What got you in? Is it arcade and pinball, just pinball? What the hell are you doing in pinball? Yeah, it's mostly pinball. Somewhere along those lines, I was being kind of nostalgic and thinking about growing up and playing a lot of the 90s pinball. Moving around as a kid in the 90s, you could always find an Addams Family. That was in every town that we lived in. I think that was kind of my entry point as nostalgia goes. I just found it freshly fascinating, and I realized how exciting of a combination of storytelling and art and light and sound and engineering and interactivity and gameplay. There's so much that goes into it to make this fun, accessible, challenging device that's also nostalgic. There's just so much there to chew on. And since I don't actually own any machines myself, it's a way of vicariously engaging in pinball, I guess. Well, it's an interactive art piece. That's what I see pinball as, an interactive art piece. And many artists love sinking their teeth into this because, like you said, it's fully dynamic. It's not just stagnant. It's not static. It doesn't just sit there. It has light that interacts with the art. It has sound that also tells the story of the illustration. There's so much going on. As we look back, I think it was like March or April I contacted you. What were your first thoughts when I contacted you about doing a collection rather than just a single art piece that maybe you've done for other pinball people in the past? Well, it was exciting. I was familiar with your work, of course, so honored that you would even consider working with me on it. Something that struck me as interesting was you had kind of like a split concept, kind of half and half. Some of it was illustration oriented. Some of it was text oriented. Yeah. And you wanted to kind of elevate these these like catchphrases and things that, you know, you've built up over your career in podcasting and pinball media and try to make it into something cohesive, which for me is an exciting proposition to not just do one single piece, but to try to do a series of things that tie together. What I found most challenging, I think, was the idea of doing a series of text-based designs. Okay, yeah. I don't really consider that one of my primary avenues. I remember you saying that, yeah. Yeah, it's something I'm challenging myself to do. It's certainly useful and good to continue pushing in that direction, but I was curious what it was that you saw in my work that made you say, yeah, he can do this. Yeah, for me, it's easy. I went to your online portfolio of the illustrations you put. A handful of pieces stuck out. Because they all, stylistically, you have a very prominent style. I approached you based on that style alone. Because there is, what I love about your artwork is there is, there's some realism there. But also, it's not too real. I don't know if that makes sense. Like when you're doing characters and stuff, character-based stuff. Yeah. Like, they're very much, like the illustrated pieces on like Beavis and Butthead or Rick and Morty. They're very true form to the animation source. But then you move on to like movie film franchises or television or bands and whatnot. Very iconic people. It's not a caricature, but it's very much, it feels real, but in its own world. And I knew the pieces that I wanted to have done were going to need just that. Thankfully, you were open to the idea and the concept. Even though at one point, I think you mess me like, essentially, is anybody going to buy this shit? This is so deep, and my response was, no, but I don't care. This was just for me to get prints on T-shirts and on the wall and some of the followers. They'll really appreciate the inside pinball nature of this collection, and I couldn't be happier with it. Let's jump into the individual pieces. The first batch you started, because you've got nine or ten different designs you did for us, But the first batch was, I asked you to do the four-inch crease or clone. I described that to you. The Pinball Show Goat. And people, again, follow it. You can go check out these probably on social media on the Pinball Network or on flippingoutpinball.com. It'll link you there. And we had the Blinded by Dwight series. So the four-inch crease or clone, I wish you could have been a fly on the wall when I presented that to Dennis. He said, oh, no. And he was like, don't get me wrong. It is perfect. because Dennis notoriously doesn't like to be the center of attention. He doesn't like any thought of him on a t-shirt. He just hates the idea. But he loved this film. I thought, honestly, I thought I was dumping money into the commission to work for it to be left on the editing room floor. Didn't think he would approve it, but I knew it was a long shot, and maybe I guilted him into it. I don't know. But he loves it and hates it all at the same time. And now is your chance to win. The 4-inch Creasel Clone t-shirts are a limited edition run. Only 75 will be made, and that's it. The reasoning behind this being, one, Dennis doesn't want to be on any shirts, and two, they're made using a more specified process, and they require a whole separate company to print and hand sew the pockets on, etc., etc. Thus, once they're gone, they are gone. But you can win one of these limited edition tees simply by going to the Pinball Network's Facebook page, or it'll be in Flippin' Out Pinball's Facebook page as well. Find the post of the art designs and share it to your social media or to a pinball face group or pin side or Instagram or Twitter or whatever it is. Share it. And in your post, comment on which design from the collection is your favorite. Send us evidence of the share via thepinballnetwork at gmail.com, and Dennis and I will randomly select a winner on next week's episode. It's that simple, and it really does help us out here a lot. Thank you to those willing to help, and best of luck. And regardless, buy one anyway. Come on, help a couple guys out. Out of those three pieces, anything stick out to you? The 4-inch Creasel clone, the iconic goat, what they would look like, or the blinded by the white? Well, Creasel was a fun start. Yeah? That one and the goat definitely felt natural for me to work on. Okay. stylistically came came very naturally um and as kind of an aside i ponder for a second the idea of style well your artwork has your art i was trying to pinpoint it when i was describing it earlier your artwork has texture that's what makes it feel real it has a lot of texture it feels like you can touch this or sticking out on the page or whatever medium you're using even the goat like when you did that goat and sent it to me i sent like some ideas of what you know conceptually i was thinking of and then you came back in the first piece you came back with i was like there he is or like that's the goat that is the goat and you had the mouth open we know that that goat's screaming all the time and then the just the small details of color reflection like neon from that logo onto the the fascia of the the goat sides of this face oh it was phenomenal it was killer I love that you illustrated and made visual what has been iconic in audio form. So for that, thank you. And we'll talk about the Puppet Pals here in a minute the same way there. The second batch was Pinball Market Trends, Moment Maker slash Point Chaser, and My Homey Go Me. These were the text-based or typography-based designs that you said initially, not your wheelhouse or not one of your specialties that you envisioned. But after seeing what you were able to do with the My Homey Go Me, That's a piece. That's a visual illustrated piece. It's hard to just say that's a piece of typography. Yeah, yeah, for sure. We went back and forth on that, didn't we, on trying to figure out that style, that Gomez style. Yeah, depending whatever pens he may be using when he signs his signature, it was trying to land on what is it that is distinctively Gomi. Is it the little dots that he puts at the end of a long stroke, or the way that the shapes of the letters kind of cross over each other. So we had to try a few different things so that I could find the right brush settings to kind of emulate what to you looked like his distinctive signature. Listener, I want to remind you, the Moment Maker Point Chaser, this is for you. You get to determine and display proudly what Dennis and I and many at TPN have talked about in the past. Are you a Moment Maker? Are you chasing those wizard modes and those pinball moments? or are you a point chaser, more competitive base, you want GCs and high scores. Now, with a very almost like a spy versus spy concept, you can wear and support being a moment maker or a point chaser. I'd love to see how many of you out in public are going to pick a side there. Or hell, you can pick both sides and just whatever feeling you're having that day, you can wear that design to your backpack or whatever it may be. And I love that the My Homey Go Me, what we did was we wanted to make iconic and really tribute George Gomez's work in pinball, his iconic games. So we did this where, if you'll see on the website, listener, merchandising-wise, you're going to be forced to certain colors, and these colors represent the pieces that he has worked on. So you'll see a green signature, I think like a blue or purple shirt for Monster Bash, a gold signature and a black background for Lord of the Rings, Batman 66 we did, which was an iconic piece of his work. So Deadpool, Deadpool's in there as well. A really nice metallic looking red on a black. So you guys get to pick based on his pieces. I love that. And then the final batch, Brad, was the Puppet Pals, SDTM's Return of the Kraken, and Hulk 2D2, which I think is going to be a fan favorite. Starting with the Puppet Pals, I cannot overemphasize how special it was to the creators of Puppet Pals and to myself, the whole shtick of the Puppet Pals is that it's a puppet show and an adventure in audio form, which is irony and stupid and silly and brilliant all at once. But the trust of illustrating what these characters actually look like in person was really big for us. I don't know if it was that big for you. You're like, oh, they're puppets. But for us, it was huge. The world now gets to see, because of your artwork, Brad, what the Puppet Pals look like. Well, to your credit, you gave me pretty good reference concept sketches to work from. Yeah, but if people could see the concept of what you did, you brought them to life. And you brought a lot of original ideas to that design that the creators of Puppet Pals just fell in love with. So we get to see Moppy and Rory and Steve there. That's something I'm going to wear all the time. And then we go to Return of the Kraken. I sent you, Greg Bone and I's, straight down the middle Kraken illustration that we, because we're not artists, but when we started, straight down the middle, that's what we had as one of our first T-shirts to help support the show. I gave that to you and I said, make it a 2.0 version. We want to see a return of this Kraken monster. Let's see what you can do with it. No concept in general, just run wild. and probably my favorite piece that you've done in the collection personally just because it was just gorgeous. It's so, so beautiful. I think people that are not into pinball would love wearing this illustration or would love printing this illustration for their game room or for their home. It's just the crack and wrap around that pinball machine and very iconic. There's some little Easter eggs in that illustration too that are near and dear to Greg Bone and I through our work in pinball media. one being the Dolly pinball machine. We're both not only in love with the pinball machine, but in love with that person. So we see Dolly. And then you see her slightly shifted from her original positioning to kind of be reacting to this Kraken. And there's another little Easter egg or two I won't give away, but a phenomenal, phenomenal work there. Was that a tough one? You said that was probably your favorite. I wouldn't say tough, maybe more time-consuming. I like that one, I think, the most because it's doing a lot of the things that I try to do in my personal work. It's a dense composition. There's a lot of overlapping shapes. Oh, yeah. So there's a lot of depth in it, and then there's so much to find in the finer details. So it takes a fair amount of time in the sketch stage to shift things around and make sure everything's kind of interlocking properly so that it reads, But it's clear, but you kind of have to analyze it to get all the nuances of it. And the perspective. The perspective is perfect. Kind of a weird perspective. Had to do some good searching to find the right photo reference of a machine from that era. Looking at it in the right perspective and then throwing in the little color reflections, water splashes coming out of it. There's so much going on. Oh, the perspective is perfection. I would have never thought of that. And I've not really seen illustrations with a pinball machine in that perspective before, but it was beautiful. And then what I think will be, this is Dennis Creasel's favorite. He said, by far, this is something that he will proudly wear, proudly print. He loves Hulk 2D2. This is one or two throw-off little bits that we've done, Dennis and I, improvisationally. And it just works for some reason, and we wanted people to visualize that as well. and now it works 10 times better because you see what appears to be in a different world the Incredible Hulk merging with R2-D2 it has nothing to do with pinball and I think people outside of pinball are really going to hold on to this one because it's just it's niche it's iconic it works for so many things Star Wars or Marvel or whatever it may be so those were all the pieces you said your favorite piece was probably the Kraken? probably so I'm fond of the last three, especially the Puppet Pals, the Kraken, the Hulk 2D2, but also the Goat, the Creasel. Any of the ones that have the hand-drawn stuff, I'm pretty fond of all of those. I enjoyed on the Puppet Pals doing kind of a janky cardboard pinball. That was a perfect idea. Most of the time, if I'm drawing pinball machines, I'm concerned about getting the geometry right or making sure that the pop bumpers look accurate or whatever. But in this case, I got to play up some of those inconsistencies and put little strips of tape and little jagged cuts and things and stuff. What was the most difficult piece? Was it the cranking? A difficult piece for an artist, but time-consuming, yeah. Pinball market trends was tricky. Because that was the most hand-lettered. Yes. No real font involved. Yeah, I wanted that illustrated by hand. I had an idea on that. You knocked that one out pretty good, though. I still think the signature was what we went back and forth on really trying to get done perfectly.