium represents creative risk-taking with grayscale art package plus selective color accents, intended to capture essence of original B&W TV show; first such approach by Stern (confidence: high) — Greg Freres: 'if any game deserved a black and white package, it would be the Munsters'; Christopher Franchi converted color art layer-by-layer to B&W to preserve artistic intent
- **[operational_signal]** Converting mapped artwork to nested version for one plastic set requires 2-3 days of labor; process involves screw hole adjustments and continuous design team coordination (confidence: high) — Stephen Martin: 'Probably two to three days maybe for just one set of plastics'; described ongoing adjustments like Ghostbusters screw hole moving into Sigourney Weaver's face
- **[community_signal]** Modern pinball community recognizes individual artist styles and brands (Zombie Yeti, Dirty Donnie, Christopher Franchi) similar to how they identify game designers (confidence: high) — Host references 'Zombie Yeti art package or a Dirty Donnie art package or a Christopher Franchi art package' as distinct recognizable styles
- **[licensing_signal]** Many licensors (especially those new to pinball) require education about pinball terminology and product tiers; Stern has developed pinball glossary and ships sample games to educate licensors (confidence: high) — Greg Freres: 'we have recently gotten to a point where we've given them a pinball glossary of terms'; 'We've actually shipped out games, too, like when we were submitting to new licensors'
- **[licensing_signal]** Supreme pinball represents departure from traditional colorful loud pinball aesthetic; white cabinet with minimal graphics driven by apparel company's brand identity and design philosophy (fashion 'flats' approach) (confidence: high) — Greg Freres: 'It was laid out in a flat... it was laid out as a flat. And I recognized it immediately as, oh, this is like what apparel people do'; white cabinets required gloves in factory
- **[manufacturing_signal]** Modern three-tier product strategy (Pro/Premium/LE) requires artists to create three complete art packages per game vs. historical single-package approach; shift to hand-drawn art compounds workload management challenge (confidence: high) — Stephen Martin: '56 games since 2013... three versions'; Greg on hand-drawing: 'now that we're hand-drawing everything again, that's – making sure that we're not overtaxing our illustrators'
- **[product_concern]** Spelling errors in artwork (Ghostbusters 'reinforcement' missing E, Batman 'villain' misspelling, historical Star Trek Next Gen 'SHIELD' misspelling) slip through multiple reviews because daily familiarity causes oversight (confidence: high) — Stephen Martin on Ghostbusters: 'it was printed out so many times nobody caught it... you just miss it... The brain works strangely, too'
- **[design_philosophy]** Greg Freres respects artist autonomy; when converting Munsters color to B&W, asked Christopher Franchi to perform conversion rather than applying blanket filter, preserving artistic vision (confidence: high) — Greg Freres: 'I didn't want to do it myself because I could have easily just turned everything black and white with a filter, but I didn't want to do that to Chris. I left it up to Chris'
- **[industry_signal]** Stephen Martin's track record of 56 games across 11 years (~5 games/year) with Pro/Premium/LE variants each suggests Stern's sustainable production and art department capacity (confidence: medium) — Stephen Martin: '56 games since 2013' with typically three versions per game; calculations suggest ~3-5 release cycles per year

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## Transcript

 The Special When Lit Pinball Podcast is brought to you in part by Lermods.com, specializing in custom quality pinball playfield lighting and mods for your pinball machine. L-E-R-M-O-D-S. Visit Lermods.com today. Coming at you out of St. Charles, Illinois, the Special When Lit Pinball Podcast starts now. Hey, what's going on, pinball land, and welcome to episode number 38 of the Special When Lit Pinball Podcast. I'm Ken Cromwell. And I am Bill Webb. What's going on, Bill? We're on the road again, huh? Took a field trip today. Yeah, we are actually welcomed back to Stern Pinball. Surprise, surprise on that. With Mr. Greg Freres and Mr. Stephen Martin of Stern, and we're going to introduce these guys in a second. Anything been going on with you lately? Not a whole lot, just more whirlwind nonsense, but we can talk about that at a later date. Yeah. We'll get right to the goodies, right? Yeah, dude don't want to hear about that. Well, Greg Ferreres is the art director at Stern Pinball, and then Steve, Stephen, who is the production art manager at Stern Pinball. Just to kind of set the tone, we're sitting down in a conference room. First of all, welcome to the show, guys. Good to be here. Yeah. Yeah, thanks. Yeah. Thanks for having us. Well, first of all, I want to thank you for pronouncing my last name correctly. Oh. That was well done. Thank you, sir. Because it's tough for most people. I've heard Ferris. I've heard Ferrez. It's all over the place. But it's Ferreres, correct? Ferrez. Ferrez. Yeah. Ferrez. You did it right. The more you thought about it, you got off. I practiced. I had a 40-minute ride on the way in the ice storm, so I was like, Freres, Freres, Freres. So, yes, that is my name, Freres. And I've been around a while. I've been around since 1978 in the pinball business and currently at Stern Pinball as art director. And we'll get into how you came over to Stern because, I mean, you're a legendary Pinball Hall of Fame artist, Greg Freres. And, I mean, you're on machines for everything from, you know, the Elvira series with Scared Stiffs, Fathom, all the way up to Jersey Jack Wizard of Oz, right, too? Correct. Yeah. So, I mean, you've kind of done the whole gamut. Stephen, Stephen Martin, if you could say hello to the other side. How are you doing? This is Stephen Martin. I joined Stern Pinball in 2013 and was hired as the production art manager and has been working since. Not to be confused with Steve Martin. Yeah. Now, I was going to ask you. So Steve and Martin, Steve Martin, does that cause any complications for you when you're calling in? Well, I mean, not really. I mean, it used to be when closer in the 70s, 80s, I got ragged for, you know, like, oh, Steve Martin, wild and crazy guy, this and that. You know, maybe a little bit in college. But once you get the first introductions out, it just goes away. Nobody really says anything after that. It's perfect. It's perfect. I want to concentrate on a couple things tonight if you guys are up for it. I wanted to talk about Stern Pinball in general. I think a lot of times you think of art packages and you think of the lead artists on these designs for these pinball machines, but there's a lot that's going on behind the scenes to make these efforts come to fruition. So I wanted to focus on that. Before we do so, I mean, Greg, would you mind telling us how you came to Stern in the first place? Sure. I mean, because you've got such an established pinball history, I find the Stern aspect of this pretty interesting. Yeah, well, way before I got to Stern, besides working for Bally and Williams and Midway, the last stint was at Midway Games, worked in video game design for about 10 years. And then they went bankrupt, and I ended up basically on the street freelancing for the first time in my career for about four years. and during that time I worked on Wo Nelly with Dennis Nordman. We kind of put our brains together and tried to come up with something wacky and strange and I think we succeeded in that. And that was with Whizbang Pinball, correct? Right. We started a company just to keep it real but that's always a hassle too. And then during that time you know we both met Jersey Jack and Jack invited me to work on the Wizard of Oz playfield art for him but yeah so he said I've already got a contractor to do the cabinet and back glass and that kind of stuff so he would you know I would like you to do the playfield for us on Wizard of Oz I said yeah it sounds great so I was able to work at you know in the early stages of Jersey Jack pinball and watch the growth from just getting started to getting a game not quite out the door. I left and came to Stern Pinball just before that game hit the street, I think. Was there a sense of leaving that game behind, or did you know it was in good hands and you had pretty much finished? I had pretty much finished it up. The timing was perfect. I had talked to George about coming here at Stern and the timing, and I didn't want to leave them in a lurch. Yeah, right. That's not what I do. So I spoke with Jack. He was sorry that I had made a decision to leave, but, you know, there was more freelance work ahead from him, and I really wanted to be full-time again, and so George offered me that opportunity. And that's George Gomez? Yes, and so I grabbed it. And I've been here for almost seven years now. Seven years. Does it feel like seven years to you? No, it does not. Right. It feels like a blink of an eye. Yep. And that's kind of how the pinball business is. It just, once you get in, it just moves and keeps moving at a faster clip every year. So during the course of your seven years here, you bring in a young Steve Martin who comes to Stern Pinball. You want to talk a little bit about how, you know, Steve, how you came aboard here? Yeah, I left. Well, I didn't leave, but I got laid off in late 2012 from Children's Book Company and senior art director over there. And then just looking for a job, and I saw this ad in the paper that said, ooh, pinball games. And I was like, oh, wow, let me throw my resume over there. Now, were you into pinball at all at that time? I mean, was it something that you had played as a kid? Did you have machines at your house? I never did, no. I was kind of new to the whole pinball thing. I've seen a pinball game, but I never – I actually played like once, maybe in college. We had a T2 at the Lock, Stock, and Barrel in Decatur, Illinois. But that was a Steve game. I didn't know it back then. But it was a great game. It seems to always come up, right? Yeah. It's Terminator 2. Yeah. And, you know, Greg picked my resume out. I think I went through three interviews. It was a phone interview, then a live interview with Greg, and then a third interview with George. And he showed up in a suit, and I was appreciative of that. I was like, you know, this is classy. I like this guy already. Right, exactly. Yeah. He told me on the second interview, he's like, you know, you could go a little casual next time. Walking through the factory here, I mean, in every position here, it is a little more laid back and lax. I mean, it's like business professional, you know, but yeah, the suit is. Yeah, maybe the suit got me the job. I don't know. Do you remember what color tie you were wearing that day? Actually, I know the color shirt. It was like a kind of turquoise. And he said, you know, you're the other guy that this is down to. He had the same color shirt on. So then you come on, and then so you guys are, are you guys completing the art department at Stern at that point? Yeah, that was it. Well, just, yeah, it was a two-man band. I mean, well, let's put it this way. When I got here, Stephen Jensen was the art director. And shortly after I got here, he stepped aside to do, he's doing his own thing. He's got a great t-shirt company, apparel company, I should say. Yeah, Warnstar. Warnstar. Okay. And he still does our photography for our games. So, yeah, he stepped and went to do his own thing, and then I was here by myself for a brief amount of time, and then Stephen came on board on tax day. What kind of changes have you guys had, you know, starting on day one as you guys were working together to now? um what was like just greg and i for the longest time um we would he you know i would work on the playfields he would try and work on the uh plastics and and stuff uh then we'd switch off when you say working on playfields and working on plastics because i i think when when people think about pinball machines and they see the art package they immediately kind of associate themselves or familiarize themselves with that package with the artist so i can kind of frame it So when like Zombie Yeti or Christopher Franchi work on their side of the fence, so they're designing things. They're, you know, whether or not they're looking at a style guide or not, you know, we put that they put together the sketches and and get it going from there. we then send it to the licensor and make sure that the licensing is going smoothly with the project artist. And then from there, once they say they're finished and we get final approval from the licensor, then it's our turn to turn that into a producible, printable artwork with all the layers of the mechanical file that are needed for the printer. So, you know, a lot of times, like, plastics are done on a mapped version. We call it a mapped version where everything, all the plastics are embedded or floating over the play field. Okay. So they know what goes where and what it associates with in that area of the play field. Okay. Then when we get it, we take that mapped version and split it apart and turn it into the nested version. Yeah. So it's always a little bit of a puzzle, kind of building a puzzle from the mapped version into the nested version. And it's a little bit of labor. It takes a few days. I was just going to ask how long that process is. Probably two to three days maybe for just one set of plastics. For one set of plastics. There's got to be a lot of work in that, adjusting art to fit or screws coming in. Yeah. The game is always evolving, so they might move a die hole for a screw head. Actually, I think it happened on Ghostbusters where they moved a screw hole. I think it went into Scorny Weaver's face, and then we had to move the artwork to kind of compensate for that. Yeah, we're always watching for that stuff early on to make sure that the artist has the latest and greatest drawings from the design team. But there's always movement going on. Right. Something's always changing. And so it's part of my job to keep the guys updated with what the latest moves are. So it's a streamlined process at this point, I would assume. I mean, you guys have this like a fine-oiled machine. There's not thousands of plastics ordered and Sigourney Weaver's face is covered with a – Yeah, we try to avoid spending money unnecessarily. I imagine, I mean, your human mistakes happen. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Spelling mistakes. I was going to say, I think we had two spelling mistakes. Some reinforcement action going on. Yeah. Right? That was referencing the Ghostbusters insert, right? Yeah, number 40, I think it was. Yeah. Yeah. I still remember that one. Nobody, you know, it happens to everybody. Can you explain to the listeners, they might not know what we're talking about. And for those of you, if you're hearing something in the background. Rain or hail. You're hearing airplanes because being at Stern and Elk Grove Village, Illinois, where maybe like a mile from the closest runway. Yeah, we can run there. And now we are in like an ice storm that's actually hitting us. Now the good thing with us now is with our portable gear, it's wireless and powerless. So if we lose power, we can still continue for the next eight hours. Just sit in the dark and keep talking. Talking about some positive reinforcement. But tell the Ghostbusters story if you're up for it. Yeah, so reinforcement was actually twice on the play field, like once to the right, just like about a quarter way up. And then the other one was on the insert itself. And I think it was Dwight always wants to get real wordy with his inserts, and that was one of them. I forgot the verbiage on that, but it was really wordy. And that's Dwight Sullivan you're referring to? Yeah, Dwight Sullivan. Yeah, Dwight. But reinforcement somehow got by missing the E. Yeah. So, yeah. I think it was correct, obviously, at one point or something, you know, maybe the cursor hit something and then you hit space bar. Yeah, right. I don't know. Somehow you miss it, you know. Right. But the thing is that it was printed out so many times nobody caught it. I mean, because when you look at the stuff day in and day out, it just becomes second nature. It's another piece of art. And so many people have laid eyes on it, but nobody caught it until like the very end. And the brain works strangely, too. If you know what that word's supposed to spell, it's not as easy to catch, especially. You just miss it. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So what was another time you had a spelling error? Well, it was during the photo shoot game of Batman. I think we had villain wrong. Oh, yeah. Okay. Villain or something. I forgot what we had there. But we corrected it, actually, before the game went to production. See, but if they get out, they're like super limited editions because you have something that's super rare. Yeah. I mean, we try to fix it, but then they're like, nah, just let it go. Whatever it takes. Back at Williams on Star Trek Next Gen, I misspelled SHIELD because I've always had trouble with I before E and all that stuff. Except after C? Yeah. So I blew that, and I think it was on the first prototype games. So there's probably a handful of games out there that have SHIELD misspelled. Everyone's going to run downstairs and check out their Star Trek Next Gens right now. When I go home, I'm going to check Joe's. Maybe it's more rare, though, with the misspelling. I know. Kind of like the baseball cards that got misspelled names or whatever. Oh, yeah, I remember that for sure. So on my next project, I am purposely going to misspell things. You have to do it. I mean, why not? Yep. See, that's the way to go. Under ramp, you'll put shield. I like it. Some different spellings. So you guys are working closely with the licensors, right? Can you talk a little bit about how it is to work with the licensor? and without burning bridges? Yeah, no, I mean, just curious. I mean, I know just from what I've read and from conversations that I've had that I'm sure some licensors are maybe a little bit more strict to work with than others. Every licensor is unique. And we try to establish a rapport with them early on to find out what their parameters are going to be. And then from there, We work with them on pretty much every time we hit a milestone in artwork, we get it over the fence to them. We talk about it. Some of them are like, done. You're moved to the next step. Others are like, well, what if we thought about changing this or that? So it's, like I said, they're all unique. They're all different. and it can become a challenge at times. I mean, like you said, it's different with every licensor. How much back and forth is typically involved with any release in which you're working with the license? I mean, is it a situation where there's hundreds of correspondence, items going back and forth? We probably have hit that, yeah. Yeah, okay. But on the average, I would say it's mainly the milestones. You know, we've got early sketches that we show that don't have any color. They're just direction sketches, you know, kind of a I call it a first look, you know. And then just as like OK thematically we in the right direction And you know what adds a wrinkle to this is we have hello we have pro premium and LE That pop filter is attacking you all night here. I got to put it closer again. There you go. So we have pro, premium, and LE games, and we have to cover art on all three packages. So we kind of have to instruct every licensor, especially new licensors, okay, here's what this is. We have recently gotten to a point where we've given them a pinball glossary of terms so that when we talk about plastics or playfield decals or target decals or back panel or backbox or back glass, three words that start with back. Yeah. So we we have to kind of handhold them and get them to understand our world so that we can understand what their needs are going to be, too. So we've actually shipped out games, too, like when we were submitting to new licensors like, hey, here's a game. Right. Here's what we're talking about. Absolutely. And then kind of compare like, all right, this is the sketches and look at the game over there. You know, it's not I mean, it doesn't it makes complete sense to do that. I mean, just as pinball people, I mean, you throw those terms out, and I absolutely know what they are. But if it's somebody running a license department and they've never licensed a pinball machine, yeah. And some licensors look at our product as a children's toy. So, you know, that puts it in a different category than, you know, a comic book or whatever. Can that work to your advantage where they feel they don't have to be as stringent or strict with working with a children's toy versus like something that's – It worked to our advantage. Okay. It's definitely kept it in the PG realm. Okay. Yeah, right. So from that direction. Okay. Well, when we first saw, what was it, Supreme had their idea of what the pinball game would look like? Right. That was like, we were like, they don't know what they're doing. Well. It's like, if you look at the game, like, straight head on, they wanted the word spelled out. Yeah. And for them, they're an apparel company, basically. And when we got their idea, it was laid out in a flat. My daughter has gone. I thought you were going to say it was laid out in a flash. Like, boom, there it is. No, they did it pretty quick. But my daughter went to school for fashion design. And so I know what flats are. And that's what it was. It was laid out as a flat. and I recognized it immediately as, oh, this is like what apparel people do. But it worked. We understood where they wanted things and what they wanted, so it worked. So was Supreme an easier license to deal with when you guys? Well, they wanted complete control, so that's it. Yeah, they suggested on the play field they wanted some iconic pinball pieces like stars and lightning bolts and that kind of thing. And they said, we'll let you kind of work that into the realm. But for the most part, this is what we want on the cabinet. This is what we want on the back glass. And that whole idea that Stephen just mentioned of spelling supreme from the back glass down the play field, that's what they wanted, exactly what they wanted. So let me ask you, and be honest, because, I mean, after all the artwork that you guys see coming through here and coming out of Stern, and Greg, with your pinball history, to look at something that, in my opinion, is simplified with the supreme. Minimalist. Yeah, that's putting it like minimally. But the name brand drives that sales for that game. I understand that, but when that package was done, I mean, what were your thoughts? There was some head scratching, you know, for sure. um it is their their approach is minimalist so you know that's that's obvious uh what they wanted so uh yeah i mean for pinball to be loud and bright everywhere like all the time and then this comes in and we've got a white cabinet with a small little logo on the side you got a three-foot cabinet you got like a name like 360 from what pinball is known for and i applaud them for having the wherewithal to pull that off. And then you've got to be careful not to mark the cabinet up when it's getting built. Exactly. They had to build those with gloves on. Yeah, there's white gloves in the factory. I believe that. And even the cabinet companies were handling them carefully because they were white cabinets. Usually we have black cabinets, and you don't see any dirt or marks and that kind of thing. So, yeah, white cabinets coming in from the cabinet company, they had to handle their work differently, too. I think artistically, I mean, when I think of other shock factors with our packages coming out of Stern Pinball, just recently Munster's Premium, which is a black and white grayscale machine with touches of color. Can you talk a little bit about your creative efforts behind that? Well, I mean, the Munster license, and when you think of the Munsters, you think in terms of black and white. Chris's work, Christopher Franchi's work, the color work is beautiful. But we wanted to really try to capture the essence of the show, the black and white TV show. and we thought if any game deserved a black and white package, it would be the Munsters. So we just took the shot. I asked Chris, hey, can you change, because he did have a color sketch version that was in color, and I said, I don't want to do it myself because I could have easily just turned everything black and white with a filter, but I didn't want to do that to Chris. I left it up to Chris to massage it to the best of his abilities to make sure that the black and white worked from his point of view. Well, and he discussed that on the Making the Monsters where he was talking about – I think he went through every single layer and just converted them. He did, and it was funny because he said reds tend to come out a little darker, and he's like, so I wanted to approach it color by color, layer by layer. He's like, it took forever. It took me like almost all day, and I was like, almost all day? I thought he was going to say it took me like four weeks. but I guess it took him almost all day. But it just fascinates me that to see that play field, to hear about the play field rumored was one thing, but then to see it kind of all together, it wasn't what I was expecting, but in a good way. I liked it. I liked that you guys added the touches of color to that machine. I was just going to say, Greg said, we need a little bit of color, so he goes, let's just do the rules on the play field in color. And I think it was Dwight was saying, no, no, no, we've got to go all black and white, or is it Gary? One of the two was saying just black and white. And then maybe it was Dwight. And then I think Gary said he wanted to make sure the Monsters logo was green. Yeah, I think that was it. Yeah. And then but then once they saw it, they're like, oh, yeah, good call, Greg. We need a little bit of color. And it added that little extra touch. Oh, plus we left the toys color, too. Yeah. So because you want those to stand out. Looks incredible. Good. When you like it. I do. We all love that. Love that. That play people is awesome. Cool. So you're talking about different art packages on sometimes the Pro, the Premium, and the LE. You've got playfield differences because the Pro is a different version, playing version, than a Premium and LE. But the cabinets often have completely different art packages. What are your thoughts in regards to the art packages that go on each model? Do you think that one model is deserved to have something that's different than another? And is that something that the artists are able to kind of collaborate on with you guys to make those decisions? Or how does that work? Well, on the pro, for sure, they want to have, like, the broad spectrum of the game, like the whole Monster family. And then with an LE or premium, you kind of want to narrow it down to some kind of theme. Okay. That's kind of a general, you know, take that we do on each product. You know, we talk it over with Jeremy or Chris or whoever is working on it, Kevin O'Connor, and kind of the whole team kind of helps narrow the focus, so to speak, and make sure that we're covering everyone. But for the street, for the pro, you know, we want a more all-encompassing version of the license, you know, to make sure we hit on all cylinders for people that may not be as familiar with that particular license. And I suppose it makes sense, too. A lot of pros are on location. Yeah, that's the one you're going to see a lot. You're not going to see too many LEs on the street. Right, exactly. So the premiums and the LEs seem to be a little bit more focused on an aspect of the license versus the broad band aspect. Okay, that's interesting. Because the one that's going to buy that game is going to be the true fan, so they're going to get it more when they buy the LE and the premium as well than just the broad range of the pro. And with all hand drawing now, we're doing our best to limit the scope of the project, just getting the stuff done on time and on budget and in an aesthetically very pleasing way. So by doing so many different variants on every cabinet side and stuff gets overwhelming for the hand drawing aspect of everything. Back in the day when everybody was complaining about Photoshop, it was much easier to go, okay, this can go here, this can go here, that type of thing. But now that we're hand-drawing everything again, that's – sorry, my voice is getting dried out. I know you're probably pretty excited to be on the podcast. Well, that's part of it. We're making you a little parched. We'll get you. But anyway, yeah, it's making sure that we're not overtaxing our illustrators, but yet getting the best package together that we can for each of the separate tiers. In fact, back in the day when he was working in his prime, not prime, but in the heyday of pinball. Sorry about that. He's a sports guy. The debilitated Greg Freres. He thinks I'm not a rookie anymore. Oh, wait, I'm not. The diminishing skills clause. No, no, no. I didn't mean to say that. I don't care. But they only worked on one package as far as the art goes. And they had a lot of time. You could put your best effort forward on one package. Yeah. You know? Now you've got to hit the home run three times, you know, with three packages. You want them all to be, like, outstanding. Well, we had the conversation when we sat down before this, and you have a list since 2006 of the amount of pins that you personally. Oh, 2013. Yeah, or 2013 that you personally have your hands on. How many was it? 56 games since 2013. Which is typically like three versions. Yeah. So like Pro, Premium, and LE, that's three. Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah, because we do sometimes make three playfields for the games. Well, with Monsters, it was the Pro, then there was the black and white, and then we had the color for the LE. But we also had two minis, so that was like actually five playfields. Or if you want to count like four and a half or three and a half or whatever. But, yeah, each game, it counts as one for me. Because we work on every single part of the game. Like Star Wars, I think, had three sets of plastics. There was a pro plastics, there was a premium, and then an LE. Yeah, Lucas wanted specific sets of plastics for each of the tiers of product to go along with whatever world we were portraying. Did you want to talk about Star Wars at all? I mean, because that was such a polarizing pin and a license that everybody, it was a dream license for most pinball people. First of all, did I say Star Wars or Star Trek? Star Wars. That was good. Star Wars. I'm just curious. I mean, because with that art package, it's different than a lot of the art packages that we're seeing right now. You know, we're used to now seeing like a Zombie Eddie art package or a Dirty Donnie art package or a Christopher Franchi art package. Was Star Wars more of like a collaborative effort of different artists? Oh, yeah. Okay. We started with one single artist, Bob Stevlic, a local artist. He had done some work on Game of Thrones. And then, in fact, he did the Game of Thrones LE, Backglass, and Cabinet. And we also had – primarily he was working on all of the Star Wars layouts, got them all to a certain point. Then we threw it over the fence to Lucasfilm, and then they weighed in on each one and started, you know, putting in their two cents of what needed to be done. So it was a big project, big scale, big scope, and, you know, it's, I mean, they are the king of licenses, you know. They can call the shots. So and, you know, we it was truly a collaborative effort in that I had to contract, I think, six other illustrators. Wow. OK. Yeah. So this is a lot more as far as a collaborative effort than what normally would happen. Right. Yeah. One guy takes it. Sure. Right. We would give Bob's layouts and then the revised layouts through Lucas to each and every artist. And I would figure out how best to split up the work so that things would hang together. When I say things, I mean stylistically. Now, we tried to keep them all on the same style page. Right, right. You know, so basically, you know, everybody knows who Drew Struzan is, I think. And we just said, OK, we're going to just try to give it a Drew Struzan-esque vibe. And that's kind of what we're looking for. And everybody got that right away. And we just kind of went for it. so I had one artist maybe doing the backbox and back glass for the LE, and another artist doing the cabinet for the LE, the cabinet sides, and maybe one other cabinet. So as art director, it's like a symphony. It was really a split, and trying to keep it all look like it came from the same brain. It actually did come off that way, where it looked like just one artist did that. It does. It doesn't look like a mishmash. Were there a lot of alcohol-fueled evenings during that whole process? I wouldn't know that. I wouldn't know that. Just thinking about it right now is giving me a little headache. The baton was going. The conductor? Yeah. Well, with that many people on one project, was that probably one of the more intense projects that you guys have had to collaborate and have pulled together? Oh, absolutely. Okay. It was a lot of work, and we got to the finish line, and we're always proud of what we end up with, so I think it turned out really well. So on that size project, what would the timeline be on something like that? It took a little bit longer than normal games, only because of the back and forth with the licensing group. There was a lot more ping pong, let's say, getting everything nailed down to what they expected. Well, and are you guys still Star Wars fans is the next question. Oh, yeah. Okay. Making sure Dream theme can kind of go awry for you And Bob Stavlik is a huge Star Wars fan So it was good that he got that project And his work is so photo real that actually on Game of Thrones the line was putting that game on, and Steve had to bring out, like he was questioning people, like, hey, what do you think of the artwork? And the factory line's like, oh, it's good. It's a good photograph. And he's like, no, it's not a photograph. It's a drawing or painting. Yeah. And a lot of people, when we launched, too, thought it was Photoshop. And so we had to send out thumbnail sketches and stuff to kind of show people, like, it started as a drawing and evolved as a tight painting. I was really taken by Bob's work when he brought in samples of his work before I hired him. He had done a lot of work for Topps cards. Oh, baseball cards and football cards? Sure. Yep. And fantasy cards, so Star Wars. I mean, he had worked on licenses, Walking Dead, what have you. And inside those cards, those card packages, there are special cards that are literally hand-drawn or painted by the artists. And I didn't know this. And he showed me these cards that he's done because he gets to do like six of them for like one character, let's say. And it's amazing. because he's working at size. The 3x5. He's not working bigger and reducing it down. Right. He's working at that 3x5 size or whatever top baseball card is. Oh, so this is not a reprint. It's an actual illustration on the card. It's an actual hand-drawn piece. Wow, that's cool. It's amazing. That is amazing. Yeah, and you can get those in a package of cards. Yeah. And I'm not familiar with that business, but I was really impressed at the amount of detail at that size that he was able to capture. That's amazing. At any given time, I mean, how many titles are you guys working on here? Probably like five or six. Really? Yeah. So like individual? You know, we're still working on a few monsters, things, you know. And then the next games that are out, you know, planned, we're in different stages of development. That's amazing. Let's do this. If you don't mind, what will be the next five or six releases that we're going to see? It's their pinball game. They don't have to be in order. Just top of the head. Top of the head. No, okay. As I digress. Well, can you talk a little bit about, I know, Elvira 3? We're kind of anticipating that. That was announced at Texas Pinball Festival last year. True. You want to tell a little story maybe or two about how that came? Can you say it's a collaborative effort with you and Dennis? Sure. Oh, yeah. Okay. All right, so we'll play yes or no. Were you aware that that was going to be launched or shown or discussed at Texas Pinball Festival last year? To a degree. Okay. It was a bit of a surprise. Okay. So it's something that's still in the pipeline? Still in the pipeline. So it's not going to go away? No. So we can expect it at some point. There's been a lot of work put into it. Interesting. It's not going anywhere except done. All right. Perfect. Perfect. Because, I mean, personally, and I've said this on my podcast, Greg, you're my favorite pinball artist. Because I'm here. No, I've said this on the podcast. I've gone on record as saying so. And as somebody that owned, I own two scared stiffs. I'm just excited and anticipating what's going to happen with Elvira 3. So I'm glad to hear that we're going to see it at some point. And thanks for playing the game there, because I know you can't say much, but to confirm that it's coming is good enough for me, guys. What about favorite art packages that you guys have collaborated on lately? I mean, just from Stern's standpoint. I know you're proud of everything that comes out, but is there anything that kind of stands out where you're like, man, we really nailed this freaking game? Or art and dream theme that you truly loved that really, you know. I mean, every game is so different. Every time a new game comes out, you're just like, oh, man, it's hit out of the ballpark. I mean, just recently, you know, Beatles and Munsters and Deadpool. I mean, the list goes on and on. It's just, you know, you think, oh, how can you top that? And then you come out with the next game, and it's like, whoa, that was pretty good. So every game is better than the last. Yeah, it keeps getting better, yeah. And that's always been the goal through the history of pinball is to make sure that, you know, as an artist, as a designer, as a programmer, you want your next project to be the best it can be. So you're always trying to climb that stairway and get to the next best thing. Are you guys reading social media? Are you jumping on a pin side or jumping on a Facebook and listening to what people are saying or discussing in regards to these games and these art packages? Occasionally. Yeah. Usually on launch day you kind of read the pin side comments Sure. You know, good or bad, whatever, but you just take it all in. You know, I come from the, you know, the old school where. What's that? Pre-internet. Back in your prime, right? Back in my prime. Right. Where everything was judged by sales more than internet. Exactly. Telegrams. Yeah. And really when you brought a game to a trade show, that's when you saw the reaction. You know, people who were privy to be at a trade show, a literal trade show, not an enthusiast show. but a literal coin-operated trade show, it was like that's when you saw the reaction. And people would come up to a game, and obviously they'd play it for free, so they weren't coining up to play. But you would go to locations, and we'd go to Mother's in Mount Prospect, and we'd go to different locations and check people, see how people were reacting when they were putting money into it. That's the feedback that you'd want to see back then. If you saw somebody walk up to a game and not even put money in, then you were like, oh, that's not good. Was that a field trip for you guys? Just watching people play? Round of beers. Let's do some research here. Let's go check out the game. You guys have been known to take some field trips here at Stern, too, I know, during work days, right? Yeah, every now and then. Mostly movies. Movies, movies. We do a lot of movies. What are some of the movies you guys have seen lately while you're working at Stern? Well, we did Star Trek. We did Star Wars, Deadpool. What else? I miss the recent ones. And what do all these have in common? Games that we're working on. That's exactly right. So you're doing your research anyways. Yeah. Were you guys sitting down? Did you guys have to watch, or not have to, but just because Monsters is the most recent, Did you guys watch a lot of Munsters binge-watching episodes, or was it anything you had remembered watching before? I did not, I don't think. Yeah, I watched it when I was a kid. I would go home and watch it. So I remembered it as a kid, but I didn't do too much re-watching the games or re-watching the shows when the games were coming out. Sure. But, you know, Borgie, I know he did that. Oh, yeah. And Dwight, those guys were always watching it. The game team definitely did the heavy lifting on that. Yeah. Yeah. So are you fans of Munsters? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I liked Munsters. Adam's Family was good, even though that was my Halloween costume. Yeah. I didn't get into Adam's Family. I was more of a Munsters guy. So I don't know if you could be both Adam's Family and Munsters or not. Yeah, I think you could be. I was more Adam's Family because I liked the humor better on Adam's Family. it was a little more I don't know maybe in the realm of sarcasm or something like that more topical but Munsters was more slapstick in my opinion so we're talking about the shows from the past in your opinion Greg what are some of the biggest changes that you've noticed in pinball since your prime at Bally Williams and now at Stern Pinball I mean evolution of pinball in general, like what are things that have most surprised you or maybe taken you a little bit off guard? Wow, that's a deep question. Well, obviously, technology is constantly changing. You know, when we went from, you know, just digital numeric, alphanumeric displays to a dot matrix, that was a big jump. And then now from dot matrix to LCD screen, you know, another big jump technologically. And entertainment-wise, obviously, that beast needs to be fed. And there's a whole new team of artists that work on feeding that beast. So those are like the – I always think in terms of the technology. Back when I worked on the first Elvira game, Party Monsters, when you hear her voice, it's very distorted. compared to voice packages that come out of games today because the technology has gotten better. When we went to Scared Stiff, it was still a little compressed, but it was better. And now today, our technology can have very clear vocals without any compression, and it all sounds great. Are you a fan of the advancement? And I'll ask this to both of you guys. I mean, because, Steve, when you started here, DMDs were common. Yeah, yeah. And I think Ghostbusters was the last game that utilized the DMD with the exception like Vaults, right? Do you like the progression that pinball has made going from the DMD to the LCD? Oh, yeah. Anytime you could progress and get better, you want to do that. I mean, yeah, you don't want to be – have an old game. You want to just go get better. Yeah, right. I mean, people are putting out better songs, sound systems, and videos, and you just want to keep one-upping what you did last. And I know it took us a while when we went from DM.matrix design to the LCD screen, but we wanted to make it right when we came out. We didn't want any glitches coming out because it was like the rumors, like, oh, it's coming, it's coming, it's coming. And I think it made, you know, with two games I think we started doing our testings on, and then we're like, oh, is it going in this game? No, no. Next game? No, no, no. When we finally released it, which was our first game? Batman 66? Batman 66, yeah, that was the first one. That's when we had it down. We were like, all right, we got it. We got it now. So we didn't want to release it on a game too early and then go, oh, man, look, they botched it. The screen is too small or too big or whatever. Well, that's the hard part, too, I would imagine. Like Batman 66, you guys had a lot of content that you guys could go back and pull from. where, like Aerosmith, you guys had to get your own animations done for a lot of that. Yep. So, I mean, that in itself, I mean, what kind of... That's a whole different podcast. That's Chuck Ernst. Yeah, Chuck Ernst. Chuck Ernst heads up that group, and he's doing a great job, and they've learned a lot in the process just since Aerosmith. I can absolutely see the advancement in that. Yeah. The animations on the LCD. Well, you guys, I mean, but even still, So you guys would still have to collaborate with that department to make everything cohesive. Right. Because you wouldn't want the animations to be completely different than the game itself. Yeah, even more so today we're collaborating even more closely with them than we did, let's say, on Aerosmith. So, yeah, it's a, that's, like I said, that beast needs to be fed. and we want it to be as good as everything else. And to me, the screen has always been more for the person that's watching, waiting in line to play the game and hopefully learning from what they're watching on screen because the player doesn't always get to see everything that's portrayed on the screen. Well, I mean, it's nice, too, when you look up, instead of holding a flipper button and waiting 5, 10 seconds for a status update, I mean, you can utilize that screen and have a lot more information on there without it being overload, too. Right. So we see the advancement of DMD to LCD. I mean, what do you guys think is next? I mean, what's another innovation that pinball might see? I mean, not necessarily out of Stern, but just in general. When I jumped in, we were doing playfields by silkscreen back in 2013. I think we switched over to digital on... Was it Star Wars? Ghostbusters. Was it Ghostbusters? Premium. Ghostbusters Premium, I think, was the first one. I can't even remember. Yeah, I think you're right. That was the first one. But, I mean, just from going from silkscreen playfields to digital, just a world of difference. But what are some of the pros and cons to that then? Because the purists might prefer silkscreen, But, I mean, there's so many advantages when you're doing digital printing. And I'm just curious to hear both of your feedback on that. Well, actually, in the history of that, Gary Stern really pushed the advancement of getting a silkscreen play field with four-color process to a level that was acceptable and was repeatable. When I was still at Williams, we were still doing spot color illustration where every color is a different layer of silkscreen. And Gary got it down to, I think, it must have been like seven colors. So you'd have your white and your black, and then you'd have the four-color process. So six or seven passes of color versus back in the day when we were doing silkscreen where you'd have up to, I mean, I think at Williams there might have been some playfields that had 17 passes of color. It's amazing. Or even at Bally. Yeah. I know Dave Christensen had a lot of different layers of color on his playfields, and they were gorgeous, but there were, you know. But the defect ratio on something like that has to be. There's a lot of factors. You know, it's throughput, you know, just getting enough playfields done per day if there's 17 passes of color on there. You know, that's incredible to think about these days. Like the 16th screen, something was wrong and it messed up the play field and you've got to start all over. Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean, and then it's like you have to ask yourself, is it worth redoing this? I mean, who's going to know this? I can imagine that's kind of crazy. But with digital printing, it just kind of alleviates, takes all those variables out. And even since we started digital, there's been advancements in the presses to, you know, for better throughput and better quality, better resolution. You know, everything changes, and it changes lately pretty dramatically compared to back in the 80s, you know, 90s. So you've got digital printing. Anything else you foresee, like future-wise? We can't talk about that. Another podcast. So I've noticed with Stern in particular an influx or an increase in hirings, especially like recently just from what I've seen like with programmers. There's a lot of people coming on board to help with the efforts there, and I'm seeing that now with output of code updates and whatnot. Anything going on in the art department with you guys and any type of expansion? Yeah, with the amount of games that we do every year, it's just too much for Greg and I, So we hired a new graphic designer, Justin Freight, who just climbed on board, what, four weeks ago? About four weeks ago, yeah. And he's been hitting the floor running. I mean, he's already put out a few things. Actually, if you went to the Munsters launch party, he did the coasters for that. Okay. And he did the launch party poster. So, yeah, don't forget that not only do we have to provide the artwork for the games themselves, but we also support Zach Sharp in his marketing efforts. Right. So anything that requires artwork for ads posters sell sheets whatever Flyers banners banners So we have to be there for that too And up until now Stephen and I have been juggling all of that plus the game artwork So you're like a two-man show in this huge building. Yeah, and I've been pushing for a third artist for a few years, and we finally got the budget to add on Justin this year. Congratulations. That's good. I'm anxious to see how he progresses. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, Steve, when you come in here, what do you like most about working at Stern? I mean, I'm trying to put it in words. I mean, when I come here, it's like I'm a kid in a candy store. Yeah, it is. It's fun working on these pinball games. And you get to see it go from an idea to a sketch to finished product. And when that product is done and you actually get to play it, that's the kind of joy you get. It's like, oh, man, I remember this or I remember that. like this little portion on the play field, how it developed and stuff like that, the stories that you hear. And just every day you're just coming in and just doing the grind and then seeing that progress to the finish line. That's what it's all about. I mean, it's great. I don't know if you'll end up in this position someday, but I always think in terms of when I think about what my kids were doing when they were growing up, I think about what was I working on then? and I usually know what project I was on, where my kids were in their development, and whatever they did, I knew based on what I was working on at work. Yeah, I don't know if I do that, but maybe I'll be a little more conscious of that right now. I bet you you've retained more of that than you probably even know. Well, after 56 projects, it's hard to blend together. It's unbelievable. So I've got a funny story. All right. Greg might remember this because, obviously, he was there. But so when I got hired, we just launched Metallica. Actually, during my interviews, like, when I got to walk the factory, I was like, oh, look at that. You know, I was like, I think that's a new game. And he's like, oh, you're not supposed to see that. But, you know, he knew. Maybe that's why they hired me. But so, yeah, I did, like, all the marketing stuff for – actually, it was back then. It was Jody Dankbert who was, like, in charge of the marketing. So I jumped on board. It was like hitting the floor running with like posters and banners and flyers and all that stuff. But the first game that I worked on was Star Trek. So I think it was like the first month in, we had a field trip. They're like, oh, we're going to go see that new Star Trek movie. And so we would go see the movie. It was like a whole bunch of us, like maybe 20 of us. And after the movie, it was still during the day. So we came back maybe like 4 o'clock at the end of the day. and we all met up in the conference room. And Steve was at the head of the table and everyone else was around the table, like a round table thing. And he's like, all right, we need some ideas. Now that the movie was fresh off our minds, what kind of rule ideas do you guys got? People are throwing out like, let's try this, let's try that. So I raised my hand. I'm like the new guy. And he's like, all right, new guy, what do you got? And I'm like, all right, I got an idea. I was like, the big thing in Star Trek is beam me up, right? I said, how about on the lockdown, we hit that button right when you know you're going to drain, and a magnet grabs that ball right past the flippers, and then it sucks it in a hole, and then it beams you up in the top of the play field. And then when I just said that, it was dead silent for like three seconds. But it felt like a whole minute. And I'm like, oh, crap, did I just mess up here? And then all of a sudden, George is clapping. He's like, great idea. We need more ideas like that. That's awesome. And Steve's like, yeah, good thing I thought of it. But he goes, it's a little bit late. He goes, the play field's already designed. We just need rule ideas. Rule ideas. Just keep those ideas coming. So that was like a nice little thing to jump into. But, yeah, I thought I was in trouble when nobody was answering. Well, plus Steve Ritchie's sense of humor is always what it is. And it'll be like the first thing he'll tell you is just wait in a truck. Yep, yep. You don't know where he's going. That's right. And that was actually another Steve story. When I was getting introduced, Greg was introducing me as Steve Martin, and he gets a Steve. He's like, hey, there's another Steve here. And he's like, what? Another Steve? I'm the only Steve. Oh, that's right. From now on, you're Steven. Steven and Steve. So Steven is whenever somebody, Steve, that's Steve Ritchie. And then whenever it's, say, Steven, it's obviously me. Do you get any hazing in here then? I mean, you're not the new guy anymore. You've been here for a long time. No, no, I'm not the new guy anymore. Yeah. So you're not buying donuts anymore. We've got fresh blood in the art department now. Oh, yeah. Yeah, maybe Justin will be the one bringing in the coffee and donuts. Well, Steve Ritchie. Oh, yeah. We went to college the other day. Friday afternoon. Yeah, what did you guys eat? He kept calling Justin Frank. Yeah. Frank. He goes, Justin goes, do you know my name? He goes, nope. Yeah. So Steve kind of hazes the new guys every now and then. Right. He's good at that. So, yeah, he was calling Frankie the whole time. And then we were kind of giggling, and Justin was like, does he know my name? And we're like, yeah, I think so. Did you guys eat Thai food, or where did you guys go eat? Did you guys eat some pizza? We went to Lou's, right? We went to Lou Malnati's. I remember the first time I met you, Greg, I think we all went out to lunch with Steve Ritchie, and we went to that Chinese place. And it was weird because I was sitting in the back seat of Steve's car. Getting car seat and you were in the front. Greg was sitting next to me, and he was driving his car like we were on the Autobahn. Oh, yeah. And then it just kind of came full circle that, like, Steve Ritchie, you know, the creator of High Speed 1 and 2, is, like, driving like a bad ass to a Chinese restaurant, and I'm in the back. Yeah. Yeah, Steve's got one speed. Go! Yeah. That's it. Everything fast. He's fast, fast, fast. Yeah. His motor doesn't stop. He's just bouncing off the walls. And it reflects in his pinball machines, too. Yeah, yeah. King of flow. So if you guys can pick one pinball machine out of the current lineup at Stern since you've been here and you're going to bring it home and it can never leave your house, which one would you take home? Well, I guess for me because I got three kids, I thought about this. What a good dad. Yeah. I'd probably go Batman. Batman 66? Yeah, Batman 66. I mean it's just – it's a classic, but the kids can also appreciate it and be like a family game. But selfishly you'd like a Metallica, right? I did actually look into buying the Metallica because my wife loves Metallica. See? Happy wife, happy life. Exactly. But, you know, the kids would be like, oh, what's this? You know, hard rock. Right. Heavy metal. What is this? You know, so they probably wouldn't like it. What about you, Greg? Beatles. He's a Beatles. Beatles is a fun pinball machine. I like the throwback aspect of it. You know, just the simple layout. And Chris did a great job. and Beatles music comes out of it. Yeah. It's a good game. And it's a sea witch kind of re-theme with some added action on there. I was surprised on how we talked about this. It was a game that, like, yeah, I didn't know that I'd have any interest in it, and then we had put some time on it, and it was surprisingly fun. I just never put a lot of effort into thinking about it, and, you know, I don't know why I didn't. Well, the layout, the design, everything in there just is so perfect and balanced, in that machine, you know, era-wise, music-wise. I mean, it just blew me away. It feels like it plays like an earlier solid state. Like, it doesn't feel like it plays like a modern-day pinball as far as the play field and the ball action. But then you have, like, all the modern-day, you know, amenities, like your LCD screen and your nice sound package and LED lighting and stuff. Magnets. Yeah, that's good. I mean, was that a fun art package for you guys? I mean, because that's a pretty huge iconic license too, right? I mean, a fun art package for us, it basically was done when Franchi brought it in. Gotcha, gotcha. It was, you know, the only change made probably was the fact that it started life as one model, but Stern wanted to split it up into the kind of similar to the Pro Premium and LE. Yeah. So Chris had to come up with two other art packages. How is it working with these guys, Christopher Franchi and Jeremy Packer (Zombie Yeti), a.k.a. Zombie Yeti? Those guys are awesome. They work so fast. Jeremy and Chris are just delightful. They do a nice job. They're real professionals, and it's all you can ask for when you're trying to get stuff done. So my job is, is it done yet? But it's all supposed to be, is it done well? You know, so with with especially with those two guys and Kevin O'Connor has been doing work. You know, this is an interesting podcast. Kevin O'Connor, really, I've wanted to ask him to add up the number of projects that he's done in his career in pinball because he has touched so many projects, not just as lead artist, but as an inker. He used to ink like we used to split it up back in the day where I would do a tight pencil for, let's say, a Dr. Dude play field or a Dr. Dude back glass. And Kevin would go and just do the ink work and send that back to me. And then I'd go to color from there. So between him and a person like Margaret Hudson, they have touched so many projects in their career. I want to hear a number someday because it's got to be an incredible number of games that they've helped. But, yeah, someday I want to get a number from Kevin and have him literally sit down and backtrack everything that he's touched because it's got to be an incredible number of games. Yeah, big shout-out to our artists. I mean, all of them are great. They're great guys, too. They come in. They're funny. I mean, Jeremy is just a riot when he comes in. Christopher Franchi is funny. I don't know. I've never heard Jeremy go longer than about 12 seconds without cracking a joke. Something backhanded I had to figure out. It just happened. But that's fine. It keeps it light. Bob Stavlik, he's a little more serious, but he's one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet. And Kevin, he's nice too. I mean, more quiet. I mean, not as outgoing as Christopher or Jeremy, but, you know, they're great artists. They've got their own personalities. And whatever we ask, you know, they'll try and, you know, accomplish. And, you know, hey, we need this or that. And, you know, more times than not, they come around and, like, get it the next day. Okay. So they're super fast. Proficient, yeah. Yeah, they're true professionals. So you guys are like the Batman and Robin of the art department. I guess you could say that. How long can we expect the two of you guys to be collaborating on everything here? Any ideas? I'll keep going. Keep going? Yeah. Hopefully Greg keeps going. Well, right now I'm a project artist, so I'm trying to split my time between art directing and traffic copying all the artwork, as I like to say, and making sure all of the games are being attended to. But right now I've got to focus on my project. So is it a top secret project? No, we talked about it earlier. Oh, all right. Good. So it's like, you know, I've got to focus on that, but I've got to focus on everything. And so it's good timing for Justin to come in and start taking some of the load off. So I'm doing, like, almost all of the, like, production art on games. And Greg is, like, kind of steering the boat. And Thursdays is, like, all meetings for him. So he's in and out, in and out, in and out. just keeping track of where the milestones on each game, you know, because we're working on, like, three games right now. And then Justin's coming in and he's doing – he's keeping Zach off of me, you know. Every day it's like, hey, we need an ad for this publication, or we need this, or we need that, you know. This distributor needs a window clean or whatever. So, I mean – But Justin will be doing production work, too, for games. Yeah, he started his first production project last Friday. Right. Yeah. So he's jumping in, too. Oh, yeah. But we need that juggling, you know, because it's with, again, only three of us. Yeah. Well, and that's the thing. You increased your staff by 50%, 33%. 33%. Yeah, and now you're three. Yeah. And actually, the trial was this summer. We had an intern, he came in and it took a load off of our plates, like what he did, you know. And that just proved that, like, hey, we need a third guy in here because, like, look how more productive we were when the third guy was, like, taking this off of our plate and doing this and that. I mean, we got a lot more done. I mean, we closed Iron Maiden. Well, wait, when he was here, we did Deadpool. Then we did Iron Maiden, Primus, and we were working on Monsters, too, at the time. And he helped take a lot of the busy work off of our plates so we could get the game stuff out the door. And we did. I mean, it didn't seem like a lot of work, but four games in three months was a lot of work. You know, if you need an intern, and I don't know if I'm immediately discredited and I can't work here because I'm a pinball podcaster, but I'm more than willing to come help in any capacity that I can. How much are you making doing that podcast? You know what? The same amount I'm making by working at Stern. On that note, you've been listening to the special podcast hosted by Bill Webb. That's right. Bill, it's all you, buddy. You're going to drive the train. Ben, you've just got to sign this waiver over here. Pass over the keys of the catalog. And, yeah, Stephen, you drive me home, please. Yeah. I've got some work to do. It's been fun. It's a good night. I appreciate you guys having us come in here. And I just think it's really important that people understand there's a lot more going on behind the scenes here at Stern. And it's, you know, in the art department and programming. Kudos to the artists that are working with you. And you know what? Kudos to you guys for just everything that you've been doing, especially, you know, with your pass in pinball. Greg, it's unbelievable. It's a great experience for us to be able to sit down with both you guys. You guys are good guys. And I'm excited to see what's going to happen moving forward. You should be. Yeah, I was going to say, how many games have you got lined up? Another 10 or 12? Yeah, there's never a shortage, right? I mean, it just keeps going and going and going. It's a machine. It just keeps going and cranking them out. At this point in my career, I'm very appreciative that pinball is as strong as it is right now. I've told this story before. My father-in-law, before he passed, he was like, Greg, mark my word, pinball will make a comeback. And I said, no, Fred, it's over. It's done. This was back in 2001. I said, I really think it's done. There's no possibility for it to come back. And boy, was I wrong. And boy, am I glad. Well, you've got the Brian Eddy curse back in the building. The man that's closed down many companies with his employment. So we'll keep our fingers crossed, but we're excited to see what happens. But thanks a lot, guys. Thank you. Thank you very much. So, Bill, we're going to wrap up episode number 38, right? 38. Special event. What a fun night, man. Oh, yeah. Always a pleasure. This is good times. Always a pleasure coming out this turn. And as we typically like to do is we like to go eat food after these podcasts with our guests. So we'll have to figure out where we're going to go eat. I know Bill will recommend burritos, but we'll see how that goes down. I don't know if there are any burrito places around here. We don't really go for burritos. Oh, Bill, I'm so sorry. Bill's leaving early. We'll find a way. Steven, you might be driving me home. If you want to get a hold of us at the show, you can reach us at specialwindlitpinballpodcast.gmail.com. You can also visit us on Facebook at Special Win Lit Pinball Podcast. Next week we're going to go in-depth into some exciting things that we have coming up for the show. But as far as the interviews have been going, it's been awesome. It's been fun. And another one in the can, Bill. Yep. Shout-out to our sponsor, LearMods. Yeah, LearMods.com. For Bill Webb, I'm Ken Cromwell. Everybody have a good morning, good afternoon, good evening. And don't forget to take some time out of your day and play some pinball. So long, everybody.

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 5559e7f1-c670-4ab4-8f04-1d1369481787*