Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of this is technically meet the team. You know, it's still the Dirty Pool podcast, but uh this is where we kind of go through everybody that works at barrels or worked on Winchester specifically. And today I'm joined by the ultra talented multi-maker vinyl enthusiast, uh Brad Albbright. Welcome.
Hello. Thank you. Uh good morning everybody. We got Dr. John in the house. We got uh the the Aussies have joined us. Uh a bunch of the regular faces and some new ones. Uh we are multiccasting on the YouTubes, the uh the Instagrams and the I don't know the other one. So if you'd like to interact with chat though, I only have those pulled up for Twitch and YouTube. If you are hooting and holler at me on Instagram, I just I can't see it. Sorry. Uh we got Carrie here. And uh without further ado, let's let's talk about artwork. Um we took the time to set up a bit of a uh screen share this time so we can take a look at some of the assets and where they came from in the game. But before we get to that, let's talk a little bit about Brad. How did you get into pinball art?
Yeah, sure. Um well, let's see. What's the short version of it? I've always been an artist and I've also always been into pinball, but pinball has really kind of come in strong in the last I don't know seven or eight years for me as I transitioned out of full-time corporate work as a graphic designer. So, right as I was transitioning to being an independent artist and starting to explore more avenues for my personal work, you know, whether it was art festivals or local markets or gig posters, that sort of thing, it's like I suddenly had enough room in my brain to rediscover pinball in the world at a time where it was healthy again. Because for the previous 20 years or so, it was this like diamond in a rough uh like exciting thing if I found it in the wild, but generally, you know, they were in sort of like disrepair or just, you know, not in in not in great uh quantity cuz I was never part of like the pinball community until the last, you know, several years. So
at that moment it it was like the perfect inspiration that I needed at a time where I wasn't expecting it and it kind of not derailed but it it redirected my focus.
So I have some of your illustration work pulled up too and your style is is very like you have an identity for sure for your work but some of this stuff including some of your pinball stuff like you have a Texas Pinball Festival poster here from 2019. Um, so I feel like some of that pinball, you know, ran in your blood pretty early, even though you weren't working on playfields quite at that point, right?
Yeah, for sure. Um, I mean, I think even in my personal work, the the facets that that always seem to come in strong are interactivity and kind of like a nostalgia thing.
Sure.
Which both of which are obviously pinball. Um, and it It's an amazing canvas for artwork, but it's also an interesting challenge because of all the the things that it needs to do, you know, to to be effective, to be useful to uh like the medium of pinball. And
and you had two projects kind of at at the same time at Pinball Expo. Look at you, you little busy bee. Uh I imagine that the
three technically, what's the other one?
Uh Monster League hockey.
Oh, that's right. Of course, that was one of the best parts of the homebrew section for me and one of the only ones that I was able to get on because the lines were, you know, everyone talked about the Winchester line being so long, but the lines at the at the homebrew section were pretty much as long for most of the games if you combine them.
Um, Erica says, "Hey, uh," and is praising the Great Pyramid. Erica, thank you so much for joining. Uh, shout out to Rewind Arcade. She's running their socials now, so you should go check out that stuff. Um, all right. So your your first game, what was your first pinball uh art fora?
Uh so Led Zeppelin, the the homebrew that I did with uh David Peek down in New Zealand, that was a rethe uh freedom, I think it was. Um, so that was the first like official
U.
It's funny how a lot of pinball people that are in industry stuff right now came from a homebrew project or some sort of other pinball passion thing. I feel like you can't like there's no way to just dive into immediately working at a pinball company. You have to like somehow prove yourself on some sort of secondary project uh in some capacity.
Oh yeah. And it it's it's a great training ground because until you do that, it's it's hard to wrap your head around what it what it needs to do and what what the shapes are. Like I mean, inserts alone, designing around inserts and designing over, you know, over inserts, framing the inserts, that alone is such a specific thing that that you have to do in pinball. Um, and until you've actually had something in front of you, it's it's hard to know what that challenge really means,
right? There it really is a unique art. Just the challenges that go into pinball relate to a lot of other artistic endeavors. And I'll use the audio as an example here too where like it's similar to doing game audio or it's similar to doing like trailer design or something, but when you get into the details of it, it's very different. And I imagine the illustration is no different like you me like you just mentioned. Yeah, sure. I mean, I think for for a lot of artists that are interested in pinball, the the concept of the cabinet is easy to kind of wrap your head around. you know, it's not perfect rectangles like, you know, a poster, but it's, you know, it's a flat piece of artwork and you can kind of work with that compositionally. But then once once you start looking at uh a playfield and plastics and start thinking of it as as a user interface
and Winchester is a good example too of of some of those angles and design challenges presenting some like unique things that we had to like kind of I don't know workshop and figure out you know I can think of behind the peppers ghost box as one example and the stained glass both on the side of the cabinet as well as the plastics was a another interesting kind of not design choice, but just challenge that we needed to figure out and then of course the uh color tone for the playfield went through a number of revisions. Um
but we we'll hop into that in a second. Um we got a this is live, so if you do have questions, please fire away. Pat the weirdo is saying regarding the art, he wants to know, did you get photos of the house for inspiration?
Yes, definitely. Um, we had a huge, you know, library of photos from the the house from the the licenser. We had photos that Carl took himself. Um, I used Google images, uh, Google Earth specifically. Um, to to frame the the angle of the house that I wanted. Um, yeah. So, there was no shortage of of um reference material. There's a virtual tour that you can
down to some of the like wallpaper, right? I mean, we used
those reference images to create a lot of the like accents, right?
Yes. Yeah, for sure.
Um, is there a is there a favorite little art moment that you have on the entire playfield? Like something that you're just like extremely proud of? Um, I'm I mean that's that should be an easy question, but uh
I don't know. There's a lot of art on that playfield. I could imagine that. Not overwhelming, but there's just so many different spots. I mean, I think overall I'm I'm just pleased that it came out as as well as as it did, not just the art, but like the entire package with the rest of the team. Um, it came to came together very fast. So, I think when I look back on it, that'll be one of the things that I'm most most pleased with is that it almost birthed itself.
Sure. Cuz
I think one of my favorite like memories of all these like Slack Zoom meetings that we had was, you know, when you were given the stage to talk about where the art was and then you would bring up your, you know, full full screen kind of like iteration of it and just see how different it was from the week before and the week before and it's just like it went through, you know, uh it shows a testament to your skill in terms of how fast you were able to both like create and iterate ideas. And you know, the team also helped you. There was a 3D mockup that Josh put together that we were able to put your artwork in to kind of visualize what the actual end product was going to be. Um, neat stuff like that.
Show you that here, too.
Yeah. Without further ado, let's let's uh let's fly on over to maybe some of those assets so we can show everybody. Um Dustin's asking, he says, "Are you going to Houston Expo? And are they bringing more Winchester buttons like he had in Chicago?" That's right. Cuz you made a bunch of custom wooden stuff.
Yes. And yes, definitely going to be there and definitely we'll have more.
Uh hopefully this is working. This is the first time that we've done this. I know that there's a bit of a gray gap on top, but uh hopefully you are experiencing our uh 3D 3D mockup asset of uh kind of final art assets put into the actual game.
Yeah. So, you can see obviously this this isn't like um a proper shaped cabinet. The backbox especially is like a weird it's a weird size. It doesn't match. But um this is largely how I would be working to gauge the overall visual and to kind of test the the flat artwork that I'm creating against the three-dimensional shapes that it that it lives in. So, uh, Carl was able to send me a step file, which, um, if I toggle this over, you know, it's just essentially the the like engineering of all the physical components underneath. You can even see some of the things that I didn't delete out, uh, coils and stuff like that,
cuz we're not really worried about rendering speed when it comes to, uh, previewing this.
No. No. So where this really becomes uh helpful is getting the player view right. So that sort of forcehortened angle that that the player is going to end up seeing it on which is pretty different from how I would see it working on an art file which would be like more straight on. Right.
Right. And a critical difference to the experience you know especially because you're looking at how the artwork kind of flows from foreground to background.
Yeah. Yeah. And I like to try to find opportunities to do things with like forced perspective. Um uh for example, the on the ramps, uh this the sort of perspective view of stair steps in the house. So you're faking the geometry of stair steps on what's a flat smooth surface that's angled away from the player. Another example is is back here on the the staircase to nowhere.
Nowhere. Yeah. probably one of my favorite little features of the game. I think it's such a small like obviously the turntable and and other things are initially very cool, but just this like tiny little metal ramp that doesn't go anywhere that grabs a ball and then kind of poops it back into a scoop is just like very satisfying when you when you make the shots.
Yeah. And I mean this is one of those things like if you can see where my cursor is.
Yeah, we can. I would spend hours on on this area and you don't even really see most of this because this this piece in front is opaque. Um, but in actuality, this component right here is designed as a flat piece of art where the steps are sort of stretched so that when you look at it from a forhortened angle, then it looks like natural stair steps, right? Well, thankfully everyone that plays pinball apparently is this giant monster 8 foot tall person, so it's easy to see over that initial
first metal barrier.
Um, so the other thing I love about this is all the detail. So, can you talk a little bit about the color scheme because I know uh we had
hue shifted the tones for the kind of the blue and red um element a bunch and uh just you talked about it and the initial drawings that you did were amazingly bold in terms of color scheme and uh you know the whole game has a really loud color package and but it didn't it didn't start that way. Yeah. As you have here.
Yeah. So, this this is like one of my earliest um I guess mood boards. And this this was probably pulled together for David to kick over to the licenser to, you know, to gauge the general direction and and make sure that there weren't any big red flags.
We got the famous barrels of fun tan tan man scenario going on.
Yeah. So like it and this is how I would think of things generally is it in my brain I start thinking more in like a monochromatic way just basic textures and things aren't super loud and I I generally I would I would defer to a more muted color palette but things always end up getting more saturated and brighter for the the pinball um you know pinball consumer kind of expects a certain amount of saturation And the question is like does it fit the license? Does it um does it Slash with itself? Does it lead the eye around the right way? So,
right. And I think eye motion is an incredible important part with every element of a pinball machine is basically trying to guide the person as like a UI experience, right? Whether it's
Yeah.
LCD screen stuff, audio assets. Yeah. And so here you can see how you use the wisps to help kind of envision ball paths.
Yeah. So this was pretty early on where it's like, okay, what if what if we're using these ghost wisps to, you know, direct the eye to the specific shot lines? And then somewhere along the lines we decided that uh we were going to have both um you know benevolent spirits and angry spirits as you know these these two like a dichotomy right so then in subsequent versions of this it was a matter of balancing those two colors for different shots. Um, you know,
were you intimidated by putting a giant like schematic, you know, uh, room schematic right in the middle of the playfield? Cuz it takes it has to take up so much of the real estate.
Yeah. Yeah. It It takes up a lot of the real estate. Um, I think
floor plan is the word that I could not think of.
Yeah. I I think what what I was concerned about was that the the placement and the angle of those inserts didn't naturally correspond to the like gridlike structure of rooms and hallways. So, I needed to to make sure that Carl was okay with it not necessarily being a onetoone thing, you know, where the the floor plan could be maybe more of this like peace meal,
right?
Abstract in the way that it would need to be in order to make sure that these inserts aren't boringly aligned and whatnot.
Yeah. Um,
but I mean it it could have just as well been important for that to be aligned and and that was a challenge for me because I I tried doing it that way and it felt more like looking at say like the map of terrain in like a Red Dead Redemption style game that takes place in the wilderness. Like it didn't feel like ar didn't feel like architecture. So [snorts] finding a a concept for myself that I could follow, which was that, okay, maybe these are scraps of blueprints that are kind of falling at weird angles on top of one one another. So it goes from being this like gridlike focus to being something that's a little bit more abstract.
Yeah.
With burned edges,
paper. Yeah. Plus the kind of incorporation of these like wisps and stuff. Um, someone asked me this at expo. I'd love to have this in video just to nip any of that stupid [ __ ] But, uh, did you draw this or did you use AI, Brad?
No AI was was used and no humans harmed by AI in this process.
There you go. These cobwebs came from human hands. Um, and but speaking of the wisp though, they went through a few iterations of how to make the wisps kind of like have I don't know a cool tail to them, for lack of a better word. Um,
yeah, somewhere in here.
You know, and again though, Carl was super supportive of pretty much every direction that we started to go down. I mean, like he would give his preference in terms of how things were developing, but uh I don't know what would you how was your experience working with Carl?
Oh, it was great. I I loved having essentially a singular point person
um because we had a good
a good experience I think um bouncing ideas back and forth and it it cut extra cooks out of the kitchen. Um
and we needed efficiency especially for kind of like the timeline that we were on.
Yeah. for me knowing that that he knew what felt right and if say there were like two ways of going about something and if I didn't feel opinionated about it I could kick it over to him and he would very quickly be like yeah that one's good and then then I could run with it and not having to make all of those final decisions myself was helpful. So, similar to similar to Stern and their factory tours, uh, where you get to see code names for a lot of the games that are there. For example, uh, Buck is the code name for Fall of the Empire. Uh, Carrie is noticing that Springfield is the code name for Winchester. And that is correct.
That's right. That's right.
Um, so yeah, this is like one of the earlier uh or this is one of the the versions of the Yeah,
I think this is this pretty far along if not final. Um, this is an example of one of those things where I feel like you might look at anything that I've done and see that there's a consistent style, but for me, I go I have to go like a different way to end up there in the end. So, I don't have uh like a triedand-rue formula that I can follow with each new project, much to my like discomfort.
I I love that. I love having kind of like set from scratch like presets and stuff just force you down like the same path and yeah,
you know, I mean,
yeah,
I I do envy artists that that have a tried andrue way of of doing their work because I I feel like it would be more efficient and more um not more reliable, but like the client knows what they're going to get.
Sure. Whereas every new client that I work with, even even previous clients on a new project, there's a lot of uh faith that has to be in place to kind of ride out the rough sketches because I don't even know yet what it's going to look like, much less them seeing through the sketch to
it's hard to have a vision of what the final product is going to be if you are not either directly involved or experienced, whatever the either platform or artistic thing is. And I I feel that's one reason why it's awesome that the the Winchester whatever estate was so cool with everything. It was like, you know, it's not like they know what the process of of pinball machines uh start to finish is going to be like and and to see a bunch of rough stuff. You know, early ideas that are mocked up
can can be scary to people that don't know. They're like, "Oh, this looks bad or whatever." And it's just like this is a a start of a path down a a final product that when you get there, you'll understand. So yeah, this is that's a great example of how the uh Wisps kind of went from early to new.
Uhhuh. Yeah. And so this this is one of those things where
I've never needed to do this before. or I might never need to do it again, but I I was trying to find the look that that felt right and was going to, you know, convey the thing, be a good user interface detail.
And we also we didn't want to rip off like Ghostbusters or anything that had existed before. Like you came up with a really kind of like your own ectoplasmy kind of like vibe for these effects on the playfield.
Yes. Yes. And that's a good frame of reference because I love Ghostbusters. I love what Zombie Yeti does, but I I didn't want it to be that.
And he has a very specific style for his kind of like uh edging that goes on for those. Yeah, it's it's very um it's very line art inspired, which you know is actually my my biggest influence is line art, black and white artists, but for this
it needed to be something more painterly. And I had to teach myself a new process to to get the look. And so this like smearing of the texture, I had to learn how to create texture first, then smear it in a way that was a little bit chaotic where I didn't have total control over this brush, but it it made interesting textures that kind of was the right amount of like dangerous and and specific, right?
Yeah, totally. Uh Jojo dojo, by the way, please feed your questions if you have anything. This is the opportunity to to bombard us with inquiries. Uh Joe's asking what tools would an artist need to know to well know well to work in pinball. Joe, you got to be more specific because there's so many different creative positions and stuff that go into uh pinball making. I mean, even the rules generation to a to a large degree is is a creative process. Um Oh, that's right. You did time-lapse videos, right?
Yeah. Yeah. So, I have so much of these. I didn't even pick this one specifically. I just pulled one out. But you can see in the the upper right hand of the screen where there's this sort of fisheye look. That is where I composited um screenshots from Google Earth where I I positioned the view uh where I I kind of wanted to get a cinematic view looking up at the house. made like a a Frankenstein like template based on stock or uh reference images and then traced over it to make the final product. Right.
Yeah. Yeah. And it it's it was difficult to do that because the the textures don't line up with one another. And so I had to kind of figure out or or fake some of the details so that they look right, but they rigid those different. But then you get that weird kind of like surrealist kind of vibe to it as well. I mean it is pinball in the end, right?
Yeah. And you can also see I'm using uh kind of more of like a a pencil like brush here. Like it's it's textural. It's not a hard black edge like like maybe you again you'd see with like Zombie Yeti's art packages are like very clean, very beautifully inked. And this is this is way like more rough and tactile
which is cool. Those both work, but I think it gave it its own kind of identity as well.
Yeah. And I may or may not do this on the next project, you know, just this is kind of what felt interesting to me for for this and I think it lent itself to the the vibe of it.
Sure. Can we pop up the back glass? I think this is obviously, you know, this is the show piece of the game. It's what people see the most of. It's used the most. And
the uh kind of art assets for uh
Oh, we've got a time you got a time lapse on this, too. Yeah.
Boy, this ghost had a lot of changes. If you want to talk about that, Brad.
Yeah. Yeah. So, um I think from the beginning with the back glass, I I wanted to have a an iteration of Sarah, um inviting the viewer to the house in kind of a creepy way. So, it's it's a little bit off-putting, but it's also like bringing you into the experience. Um, I think some of the concerns that that we were working our way through were whether she had a Casper tail,
quote unquote,
cuz we really didn't want or I should say Carl the team in general was really worried about things not looking like they were not original, but like that we were stealing or taking from other ideas and we wanted the Winchester to have its really its own identity.
Mhm. Yeah. She doesn't look really anything like previous iterations of Sarah that they've had. And thankfully they they let us kind of do do what I did,
right?
Um and uh Julian Brown, she was able to kind of send me one of her 3D models as a as like a pose to, you know, kind of mock it up with. And then I did some some further posing. Um took photos. And
did you model yourself? You like got up against the wall and you were just like,
"Welcome to I'm Brad inviting you to the Winchester.
My My delicate features."
You like pulled a a Titan Titanic like moment
as I'm knocking my mouse over. I'm my own French girls.
I'm my own French girl. There we go. Quote that one, Brad. All right, clip it.
Um,
yeah.
Yeah. I mean, this is amazing seeing like I love your watching your techniques for how you're like building rocks out of of nothing but just like, you know, white shapes that you've created.
Yeah.
Do you want to pull up the side panels? I mean, I guess. Yeah. like is there anything specific that you felt was like extremely unique to the to this particular project compared to like other pinball projects that you had that you've worked on?
Well, yeah. I mean, I for me, this project was cool being able to explore this like Victorian vibe as a whole. Um, that's something I've never really had to do before, never really was motivated to do before, but for this it was perfect. and the Victorian horror thing um really speaks to me. So, it was fun getting to explore things like stained glass and I'm I'm very pleased that we were able to um let's see how what's the best place to show this. Let's get back over here. Yeah, this is definitely a better because you can see
Yeah.
the stained glass quotes.
Yeah. So, the these are specific windows that are in the house. Um, you know, with a lot of things, we we took a lot of creative liberty and kind of came up with our own stuff, but these are actually actually referenced from the house. And it's cool to have something like that so prominent on the backbox.
Yeah. And there's a few things in the game that are I think people have been critical of a handful of things, but many of those are actual things from the house. They're They're deliberate full-on either not only references, but just like part of the house cuz this is, you know, it is a nonIP game, but it is also an IP game. The Winchester is a real place. And uh historically, the things that went into it are are really are really important. Like for example, the Annunciator is a good example. both the visual asset and the audio asset because people have been there have been some pinside uh trolls talking about how the bells uh this that or the other thing but this is a real thing in the house like this isn't that's the actual sound it's not uh some madeup thing that we put together um it's a historical piece
it's it's not uh high-res enough to read it here but this this is an Easter egg this says D'Python Anghelo
don't spoil the Easter Thanks, Brad.
I am happy to I'm happy to spoil this one.
Yeah, go for it. Zoom in. It's It's a cute little reference to Carl.
It's It's D'Python Anghelo and Co. Um and then I think it I think it says Houston, Texas under it, actually. It's so tiny. In the actual game, you probably can't even read it. It's so small.
I don't know. The fel the fidelity of the print really blew me away. I remember when uh you know David had posted some uh test assets that had been printed out in chat on Slack and was like zooming in to make sure that I don't know screws aligned and all sorts of other stuff when we were doing QC as a group and it's crazy man. The resolution on these prints is is unbelievable. I really really shocking. I expected it to not be like that.
Yeah. But hey, back on the topic of the stained glass, I I'm really pleased that we were able to keep so much of the plastics as stained glass. Like I think in pinball, there's there's a lot of different uses of art on plastics. And here, you know, it could have gone a different way. It could have been, you know, interior scenes more in the vein of of the the Oregon that's here. I think this is like an older version of the artwork, but like this is one of the only um like scene, does that make sense? Like scenes shown on the plastic.
Yeah. Where it's it's not uh where Yeah. where it's like an image or a room that you're using to repurpose as a plastic as opposed to creating a completely artistic, you know, pattern that is being used for the plastic. And uh it really to me it really brings the brings the whole room together. which I forget what movie that quote is. Uh but you know, you're tying the side cabinet of the game into the plastics as well. And something I'm very critical on the channel is when the art package in a game is like really disconnected either from the theme or just from the the other assets that are involved in it. And uh for how wild and crazy and kind of loud the color palette is and artistic kind of direction you did for this, it all comes together. It all relates to each other and it and it really does work. It's such it's such a cool looking game. The dude's rug. That's right. Duh. It's the big bowski. Uh Joe's saying, "With playfield artwork, are you using Photoshop and Blender mainly to get the art design?"
Well, Blender is just used for the mockup, right, Brad?
Yeah, Blender is used more just for visualizing the the threedimensional space. I'm primarily working in Clip Studio Paint for for assets. Um it which is effectively Photoshop. It's just um it has some some slightly different tools. And the the reason I started using Clip Studio is because on the iPad it'll run a full version of the software. So if I need to be mobile, I can I can bounce back and forth pretty seamlessly.
And just to how high resolution are some of these like asset files just to like
put into perspective how power they are.
Yeah, they're enormous. And they're The reason I'm not really taking you through like this is my back glass file and there's there's hundreds of layers here and if I start toggling them it'll it'll like slow down my whole system.
Yeah, which is great that you have these pre-rendered kind of like animations for it.
Uh David is here. Barrels of fun CEO dropping in
scrolling all the way down.
David has said AI. We already addressed that. How dare AI be gone. the home humanmade artwork for humanmade games. Uh, thank you for stopping in everybody. Say hi to David. Also, thank you for the new followers. I appreciate it. Uh, we are, if you are just joining, David, we are currently going through uh kind of behind the scenes assets of what it's like to go from like mood board almost to uh to final assets.
Yeah, the geeks here too. You got the whole the whole board crew is spying on us. Um, see,
so yeah, we kind of we ran through Let's do the cabinet artwork. I guess we kind of we touched base on on pretty much every aspect of everything up until uh you know, the cabinet artwork.
Here's a view of of some early really really rough like, okay, what if it's an exterior on this side? What if it's an interior on this side? And then here's a an early sketch of what became the seance side, which compositionally is is pretty close to what it became, but the details, of course.
Sure. Dallas After Effects user group just chimes in. They said, "What's an Easter egg that Brad put into the design?" You just missed it. We just showed it. Uh it's on the Annunciator uh on the playfield. You'll have to uh you'll have to find find a Winchester and and climb on top of it to take a look or watch this on video on demand to rewind it. There's There's Sarah. That's kind of an Easter egg.
Yeah. Yeah. And again, we had mentioned earlier that like so much of this like the wallpaper like there's all of the imagery like the there's so many legitimate references andor direct like uh I mean you took images from the actual house and then rendered them uh you know with your illustration style. So like so much of the house is is brought to uh kind of be part of the game. And this isn't just the idea of what we think the Winchester mansion is. It really is the house. You know, a big part of this process that I I haven't mentioned yet, but I've I've made a point of highlighting um when I talk to people about this is is how much I was able to uh make use of assets from Joshua. Uh Joshua who's doing our user interface and our um you know, our screen animations. He's
which you can which you can learn about on the previous episode of this who I interviewed first. That's right. That's right.
Two more. Anyways,
uh he he modeled all of the interiors of the house. And um let's see if I can find it here. You can see this is reference that I built for myself using Joshua's assets and set up lights for myself. This is what became the uh the front end credit game over screen as well, if I remember correctly. Right. Uh well, yeah, he does have a version of that, but I I built this specific like combination of textures and things and gave it this sort of fisheye perspective in order to then create this illustration so you can see.
Oh, right. Which I honestly I think the front of this is one of my favorite shots of it. I just I love the like eerie, you know, you use the spirit energy in a lot of the kind of like assets that are around the game to help tie it in as well.
Yeah. But being able to
David's hopping on. He says, "Thanks for watching." Dirtpool. That's not my name. Dirtpool. God damn it, David. Uh thank you for joining us. Enjoy your call, my dude. Uh back. Yeah, being able to to pose assets, to get a sense of perspective, to get a sense of lighting, um the textures of the the environment and the crown molding and all this stuff like that, that stuff's very difficult to just generate out of your brain. And so having having someone else on the team like Joshua who's using those assets elsewhere and creating them from scratch, having us be able to go back and forth,
I think really helped with the the total package becoming um cohesive. And um uh another example is on the playfield, we've got all the seance instruments, so we we knew what instruments they were going to be.
Yep. Um, and Joshua started modeling up some of those things and I was able to use those models and then create these kind of, you know, loose pen and ink sketch versions of them for the playfield. And then on screen we have the more detailed threedimensional versions of them.
As a as a funny side note for the instruments, all of the instruments that are in the game other than the gong were actually played with real instruments. Uh, I had Carl plays trumpet and I I forced him to to do a little trumpet diddy for it. Sid played a high tom in order to get the tom out of it. And I have tambourines and bells lying around for the other ones. But it's just we really tried to use as many non stock and authentic originally created things for as much of the playfield as possible both in sound assets and also as your you know with your all your visual stuff.
Yeah. You know, it's it's funny. Of all the things I'm looking forward to experiencing in the game play, I can't wait to to dial in more on how you match the pitch of the target sound effects to whichever song is playing at that moment. It works well whether you're hitting the drop targets. The two actually the treble and bass targets that are below the key, you know, when the the ball kind of falls straight down kind of in front of the the that side ramp.
Um it's above the um No, it's above the organ.
Oh, we're inside of it. Wee.
Yeah, right there.
Uh yeah, so those those two targets Yeah, right there. Those treble and bass targets that are to the Yeah, those two gray ones. Uh those are those have the most interesting pitch. They have a huge pool of tones that they can pull from and as the ball bounces up and down on them, it plays multiple potential melodies out of it. All of which being in either a key or a relative key to what the music is playing. So, it's neat. It's a subtle effect, but uh if you have multiball going on, it's pretty it's pretty obvious. So, does the subway have any art? I'm going to go with probably not. Joe, can you can you spoil the answer to that, Brad? Does the subway have art?
I no, I don't I don't think that it does.
If you consider opaque plastic art, then yes, it does.
But the behind the peppers ghost had a few iterations of potential artwork. That's a good example of something that's uh kind of behind a hardware or mechanic that we put in. this uh my model here isn't a very good place to to evaluate it, but the the question was whether the the effect was better or worse having artwork back in this space uh for the ghost to kind of play off of because it's lay layered in front of that thing without being distracting because
it needs to be as dark as possible back there for the effect to be bright. Um, but you also want a sense of dimensionality, but you also then have to account for the height of the player, which is difficult. Um,
yeah,
it is true. The peppers ghost effect, even though you think it's just like easy, slap a piece of, you know, angled acrylic in front of a LCD screen, you're good to go. No, we had to figure out how to properly align assets vertically in it for, you know, the average height individual that might be playing the game. It was uh I'm glad that it was not a problem that I had to solve.
Yeah. Here's Here's uh like an artifact of the process. This is an older version of the the apron where the player lock ball and the numbers weren't actually included in the print in one of like the the early
iterations of the design. Then we decided that instead of it only showing up when it lights up underneath, it made more sense to have it be printed across that surface the same as the letters. And I think it's much improved now, but we
totally especially for how much that's used and will be used. I mean, it does countdowns as well as telling you what ball is up, what player is up. Like, uh, the apron is a a pretty large part of the experience.
Yeah. So,
I mean, it's it won't be a surprise to anyone, I think, at this point, that that it does light up, but it helps that it looks complete when it's not lit up and then you can be surprised about when it lights up,
right? It's like what's more important, the surprise that it does something or the fact that it's like repeat usable during the like entire game?
And I think the second thing, one more because the surprise only happens once and you're like, "Oh, that's cool." And then then it's more like, "Okay, I'm glad this does the thing." Yeah, it was it felt kind of like vacant without having to having the print all the way across that surface.
For sure. I love all the little filigree and kind of like old uh kind of woodcut uh pattern and like you know I feel like I'm in a old medieval like tarot card kind of book with the stuff there. It's just super cool.
Uh Christopher Transy says he loves the game. He loves doing loves Labyrinth and we did a great job on these three pins. Thank you. I helped on some of those.
[snorts]
Um, so I guess let's see the the um earthquake tower that was a plastic that kind of went in later on. I feel like the the sculpt in this is so enormous that it definitely kind of
uh
it came into play in terms of figuring out how to do the art back there, right?
Yes. um the perspective down on this piece of flat plastic to match the perspective of the house and the sculpt was kind of interesting. It's that I think you notice that most on toppers where they try to combine these threedimensional sculpts with flat plastics and often times they just don't jive very well together at all.
Right. Um, like all flat plastics would be cool, all sculpted would be cool, but when you combine them, it sometimes it's just a weird weird bit of contrast. And here,
right, you either get a dimensionality that's interesting or you get a Slash of dimensionality, which is like less cool.
Yeah. Yeah. But here, you know, we um
we knew what we were going to be working with. Um, [snorts] this was like provided to me from, you know, uh, the guide for the the sculpts being painted. So, I was able to match those colors and and match the perspective using Blender looking at it in this
and the house has some pretty bold, you know, colors and trimmings involved in it. Uh, Rendle Resto says, "Is the game going to get a topper?" Uh, there is no free topper with the game. I have heard rumors at Expo uh that there may be a a fancy topper coming in the future. So, I would say stay tuned for information on that. Um, and then we have the classic Winchester Mystery House logo here, right?
Yeah.
I guess you
Yeah. So, the the one that's on the back glass, uh, that was Robert Blakeman.
Yeah. Shout out to Robert Blakeman, the kind of pinch hitter of
uh, art assets and other kind of promo graphics. Robert Blakeman is uh kind of a a rock star to help get the games to finish line when it comes to making promotional assets and more. Um and so he created that Winchester one, right?
Yeah. The one on the back glass and Robert Blakeman's done awesome work on all the the banners and flyer and promotional assets. And that one of the things that I am very conscious of when I'm working on cabinets is that it's a pretty good piece of uh real estate for uh translating to banners for shows. So
it's already a large piece of art, but I do my best to work at an even higher resolution like 600 dpi instead of like normal print being 300 so that
that's so that's ridiculous. Yeah, it's crazy. But then if you see the banners that we're able to bring to shows, we're able to to then take what was a cabinet side
Sure.
and bounce it up to, you know, 8 ft and it still looks really good.
Cuz I I've seen that asset. There's There's drawing in that area that is generally cut off because it is not a square asset.
Exactly. Let's see where we There we go.
Just out of curiosity. Yeah. So, you can see there's there's house and paintings up there and stuff.
Yeah. So, like the the molding on the top of the walls isn't visible at all in the the cabinet, but it's all, you know, painstakingly drawn just for the sake of [snorts] having an asset being seen that we might want to use later. Yeah.
Just out of curiosity, what is what is the file size of either like that or the back glass with all of its layers? Uh,
what do we got? 8.3 GB.
Jesus Christ.
Yeah, I think so. Some Some get up towards 12 at at one point.
Yeah. Does this use the same materials doing for the cabinet art? Yes, it's the it's not rad cows. I forget what the uh the materials called, but it is the it is the same shiny highs. You know what's that?
Ever gloss, I think. Correct.
There you go. That's the one. I believe it is that. Well, that's that's great, man. I I don't I think we've pretty much dove into every single component on it. Do I guess do you want to look at one of the stickers inside the cabinet door? No. The uh
actually uh now that you mention it, one of
here, let's I was going to say let's flip back to you so people can actually see your face and talk a little bit about the wooden kind of like uh threedimensional artwork that you do as well. Uh some of which may or may not be inspired by uh the Winchester.
Yeah. Yeah. Here, I brought I brought one piece upstairs just in case it came
Oh, wait. I lied. Can you pull up some of the sticker art for uh standups and stuff? I feel like this is stuff that is very underappreciated because you just can't really get in and see it. Or, for example, like the trouble and bass targets that we were talking about that have musical tones associated with them. They're facing the other direction. So, you like don't even get to see them very at all unless you're like leaning over the cabinet,
you know?
That's true. I was going to point out if I can see where did I save it. I love that Seventh Guest is in there. I've talked about that a few times that Carl had sent me that as an original reference for the soundtrack and uh it was not only a favorite game of mine from back in the day, but a huge uh
Yeah.
Yeah.
inspiration for the sounds.
Yeah. major major inspiration to me. Um, a for [snorts] formative memory from growing up and I was very pleased to be able to turn those kinds of inspirations back on the source, which it became very clear to me as we started like looking into this project that a lot of the things that I loved growing up were directly inspired by the Winchester House.
Totally.
Um, what else? couldn't help. There's a number of like melodic Easter eggs that are kind of tips of hats to different uh
to different things that may have been responsible for my pinball uh journey.
So, if you recognize any of those uh when you're playing, give me a shout. [snorts]
So, this is what I was looking at. These are these are target decals. And I I'm very pleased with the um the seance like the the three standup inline targets uh the drop targets on the way to the seance room because the plastic above is this sort of eroded wall where you've got the wallpaper and then the slats of uh of wood inside the wall and then underneath that is where you see the three drop targets, Right.
And you've got uh you've got a spirit trail kind of going into it which is lighting it up from below. The first drop target is the wallpaper texture kind of bottom lit by the spirit energy. The second one after you've dropped the first target is uh some wallpaper texture broken away revealing the wall slats. And then the third is wall slots broken away revealing this sort of spirit energy in the void which is where you end up setting the ball.
You're like breaking through different layers as you get closer and closer to the seance kind of ball lock. Very cool.
Yeah. Yeah. So having that all those like layers of dimensionality and the the sequence of the art changing to me is one of my favorite parts of the whole playfield. The plastic on top of that too is really neat where the the slats kind of like partially obscure the pathway into it, but really it's a complete, you know, plastic acrylic top uh to it to keep the balls from,
I don't know, launching out when they when they hit a target.
But it it just creates a really cool kind of like secret secret pathway kind of vibe to it, which which it is literally
for sure.
So,
okay, I'll stop my share. Hey, look everybody. It's It's Brad. He's back.
We're all back.
Hi,
Brad. All back.
Yeah.
No,
we've got This is This is Alfred.
So, can you spin that sideways and show people both kind of like the dimensionality of it and the material? Yeah. So, you work with uh you work with wood. Do you like wood?
Big fan of wood.
I'm a big fan of wood. I like I like wood. I like laser cutting. Um so, this is uh an example of what I do in my personal work, which is to take illustrations and then break them out into these sort of stacked flat layers to give it more of this interactive, you know, threedimensional quality. Uh, and then this this would hang on the wall and be sort of set up in a way where it appears that, you know, he's hanging from this this noose being carried by a bird.
Good lord, Brad. This is a family channel. How dare you? How dare you?
It's Alfred Hitchcock. Come on.
Oh, right. That's okay then.
So So yeah, these are like the the elaborate deluxe things where I I experiment with materials and sometimes
You have some with moving parts, too. Do you have uh do you have one of those uh on hand or no?
Uh no, not not really on hand, but yeah, sometimes they have spring mounting or or ball bearings. And
I have no engineering background, so it takes me weeks staring at a thing to figure out like how to make it move. If only you knew some engineers to like
only to to that point like pinball has been amazing because it's it's put me
like up close and personal with people of all disciplines, yourself included. um in a a collaborative way that I've never before even wanted to be a part of like
sure
like entering into pinball it's now a fun rewarding experience to to join forces with people whereas before just as like an artist it
So are you are you saying on camera that you're you're going to do an illustration of the great pyramid for me?
Is that what you just said? So, on that topic, I need you to explain what is the background to this this pyramid of yours. Yeah,
I've talked I've talked about that a little bit in the past, but sure, we can dive into that. Um, give me a short version.
The short version is that the first game that I streamed and the one that I did sound design for is Twilight Zone. And on Twilight Zone, the power, which is the upper playfield on it, is is directly inspired by this pyramid energy power Illuminati thing. Uh, so when the channel got started, I was just like, you know, it'd be fun to have like kind of a gimmick, be a cult or whatever. And I was just like, well, what what would we praise? I'm like, it's right there. It's just right in front of me. So, thus, the Great Pyramid was born. The god of pinball and uh all praise. Yeah. So, that's where that's from. It is both a non-serious and very serious thing because pinball is a very serious thing. Uh, and yeah, if you're watching now, you're part of the cult. So, welcome to the cult of pinball. Um,
so yeah, that's where that came from. So, you should absolutely check out Brad's uh work, his personal work, and also your wood stuff. If you want to bribe if you want to buy Brad's wood, where can people get your wood?
Uh, shop.allbrite illustration.com, which it's a really long URL, but uh
Well, I have the whole the whole URL is sitting right below you, but I can't point at yours. I guess it over there. You know, you can also uh you could follow me on Instagram. It's just Brad Albbright, one L uh Brad Albbright, and then everything's linked from there.
Is there like a is there like an evil Brad Albbright that has two L's that we need to like watch out for for or what?
I bet there is. Yeah,
it's like Bizarro Albbright. Does he talk backwards and stuff?
That'd be like weird.
That'd be like half bright or all dark.
This is getting too deep. Um, all right. So, as we're wrapping up, we're at an hour now. Uh, if you have any questions that you'd like to throw at Brad, please don't be shy. What did I miss here? Uh, Ronda Resto says, "Are there any UAV UV reactive inks on the playfield?" I don't know. You'd have to get a black light and go check one out for yourself. Uh, Jay Biscy says, "What is good?" Huh, Pinball?
That's true. And Pinball is very serious. Uh, Miga Cammy is here. Missed that. She says, uh, she likes to have pinball artwork on her desktop. That's cool. It' be cool if Brad could upload the rectangle artwork somewhere. Yeah, we'd have to get approval for that. It's a little hard to just throw assets around willy-nilly. As much as we did create these things, they're not ours to give away. And uh, but having said that, you know, Barrels has been really community focused. If you haven't noticed, David is like always out trying to mingle with people, having people over to the factory. Barrels is a pretty transparent operation, and I like that. I think that that's that's pretty cool. So, uh Joe's asking if you worked on any of the LCD artwork. No, I don't believe that's a that's a Josh.
Not me. Um but to my earlier point, being able to to bounce things between us was a nice way to keep it cohesive. And I I am in love with what Josh and Julian and Trent are doing with the display. Yeah, I think
especially because they were able to they were able to go darker with it. You know, it makes sense for cabinet art to be like loud and and vibrant, but on a screen you can really dial in the
the spooky factor.
Yeah,
it feels it feels coherent in a cool way. Somebody at Expo was talking about how much they appreciated that the info that was on the screen was like exactly what they needed to see. It was in the right spot. It wasn't like overload, you know, it just you got the information you need in the right format. And uh I think that's a testament to both Eric for doing layout for that as well as, you know, as you mentioned Josh, Julian, and Trent doing the art assets to help fill those ideas in.
Yeah, the user interface is really nice. And I like how like stuff kind of comes in like some of the molding from the house will will slide in. And
yeah, there's a cool depth of field effect too when things are up in the foreground now. There's a lot of there's a lot of neat stuff coming. Um, you had mentioned uh talking about Josh and his his architectural renderings. The rooms that are coming are much more like elaborate on the inside and that's very much part of the new like renders as well. Um, you know, the seance room is a box whereas the North Conservatory is this wild like [ __ ] windows everywhere crazy looking thing. So, uh, look look forward to that. And, uh, if you can find a Winchester, yes, I know that they're kind of rare. Again, sorry. Check it out. It's going to be cool. Um,
we'll be around.
All right, that's it. If If anybody else doesn't have any questions, Paridolia just showed up. Sorry. He's like, you managed to fetch you catch us live as we're like signing off. Um, as I say with all my guests, thank you so much for taking the time to hang out and talk about your work. I really appreciate it. your work on the game has been part of the reason that I think it's such a magical awesome experience. Um, so thank you for that.
If you have anything that you'd like to plug, I know we were talking about your website, but please take it away. The floor is yours.
Um, yeah. Yeah, the website, Instagram, uh, I kind of bounce things to both of those. Facebook,
some of those links, I'll put them in the description.
Yeah, I don't use my like Albbright Illustration Facebook page as much as I should. Um, but like my personal page. And
Dustin, that's a good point. Do you have a personal collection? Dustin's asking if you have uh any pins.
Oh, that's a that is a good question. And uh the short answer is that pinball fights for the same uh space in my house as printers, 3D printer, laser cutter. So, it's it's a challenge. But I have I have my P3. I have a Gotle. I'm probably gonna let the
Gotautle. Come on, man. What got
a hot shot? It's a hot shot.
Okay. All right.
And And I really like it. Um but I'm I'm probably gonna find it a new home to make room for my Winchester.
And then uh to to my left here, I have this is an AR that's an arcade oneup that I completely gutted and put new screens and a computer in. And it's running like a full full like VPX
thing. VPen, VPen stuff is neat. The homebrew and VPen people are really neat. I have a project coming up soon that I can't wait to share with everybody about that. Um, but I can't help but wonder, man, like if you could make extra space for a pen. Can I ask you maybe out of these three pens which one you would add to your permanent collection?
Out of which three?
I'm going to tell them. I'm going to give you three options. You got to pick one.
First pen would be Raven. The second pin would be raven. The third pin, if you had space, it's a Raven.
Um, probably Raven.
All right, that's a great choice.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah. My first game actually was a Motor Dome.
Okay.
A lot of people like laugh at that, but it was kind of [ __ ] awesome.
I chuckled. I chuckled. Some of the I mean, these terrible games uh, you know, have a special place in a lot of hearts, you know. I can think of like I don't know Hard Bodies, Laser War, uh what Future Spa, like there's a bunch of games that I would consider are uh not necessarily meme games, but they're, you know, amazingly bad in the in the in the best possible way.
Yeah, it was fun. I learned a lot like just fixing it up. But um in lie of games in my personal collection, we just got a new arcade less than 3 miles from our house here in in Lewisville, Texas.
Oh, really?
It's called Press Start Play.
Okay.
And it's this remarkable arcade that I I don't know how it makes any sense at all, but they have like all LE trim games. There's almost 70 pinball machines. Um
Wow. That's That's a pretty damn good number, man. And I would be pleased with like 8 to 10 in an arcade, but that's that's times seven.
It's probably the the best arcade, biggest arcade in all of Texas that just happens to be this close to us. And they just opened. So
if you're in if you're in Texas or even like Oklahoma, it'd be worth the drive.
Even Oklahoma. Well, if I do make it out to Texas, will you will you come share a beverage with me and play at uh at the giant 70 pin location?
Hell yeah.
Hell yeah. Fantastic. Thanks, Jeff.
I'm just checking chat one more. Of course, we got a bunch of people filtering in right as we're shutting down, but uh are they going to do the upkeep? Joe says it is. It is hard. Pin arcades need to make sure that their games work because otherwise it really sucks for everybody.
They do have they do have proper pinball tech there. Um, in fact, if if anyone in this area used to go to um, Bishop Cider Arcade, a lot of those games and those techs have, I think, transitioned over to this space. It was within a private collection, the guy that opened the place.
Got I haven't met him yet, but we're just we're such fans of going there ourselves.
The real the real champs of arcades are the techs. That's just
Yeah. I feel I feel for anybody who has to go through that many games and make sure they're working and have to deal with orary customers like beating up the games in ways that are just frustrating.
Um anyways, without further ado, Brad, thank you so much. Uh we're going to go do what we do. We're going to go find someone to raid and uh hopefully make their day by dropping a bunch of pinball lovers from the cult on them. Thank you so much for everybody who has uh hung out with us the entire time um for the subs questions and uh everybody else that's just throwing a lot of love over. I appreciate it. Can we throw up a pyramid? All praise, Brad. That's right. No, there's no wrong way to do it, man. You can do it however you want. Hell yeah. Look at that. That's a full full double hand pyramid right there. Uh yeah, thank you for opening your computer to us. Uh let's go find him. We're going to do the raid thing. Say goodbye everybody. Bye.
Thanks, Jeff.
I got to find the be right back button. There we go. I found it.