You're listening to Topcast, this old pinball's online radio. For more information visit them anytime, www.marvin3m.com. Flash Topcast. Time on Topcast, we have an interview with a ballet pinball artist that joined the company in 1976, worked at Balli up to 1984, and then went to work for Data East from 1987 to the early 1990s, and now is working for Stern doing such titles as Lord of the Rings, Simpson's Pinball Party, and Playboy. I'd like to welcome Margaret Hudson to Topcast tonight. She was a pinball artist starting her career right out of college from Southern Illinois University in 1976 and working for Balli, Data East, and now she works for Stern Pinball. So we're going to give Margaret Hudson a call right now. Hi, can you hear me okay? Yeah. Okay great, you ready? Sure. Let's talk about how you got involved in pinball. It's not like you were an artist, let's see. You went to school at Southern Illinois University, is that right? That's true. And so how did you get your first gig in pinball? Well, I answered an ad in the newspaper. It said they needed a graphic artist to do production work for pinball games, which I didn't have any idea what that was. And I interviewed with Paul Faris, and they were just starting their own in-house art department at Balli. And they hired me as part of the, just the startup of their own art department. And what was this about in 1976 or so? Yeah. Okay, and what's, I mean was this the only job you interviewed for? What did you interview for some other stuff too? Oh, I was interviewing everywhere, but right out of college, nobody wants somebody with no experience. So, you know, that story. But you had other choices, right? Other choices? Yes, as far as jobs. No, not really. There was avenue I was going down was why pinball, or you know what I mean? There was no particular reason. I wasn't a pinball fan by any means. I don't even know if I had ever really played it. I mean, I was thinking when they said artwork on pinball, I'm like, there's artwork on pinball. I was thinking back to, you know, the arcades in my college town. And probably the only thing I could think of was the dinosaur game. In what sum, in your, at Southern Illinois University, what, what was your degree in? I had a bachelor of arts, my master's in paint. I mean, my main concentration was drawing and my sub was painting. So when you, this was a valley that you were interviewing with Paul Faris, right? Right. And what was your, you know, what was your reaction when you went in there and you taught to him? Oh, it's always exciting when you think you might have a job. I was ready to work in a factory just to get a job, but to actually be hired in an art department was pretty exciting. At the time, there was only Paul Faris and Dave Christensen working in the art department. Paul was hired as an art director to set up a whole department, because before that they were sending all their art out to Ed Poster. Right. Okay. And what, so what was the first product you worked on there? Evil, can Evil. Oh, oh, you did evil, can Evil work? Well, I did parts of it. I trained on that one. I learned how to ink and cut screens and just learn the whole process behind production artwork, because that's nothing that I was taught in school. So everything was Marc Silk screen base at that time, right? Oh, definitely, yes. And so, I mean, as far as color separations and work like that, you had no training in that at all? No. And was that tough to learn? No. No, it wasn't. Easier than the computer. All right, well, we'll get to that. Okay. Now, what's, so you did work with on Evil, Can Evil, and also what, you know, I'm just going through the internet pinball database and it says you worked on like eight ball deluxe. The one, I think it was the original eight ball, not eight ball deluxe. It was more of a cartoony. The fancy one? Right. We're not supposed to say that word though. What do you mean? Because it wasn't fancy. It just kind of looked like them. Kind of. Yeah. Well, that was in the days, you know, before licensing and all that. Did they get in trouble at all for that similarity? I don't think they did. So it was just kind of an inside joke almost. Yeah. Yeah. And now, did you work on that class? Was that mostly Paul Faris? It was mostly Paul Faris. So were you like, were you kind of the art department grunt at the time? Oh, yeah. And what is a grunt doing in our department? They do whatever. I mean, you do the inking, you do the color separating, you do the... Do you actually have to cut the screens? Hmm. That's the thing that I couldn't understand. When I did first did hired, I was thinking of scissors in my hand cutting screens like a screen door. And it's actually used a flivel knife and the material is called amber list. It's like a plastic coated stuff and you peel, it's very delicate work. And I did a lot of that, a lot of that. And nobody liked to do it because it was pretty tedious. And they always joke that it was something for a small little lady's hands to do. Kind of like mending. They were just saying that because they wanted you to do it. Right, yeah, exactly. So what was the first game that you really had, you know, the real, the full artwork control on? Oh, that would be a ball de laque. And did you do all the artwork for that? Yes. Now, that has a real, obviously a real strong cowboy theme to it. You know, the main guy on the glass is kind of a cowboy figure. Why did you go in that direction? It was pretty much dictated to me and it was very popular at the time. That was the same era of urban cowboy was very popular. They try and keep what popular themes. And pool has always been a very popular theme. So to put the two together just kind of went hand in hand. The cowboy on eight ball de laque. Is there any sort of inspiration or any, you know, male model at the time that kind of inspired you to draw him the way you did? Oh, that was just a friend of mine. Oh, really? So how common was it for artists to use, you know, friends and people they knew in their artwork? Very common. So that was just a guy you knew that you used as. You just had the look that I was looking for. And it's better than making people up because they're going to get something wrong if you don't have reference. If you looked at time machine back glass, I'm in that one. Oh, really? Where? I am the hippie in the car. Yeah, I'm familiar with that glass. Sure. Yeah, I love that glass. I love that game. Yeah, it's great game. I love how they have the chime units in it. When you go back into the 50s, it plays the, you know, the chime songs. Yeah. As a, you know, a young lady working in a kind of a male dominated field. Was there any upside or downside to that? I think in the beginning, I was very idealistic and you think you can change everybody's way of thinking. And you know, I would get upset, you know, it was, I mean, we worked in the engineering department. It was pretty much almost all men. You know, older men, then you're not going to change the way they think or the way they, you know, treat women. And everybody treated me very nicely. It's just that I learned how to get along, you know, just don't make waves and learn to laugh at things. How was working with Dave Christensen? Quite a character. He was, um, pretty silent. You know, he's very dedicated and he wasn't used to having all these people, you know, before it was just him. And all of a sudden he has all these youngsters come on board and, you know, we're learning also to new processes and ways to do things. And he had his way of doing things and you know, they all, we know they all turned out beautiful. But you know, Dave was a cool guy. And how was working with Paul, Paul Faris? Oh, he was great. You know, he took me under his wing and pretty much made sure all of us really got everything we needed to do the best job that we could do. You know, he was always pulling for more for the art department and just advancing all of our tools and techniques and going on seminars to learn different things. He was a great, great boss. Now on April the locks, they sold like well over 8,000 units of that game. You must have been pretty proud. Oh, yeah, I was. And the thing, I got that game to do because nobody else wanted to do it. Now, why didn't anybody want to do that game? Nobody wanted to do old pool and you know, that game, you know, was an exciting, a theme as some other themes that were coming along at that time. So it was really my first chance and there was a great experience. I worked really hard on it. Did you get to keep one of the games? Oh, no. No, I could have bought one maybe. I have a glass. Now, did they, did this whole experience with working in pinball, did it change your perception of pinball and how you viewed it? Oh, definitely. Definitely. I mean, on break, they had a game room and you would play pinball every day. I mean, you really got to know everything about it with a lot of fun. So after 8 ball deluxe, according to the pinball database, it looks like you did baby Pac-Man. I worked, I did that with Pac-McMan, the two of us together. That was a video pin, I believe. Right, it's like half pinball half video game. Right. Any interesting stories on that? No. No, what part of the artwork did you do on that game? On baby? Right. I probably did. I'm having a hard time picture, the little tiny play field. I think what happened was Pac-McMan did a lot of the sketches and then I turned it into production art. You know, like I did a key line in color separation, the type setting. I think Tony Ramoney worked on that one as well. He did the cabinet. And it was a great cartoonist. Now let's talk about that. You said that you did the key line in the color separation. Maybe you should explain what that whole process is, how it goes from the raw drawings to the actual finished product. Okay, well you have a pencil sketch. You have pretty tight pencil sketch. The sketch is over engineering drawing of where all your perimeter are and your holes and your roll overs and everything. And then to do the key line, you use a frosted mylar, which is a plastic kind of see-through thing that you ink with a repyteograph or a brush. And you do black outlines around like a trap line, like on a cartoon. And you circle all the holes and the inserts and you fill things in with color with the color separation, the amber list. You cut real lightly on this red plastic and you peel off everything that is not supposed to be a color. So there might be ten colors. There will be ten sheets of amber list, one for every color. And then you do the type setting as well that either we would, well now we do it ourselves. But at that time a type was something so specialized that it was sent out to a type house. But I would have to spec what size and what font to use and make it sure it's variable. So any of the writing using any of the letters you mean like the type house would actually do? Oh they would set the type. They would set it. I would just give them a piece of paper with like I want, hell of that a caw, and I wanted to say shoot again and I wanted to be in 24 point size. And they would send it back to us and hopefully it would be right. Or as often times when it wasn't, you'd spec it too small or too big or now it's great to have total control over that because you can just do it right on the computer and see how it looks and make sure it fits. Now when they did a re, they did, uh, April Deluxe did a rerun like the limited edition. Did you have to do any additional art for that? They used the same play field, but there was a new cabinet. It was in gold and black. And we took elements of the black, black, black, black and reconfigured them and added more to it for a smaller, with a smaller rectangular glass as opposed to the big square one. But everything else was the same. So it looks like the next project you worked on was the Mr and Mrs. Pac-Man and that sold an excess of 10,000 units too. It did? Yeah, 10,600 according to the database. Wow. And how much work did you do on that game? Um, funny. I cannot remember the play field. I can't remember what it looks like in my head. But I know I did, uh, Pac-Man came up with a layout for the back glass and I did the painting for it. So, and the playfields. I'm sure we both worked on cabinet. I can't remember. I should have my book in front of me. Now, after that, it looks like you, you, um, uh, did maybe spectrum? Yes. That was totally all mine. Okay. Now, tell me about that game a little bit. Oh, that was with Claude Fernandez. It was the, um, designer. And it was in the computer. You know, we were approaching the computer age with, and I think there was some game out at that time that was, I'm in there's something with you guess the color sequence. So we were kind of taken off on that idea with, um, you know, I can't really remember. But it was something to do with color and like brain waves and, you know, technology, you know that cosmic idea. Now, after spectrum, it looks like you started doing some artwork for Gottlieb. No. So you didn't do like on the database, it says you did going nuts and in crawl. No. Those weren't your games at all. Going nuts was kind of like I had a squirrel on it and crawl was kind of, uh, it was after a movie. No, I didn't have anything to do with that. So neither of those two games you were involved with at all? No. Did you ever do any work for Gottlieb? No. Okay. So then, um, uh, Granny and the Gators, were you involved with that one? I ballie. Right, yes. That was Pat McMahon and myself again. Um, I think Pat did the cabinet for that one and I did the backlash in playfield. Okay. And what some, after Granny and the Gators, um, what, uh, what, it looked like you didn't do much pinball work for a while until like, DAD East came about. No. Um, well they put me on these, um, conversion kits. What, what they were calling, um, video conversion kits where I was just doing little glasses and control panels. Um, um, flicky was one and 10 pin, something or other was another one and water match. It just pinball was getting a little fluttered at that time. So they just started doing, you know, more other things. And so you stayed on at the art department of ballet then during these lean times. Oh, yes, until, uh, I don't know what here it was, 84 maybe. Did I get laid off? So after you got laid off, where did you go to work then? I, um, started working with Joe Kamikaw and he was, um, yeah, the start up for DAD East. Right. Right. And so the first game that DAD East put out was laser war. You were involved with that one? Oh, yeah. And how was it working with Joe? Right. Man with a million ideas. Never stopped. Yeah, it looks like you did quite a bit of laser war, secret service, time machine, torpedo alley, robot cop, the Simpsons. You did the Simpsons too? Well, they were all, um, combined efforts with Kevin O'Connor and myself. So how did that go? Great. So when you did a combined effort with Kevin O'Connor, I mean, what, how did you guys figure out who did what? Pretty much I did all the production work and he did the designing. Now, when you say you did the production work, what does that entail? What I talked about before, uh, with doing the inking and color separating and the type setting and just making sure everything lines up and is registered. Now, when you say the inking, what do you mean by that? I guess I don't understand what that means. Well, it's, um, an ink pen, a repotagraph pen like a technical pen. Hmm. And what is that required as part of the color separation? It's part of the key line that traps the color separating. A lot of times you have to use, well, back in the old days, we would use templates and like circle templates. And it was like drafting, pretty much like drafting. Hmm. Okay. So, if you wanted shading, you know, on a, on a, on a play field, you couldn't shade. You couldn't have a pencil to shade with. You'd have to use little dots, you know, you'd like, stipple with a pen just like for hours on end, just getting a little shadow on an area. That's how things were done then. So, when did the computer come into play in doing the artwork? Oh, let me see. I'd say in the, in the late 90s, I mean, it was happening, but I wasn't catching on to it because I was home. Working by myself and it's, if you don't understand it, you know, you just don't really understand how the whole process comes together. And they would, they just pretty much stopped using me because I couldn't give them the files and the way they wanted. You know, I was still doing the old fashioned way. So, when you were, weren't doing much pinball after like the Simpsons and Star Trek, what, what type of work were you doing then? Not much. It was pretty, pretty bad time for me. So, was it like, it was like, sink or swim, you had to start using the computer? Right. Well, you know, I tried. I just wasn't good at it. You know, I had too many problems. It really wasn't until, God, what was it? A Playboy game. And I was brought in on that one. And given, you know, Paul, between Paul Barker, John Yalsey and Kevin O'Connor, they pretty much taught me how these things were done. And I just started, started down that road learning how to do everything on a computer. Was this recently, like in the last 10 years? I'd say so. Oh yeah, because there was in the, I want to say around 2002, I want to say that they, that Stern actually did a Playboy. Oh, that's, that's what I'm talking about. Oh, okay, Stern's Playboy. Gotcha. You know, I get these companies confused because it's all the same people. They just keep changing their name. I mean, Dad East, you know, Stern, to me, it's like they were all there when they were Dad East. No, it's Stern. It's still all the same people. So yeah, that was the Stern game. So what did you do on the, on the Stern Playboy? What, what work did you do on that? I worked on the Playfield. And did you have any, you know, as Playboys are real strong, you know, mail, I want to say, mail dominated theme. Did you have any issues working on something like that? No. No, because they, you know, they have to make it decent. You know, they can't, it's not a porn thing at all. I mean, they have to make it decent so that these people will put it in their establishments. And they actually even have, you know, versions. I'm not sure which Playboy had it, but they actually had a little decal that, a little lace decal that went over a cleavage on someone. Just in case they wanted a GP it up. Right. So then you also, it looks like you also worked on Lord of the Rings and Simpsons pinball party, right? All right, yeah. How was it working on those games? They're all the same. You know, I just do what I do. Now, did you work with somebody on Lord of the Rings? Oh, Kevin. Okay. So you guys, so you were basically teaming up with these guys again. Right, right. Kevin and John Yalvese. Okay. And now, how was that? Is that a good relationship you have with those guys? Oh, it's great. It's great. We work very well together. And now, in this lapse between the, you know, the early 90s and then early 2000s, you know, there's like a 10-year window when you weren't doing any pinball stuff. Was, I mean, how did these guys bring you back into the fray? Um, I guess they just had a window to fill. They needed somebody to do some work and they said, how about Margaret, you know? She's always known, you know, she knows the product. She knows how we like it to look. The only thing she doesn't know is the computer. So between everybody, you know, they took care of me. So how, now, what computer tools did you have to learn? Do you know to master this? Photoshop and Illustrator. The two programs. And which to use more Photoshop or Illustrator? Well, pretty much both Kevin and John do not like using Illustrator, so I use that one. I do a lot in Photoshop as well. Have you gotten pretty good at it now? Pretty good considering that, you know, I wasn't born into it like some people. I mean, it does make many things a lot easier. Yeah, because Photoshop is like dot, you know, dot by dot. You know, pixel by pixel. And Illustrator is like a vector or line-based graphic. Right. So you're good with the vector stuff. Yes. You know, that is I tried to use Illustrator. Man, I just have a real hard time with it too. Yeah, it's confusing. Well, there's no eraser from one thing. Everything is a little more mathematical, I think. And once you learn how it works, still, you know, there's a million things I don't know. I just know how to do way. Have to do for pinball. Right. Now, do you own any pinball machines? I have Jurassic Park. It was given to me by Stern. Why? I don't know. Because I did want to buy a Simpson's game from them and, you know, I couldn't afford it. This was a year that they had a big pinball party at a world premiere. It's at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. Maybe this was one of the games that was there. Hmm. So I assume this was around 1993 or so. Exactly. Has the date on it? There's a little plaque on the front, so it made it specially for me. Now, as far as doing things, you know, digitally versus, you know, old school, was there any sort of, you know, personal reward that you felt greater with, you know, doing it old school or doing it through the computer? At one point, I probably say I enjoyed doing it old school. But I think the better that you get with the computer, I don't think so. Because you just pretty much, you're able to do so much more. As far as, like hand drawings and paintings, do you still do that type of work for, you know, for other clients? Yes. So you still use all that, you know, the old school technique, you still use that stuff today? Yes, they do. So not everything is gone digital? No, no. Now, what other type of clients have you worked for outside of the, you know, the gaming industry? I've worked for a couple of educational companies that put out videos and books. I've done some book illustrations and video covers and DVD covers. I love people and I do logos and I do whatever people ask me to do. I don't know how I figure it out. Do you have a favorite piece of pinball art that you ever did? I really like Mr. and Mrs. Pac-Man and I like Spectrum too. Oh, the Spectrum game, that was pretty cool. Yeah. Now, is there any piece of pinball art that you wish that you did not do that, you know, that you did do that, though afterwards you kind of said, man, I really wish I didn't do that project? Well, not that I wish I didn't do it, but I wish I did it differently. Now, which one was that? Well, it all delected play field. Why do you wish you did that differently? I don't know, it was my first one and there's just some things that are a little too dainty. I wish I would have made Boulder and... Did you like Granny and the Gators play field? Have that in my studio and I always look at it and enjoy it. Was there any design team or group of individuals that you liked working with more than others, or for any particular reason? No. Not really. Now, when you did work, did you mostly work out of your home or mostly work at a sturner, actually at their facility? No. I always work at home. They don't have the setup there that you need. Now, are you going to be doing any more of a sturn stuff? Oh, yeah. Is there something you're working on right now? I'm just getting the play field drawing, the engineering drawing. I haven't even opened it up and looked at it yet. I just got it today. For which game is that? I can't tell you. Oh, okay. Top secret. Right, right. Now, what about the secrecy? Was it... was everything really top secret in Pinball? Oh, yeah. I mean, did they make that real clear? It seemed to be... One Pinball company would do a seam... And another Pinball company would come up with the same... almost the same idea at the same time. You don't know if it was just the sign of the time, or if there was a leak, or what? I can't really think of an example to give you, but no, we weren't supposed to tell anybody what we were working on. Was that like an unwritten law? Or they were really, really sturned about that? It wasn't unwritten, but everybody just knew it. Now, did you work on the baby in the whole project at D.D. East? The Harry Heist game. Oh, is it a huge one? Yes. I think so. It sounds familiar. I pretty much worked on every game at D.D. East. You mean in some manner? Hmm? And some things you worked... You had more control or more design, and some things you just worked a little bit on, or something? That's right. And what was at D.D. East? What was your favorite game back in the D.D. East days? Well, I have to say, I think I really like Time Machine. Did you do the entire Backglass on Time Machine? Oh, no, Kevin did it. So you were doing, again, the production work? I didn't do any design work for D.D. East. But now, like on the new... on the Stern stuff, do you feel like you have more artistic control there? No. No, I'm pretty much production. Which is fine with me. You're okay with that? Oh, yeah. I mean, you have Kevin and John, and they're both great. And I just assume... Let them think about all this stuff, and I'll carry it through for them. Do you ever give them artistic direction, though? Yes. Are they pretty receptive to that? Yes. So, as far as like a game that you had, like, total control, it sounds like Eight Ball Deluxe was really your baby. Yeah, in spectrum. I'd say spectrum more so than Eight Ball Deluxe. Why was that? Well, Eight Ball Deluxe was my first game, and so Paul Faris had a lot to do with the way things looked. The art director. He had pretty heavy hand in that. Now, was there anything that you had a harder or easier time drawing? Like, I mean, was drawing males easier or harder, or females easier or harder? Well, I think women were always criticized more for not really drawing women as adeptively as the men would draw them. They'd try to draw the women in more wholesome way, which didn't always work. So, it was harder for you to draw women? Yeah, I'd say so. That's interesting. Okay, well, Margaret, is there anything else that you'd like to add or anything I missed? No. Okay, well, cool. I really do appreciate your time. I'm playing Pinball, that's all. Do you still play Pinball? Oh, yeah. Well, you need to get some more machines. Do you play Pinball? Yeah, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I own quite a few. Really? Oh, yeah. Where do you keep them all? In the basement, I've got like 100 set up in the basement. Oh, my God. Yeah, that's pretty much everybody's reaction. You must have a big basement. You know, that's the funny thing. It's not as big as you would think. I think Pinball games, as much as I like them, they're a little bit of a decorating dilemma. What do you mean? Just fit anywhere. Yeah. Yeah, well, that's why the basement is mine. The rest of the house. No, that's not mine. So. All right, well, hey, thank you very much. Again, I appreciate your time. Okay, great. Good luck. All right. Bye-bye. All right, I'd like to thank Margaret Hudson for joining us tonight on Topcast. Really do appreciate her time. Appreciate her coming on and sharing her stories about being a production pinball artist at Valley, Diddy East, and Stern. And don't forget to check out Topcast video, our video version of the podcast that are 30 minute episodes available for download that you can watch either on your computer or on your iPod with a video screen. Good night. It's so long.