Total Crap- the art of Johnny Bergeron

This Flippin' Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 6m·analyzed·Feb 17, 2020

Analysis

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TL;DR

Johnny Bergeron on his gig-poster-to-pinball-art journey and creating Jurassic Park.

Summary

Johnny Bergeron (aka Johnny Crap), a Montreal-based artist with a background in graffiti, skateboard culture, and metal/punk band poster design, discusses his career path and his work as the primary artist for Stern Pinball's Jurassic Park machine released in 2019. The episode covers his artistic evolution, self-taught approach, the referral from Zombie Yeti that led to his Stern contract, the seven-month production process for Jurassic Park's art package, and his subsequent immersion into the pinball community as both an artist and player.

Key Claims

Johnny Bergeron is 47 years old
high confidence · Johnny Bergeron stated directly in the podcast: 'I'm 47.'
Bergeron was introduced to Stern Pinball by Zombie Yeti, who was overwhelmed with projects and referred him
high confidence · Bergeron: 'That's probably why Zombie Yeti, because he's the one that referred me to Stern. Yeah. Because I think he was just swamped with too many projects, again.'
Greg Ferrer was the primary Stern contact who first reached out to Bergeron about Jurassic Park
high confidence · Bergeron: 'it was like Greg Ferrer that like hit me up first and could boost, you know, start by explaining what they needed and what they wanted.'
The Jurassic Park art package took seven months from test piece to final file delivery
high confidence · Bergeron: 'for me it was about seven months like from like my test piece to like like delivering like all the files and like everything.'
The backglass with orange tones that Bergeron initially created as a test piece ended up being used for the premium version
high confidence · Bergeron: 'I did a backglass. Okay. It's actually like the backglass that ended up being used I think for the premium. Yeah, that's the one I did. Like there was like a previous version though. Like I reworked it after because like once I started, like I did that test piece.'
Stern deliberately delayed Bergeron's work on the playfield because 'there are so many factors that come into building the playfield'
high confidence · Bergeron: 'they threw me because like not everything was set to for a playfield yeah so like playfield is always something that moves like almost to to the end...they just made me wait on that they're like okay don't touch the playfield'
Bergeron was flown in by Stern to see the Jurassic Park prototype and understand the mechanics
high confidence · Bergeron: 'So at some point, like the, the, the play field was pretty much set for them. They flew me in to show me the prototype and show me what each target was doing.'

Notable Quotes

“I've always been drawing since like I was very young. Yeah. And like, just drawing all the time and I but I've never seen it as a as something I could do with my life really”
Johnny Bergeron @ ~3:30 — Establishes Bergeron's early artistic drive despite initial skepticism about turning art into a career
“I remember like one of my first graffiti was a painting like a huge Uzi with Ice-T written yeah yeah and uh and it was like in ballet like you know like it's a small suburbs of Montreal, you know, like really small town. So like the dentist was probably like really weirded out by that.”
Johnny Bergeron @ ~5:00 — Illustrates Bergeron's immersion in West Coast hip-hop and graffiti culture in Montreal
“I'm very much a generalist, I think. I like to touch a bit of everything.”
Johnny Bergeron @ ~15:45 — Describes Bergeron's versatile artistic approach, which appears central to why Stern hired him
“I would say like if I try to do a Johnny Kraft Jurassic Park like would probably look different. Yeah. But it would probably not serve like the licensor”
Johnny Bergeron @ ~19:00 — Explains Bergeron's professional ability to adapt his style to licensing requirements rather than impose his signature aesthetic
“I never thought I would be asked to do a pinball. I'm not from the pinball world. What I've always enjoyed from pinball, like many other things like comics, it's just the style of drawings.”
Johnny Bergeron @ ~21:30 — Highlights that Bergeron was attracted to pinball primarily as a visual medium, not from gaming background
“They just made me wait on that they're like okay don't touch the playfield and it was the most complicated part you're gonna have to do”
Johnny Bergeron @ ~31:00 — Reveals Stern's project management strategy of sequencing artwork to account for mechanical design changes
“I wanted it to make it look functional for them. Like I wanted a pinball player to like be happy with it, you know, like not, not me, you know?”

Entities

Johnny BergeronpersonZombie YetipersonGreg FerrerpersonKeith ElwinpersonStern PinballcompanyJurassic ParkgameDirty Donnyperson

Signals

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personnel_signal: Stern Pinball successfully recruited Johnny Bergeron (a non-pinball artist with gig poster and metal art background) through a referral from Zombie Yeti, expanding its roster of generalist artists who can adapt style to licensing requirements
high · Bergeron: 'That's probably why Zombie Yeti, because he's the one that referred me to Stern.' Discussion of Stern's strategy of hiring artists from diverse backgrounds including graffiti and poster design
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design_philosophy: Stern appears to deliberately hire artists with diverse non-pinball backgrounds (poster, graffiti, metal art) who can adapt their style to licensing requirements rather than imposing a signature house style
high · Host: 'I think Stern Pinball and the way that they've created this new group of artists is really interesting because a lot of you guys seem to have a really similar background. Like gig posters, like Dirty Donny, Zombie Yeti, yourself' and Bergeron's discussion of adapting his style for Jurassic Park
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design_innovation: Jurassic Park playfield features a thematic map design with coordinated color palette (greens, blues) that serves both aesthetic and functional purposes (insert placement, visual hierarchy)
high · Host: 'the green map and you got the blues underneath like there an artistic sense to it where it not just like hey we need to put some ink down on the playfield where we can have inserts you know there a lot more to it than that' and Bergeron's discussion of map placement and color choices
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product_launch: Stern released a code update for Jurassic Park adding a mini wizard mode called 'Escape Nublar' that allows players to access challenge scenarios
high · Bergeron: 'especially, like, since they updated the code now, the, the little challenge, uh, game that they added. Yeah. Like the Escape Nublar.'

Transcript

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0:00

The episode you are about to hear contains explicit words. The opinions within are those of the hosts and in no way imply that anyone listening to this podcast agrees with anything we say. Please send complaints to thisflippinpodcast at gmail.com. Nice to see you and our special guest is someone who is truly a fan of the snowboard game when playing it. Well cool I'm really happy to see you. I'm joined by Johnny crap aka wait John John Jonathan Bergeron aka Johnny crap right pinball artist for Jurassic Park pinball like the title basically of 2019 kind of blew it out of the park with your first game and I follow you on Instagram I we seem to have some common interest and so I was like let me hit you up several times over and over again and see if I can The Messages and well, I I talked to I actually reached out to uh, zombie yeti like a while like a while back Can he's been on the show and I was like man? I was like I want to get this guy on he's like I don't know if he's gonna I don't know if he does that kind of thing and I was like, alright, and so I think I hit you up on Instagram and

1:31

Nothing and I was like, okay, and I don't want to like harass the guy But I'm like, but I see the shit you post I'm like We're into the same thing. I just want to have him on to talk. I think your story is really interesting. I think Stern Pinball and the way that they've created this new group of artists is really interesting because a lot of you guys seem to have a really similar background. Like gig posters, like Dirty Donny, Zombie Yeti, yourself kind of come from this like real gig poster background, which I think is really cool. But I also think it's interesting, like seeing what you're into.

2:20

Like music wise, you're coming from a very culturally heavy scene into pinball, which is a really kind of weird cultural scene because it's. Almost just pinball. Yeah, people are as intense in that as metalheads are. Yeah. And yeah, it's like it's it's it's it's a it's an interesting world to join in. And so your your background, how old are you? How old are you? I got to ask because you grew up in the. I'm 47. 47. All right. I just turned 48. Yeah, I saw that on the line too. Yeah. It's kind of funny. Like, oh, yeah, it's like we're we're at that. We grew up in the same like we grew up like skateboarding. I never BMX but I skateboarded so I grew up in that you know that I would say golden era of modern skateboarding. Yeah. Where you really saw a change in like the attitude with graphics just the entire art explosion. I know you come from like a graffiti background. I used to do graffiti. Yeah. So yeah. So how'd you get into What's your background? How'd you get into art? Yeah, how'd you get into art? Like what? I've always been drawing since like I was very young. Yeah. And like, like just drawing all the time and I but I've never seen it as a as something I could do with my life really like, you know, even like in when I was in high school, like my mom like used to tell me like, you know, just pursue a career in art. I'm like, no. Yeah, my parents wanted me to do that. Yeah. Which is pretty rare. Yeah. Usually people are like, discourage you from doing that. But, you know, I was like, no, no, I just, you know, I don't know what I want to do, but I don't want to do that. And, but then like, I fell into like skateboarding and graffiti. Like I was really influenced by the West Coast, West Coast culture for some reason. Like I was, you know, I live in Montreal where it's really cold at winter and like, it's just, I've never really got into like the Quebec culture too or like you know like I don't feel Canadian to certain extent yeah like my culture really came from the West Coast and everything like you know I remember like it like one of my first graffiti was a painting like a huge Uzi with ice tea written yeah yeah and uh and it was like in ballet like you know like it's a small suburbs of I'm a little bit of a fan of the street culture. I was in Montreal, you know, like, like really small town. So like the dentist was probably like really weirded out by that. But, you know, like I really got into graffiti after that. And the mix with like everything merged at some point, like, you know, like the music, the graffiti, like the street culture, the like the skateboard culture and all that really You don't work a worker. The criminal Main Penalty List of grosses How you adapted to be like that There could be so much point in a company's schedule to make. If you have any questions article they could be in the chat box and I do think you could bechuss podcast review Continue buried back in Alors, David decid empezando and we have to go going out this way better straight spicy returned really II like it's a I bet you for I tell me next We're like around like 20. Yeah, wow. Like doing like, you know, a graffiti job inside of a skate shop and things like that, you know. But I just kept like going bouncing from jobs to job that had nothing to do with really what I was doing the rest of the time. And at night, I would just come back home and like just draw and, and at some point I got asked to do like some local, like posters for local gigs for like punk rock bands. and things like that and then a promoter saw some of my work and started getting me more work and uh snowballed from there like i just kept doing like bigger bigger acts like you know time after time and job after like going from jump to job yeah and uh and then i was approached like a while back like i was probably like i was around 30 at that point when like my first real So, yeah. So it was kind of funny to do. And from there, like I just, you know, got more and more work from those companies. Those T-shirts are all made like, it's not Kid Rock that hires you, right? Obviously, it's like a like big companies that do merch for a bunch of bands. And so like they have a big roster of bands and they started like giving me more of a And so like they have a big roster of bands and they started like giving me more and more work and and I ended up doing a lot of metal stuff for a long time like you know I started doing some Slayer and you know by at this point I've done probably like 20 Slayer t-shirts. So that's how it got started for real. And then I managed to leave my daily jobs. I was basically working all day at a daily job and then I would come home and I had more stamina I guess, like around 30. I could work all night too on things and go to bed at 2am and get back up at 7am to go work on a regular job. But, you know, at some point I managed to be able to just quit those jobs and just concentrate on just drawing all day. So now, now your style, like your commercial style, because like, were your parents, was your mom or were your parents art artists at all? No, no, no, not at all. I mean, so in their, their support for you was just because it was something you and you were into doing and they were just like, yeah, go with it. And so were you trained at all? Like, did you go like, were you in like special high school program or anything like that? No, I, I pretty much learned on my own. I'm, I'm self taught. And I just like to discover and back then, like there was no internet or anything like that. Yeah. So basically, you'd look at books and try to learn from that, like by just looking a lot that, you know, the materials and like buying materials, and I've been trying things and sometimes, you know, like it probably took me longer to learn my stuff than if I went to school for that. But I just kept at it, you know, like because like going to like at some point we have Cégep here. Cégep is like after high school, before university. Yeah. There's kind of like a couple of years where it's like that, you know, like you do a transition from high school to university, basically. And I went to CEGEP in arts, but like I already had like a good background in arts that like I learned on my own. And when I got there, like people in CEGEP, like basically they got into that program because they couldn't get in their main program. It's just a way for them to get into school. Yeah. By going through the art like program. Yeah. So I was very not challenged in there. And I started doing graffiti too, like pretty heavily at that point, like doing really big pieces by the train tracks and stuff like that. And I was really influenced by that. And I used to show my teachers and my teacher were like just discarding that like, like it would never amount to anything, you know? And they're like, well, that's, you know, just a phase, whatever. And like, who's who's selling right now in art, in the art world? Yeah, like just like big graffiti artists. So we're there back then. Now this was in like this was like late 80s early 90s? Yeah yeah yeah and a very early 90s like like 92 around that um so anyway so i basically learned on my own you know uh i remember taking a class like for oil painting but i was already like painting oil for like a couple of years yeah i took a class at like a little community uh like was where was it like it was like a above I was on the second floor of the scout meeting place. So I met people there and they were just old ladies. They were like, you know, people, they always say like, when I'm retired, I'm going to learn how to paint or whatever. And so I was like the kid in there. You know, I was probably like 20, no, not even 20. I've been like 18 or 19 at that point, just learning with them. That's the only class like that I took for like real painting. What were you what were you looking at? Like as far as like artwork, I mean, like being in the skateboarding and stuff. I mean, I think back to when like I was like high school, like I know Puss Head was big, like you would see his stuff and it was like that real, you know, like. It kind of I don't know how to describe his style, but it's, you know, it's like it's kind of like a gory metal. Yeah, but it's also like really finely done, you know, it's like he does he has his own technique like there's a real puss head technique that I know that I would steal, you know. Yeah, there's two or three artists that made like a good living. We're like reproducing that. Yeah, that style, you know, after because he's very reclusive to like, he's not like he's hard to get to and like, which is like, I, I totally understand like, Once you have your thing going and he's like just he's doing his own thing. Like, yeah. And I think like the beauty of him is like.

The map design on the Jurassic Park playfield was mandated by Stern, not Bergeron's original concept

high confidence · Host: 'what brought you to make the playfield art a map?' Bergeron: 'The map wasn't my idea. Yeah. Like I mean they told me like what it was and it had to be sort of a map.'

Bergeron has become an active pinball player, now playing in a league at North Star bar

high confidence · Host: 'you're in a league now, you play at North Star and stuff. So did that transition happen during the process of making the game?' (Bergeron affirms in response).

Stern released a code update for Jurassic Park that added a mini wizard mode called 'Escape Nublar'

high confidence · Bergeron: 'especially, like, since they updated the code now, the, the little challenge, uh, game that they added. Yeah. Like the Escape Nublar. That's a lot of fun.'

Johnny Bergeron @ ~44:00 — Demonstrates Bergeron's mindset shift toward serving the pinball community rather than creating art for its own sake

“there's not much that they had me like to change like sometimes they had me something changed because like either their plastic piece was changing altogether”

Johnny Bergeron @ ~50:15 — Shows iterative nature of pinball art production as mechanical elements evolve during development

design_philosophy: Stern maintains an integrated design process where artists (Bergeron) work closely with designers (Keith Elwin, Greg Ferrer) and have direct access to prototypes and CAD files to understand mechanical constraints and artistic integration opportunities

high · Bergeron: 'Greg was really cool with me. He's like, dude, like we're going to help you. Like if you have questions, you can hit up like Zombie Yeti' and description of being flown in to see the prototype

manufacturing_signal: Stern strategically sequences pinball art production, deferring playfield design work until mechanical elements are finalized, as playfield layout can change significantly during development

high · Bergeron: 'playfield is always something that moves like almost to to the end you know like it's like you know there's many there are so many factors that come into building the playfield and sometimes subjects change because like something doesn't work the way they want it'

community_signal: Johnny Bergeron transitioned from external contractor to active community member, joining a league at North Star bar and developing deeper understanding of pinball mechanics through play

high · Host question about whether Bergeron got into pinball during the process, with Bergeron confirming league play at North Star; his discussion of noticing details that 'bug' him now after extensive play

industry_signal: Modern Stern pinball art (Bergeron, Dirty Donny) adopts more painterly, detailed approaches compared to classic pinball artists like John Yowsey who used graphic, heavy black-line techniques

medium · Host: 'the use of colors, you know, like...Stern has done a good job and I think Jurassic Park does a good job in in using colors and really popping the playfield' and discussion comparing modern art to Yowsey's graphic style

licensing_signal: Stern manages licensing complexity by limiting which licensed properties contribute physical toy elements (e.g., declined to license Jeep truck for Jurassic Park, created in-house alternative instead)

high · Bergeron: 'you know they already work with one license they don't want to reach out to like more you know get more and more people involved like you know like to have like the original jeep i think would have been like tough so uh so you know like they probably opted to like make their own'

sentiment_shift: Johnny Bergeron expresses retrospective reflections on his own design choices, noting details he would change having played the machine extensively since release, indicating self-critical growth

high · Bergeron: 'if you ask me today, like our pinball machine, I'll probably change some stuff because now I've been playing it a lot at the bar, you know? Yeah. And I'm like, ah, this part bugs me now'