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Speaker 1: Cool Media.

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Speaker 2: Hello, sixteenth Minute listeners. Jamie here and we have one

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Speaker 2: more weekly episode of Sixteenth Minute next week before we're

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Speaker 2: going on a short hiatus. We will be coming back

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Speaker 2: in the summer with a brand new season.

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Speaker 3: But before we go, my book Raw Dog is out

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Speaker 3: in paperback too today and today I am on tour

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Speaker 3: starting literally the moment this episode comes out, So for one.

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Speaker 4: Last time, I want to remind you this is where

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Speaker 4: I'm going to be, with more dates to be added

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Speaker 4: in the summer during full Hot Dog season. But if

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Speaker 4: you are in the following cities in the days to come,

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Speaker 4: this is where I'll be. Tonight, May thirteenth, I will

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Speaker 4: be in Los Angeles at North Fig Bookshop. Tomorrow May fourteenth,

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Speaker 4: I will be in Louisville, Kentucky at Carmichael's Bookstore. May fifteenth,

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Speaker 4: I will be in Cambridge, Massachusetts at Cambridge.

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Speaker 1: Public Library with Tory Bedford. May nineteenth, I will be

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Speaker 1: in Portland, Maine with my friend Maya Williams at Longfellow Books.

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Speaker 1: May twentieth, I will be in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania at Midtown

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Speaker 1: Scholar Bookstore. May twenty first, I'll be in Richmond, Virginia

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Speaker 1: at Fountain Bookstore. May twenty second, I will be in Pataluma,

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Speaker 1: California at Copperfields Books. And May thirty first, I will

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Speaker 1: be in Larkspur, California at the Marin Country Mart. And

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Speaker 1: that is just to start. All of these events are free,

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Speaker 1: so there are a few places you have to sign up,

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Speaker 1: so just check the link in the description and I

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Speaker 1: hope to see you soon and welcome to the Badger Zone.

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Speaker 1: Some of our planet's most defining moments are the results

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Speaker 1: of years, centuries of concerted effort, a singular vision willed

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Speaker 1: into reality, and others are complete fucking mistakes. My favorite

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Speaker 1: example of this is from the late nineteen twenties. In

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Speaker 1: a science lab in London, a certain doctor and I

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Speaker 1: won't say who because it gives it away to all

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Speaker 1: you dorks. So let's just say a certain doctor went

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Speaker 1: on vacation and like many people who just got back

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Speaker 1: from vacation, he had left his station at work a

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Speaker 1: complete mess. But scientists don't have desks like mine covered

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Speaker 1: in coke zero bottles and collectible minions figurines. Scientists have

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Speaker 1: workspaces that, if left untidy, can become dangerous ecosystems. What

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Speaker 1: was on this doctor's desk was a collection of petrie

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Speaker 1: dishes that contained bacteria in them, which, now that I

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Speaker 1: say it, could actually describe my desk at varying times

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Speaker 1: depending on which dishes were left on them. But when

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Speaker 1: it's a scientist, the bacteria is there, at least intentionally,

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Speaker 1: and in these petrie dishes were I'm going to try

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Speaker 1: to read it staff O lock Cook. Nuphilophagus a bacteria

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Speaker 1: that causes abscess's sore throat and boils, probably something that

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Speaker 1: the scientists should have rinsed out before going on vacation,

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Speaker 1: But in this case it was world changing that he

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Speaker 1: was a slob because in one of these dishes a

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Speaker 1: mold had grown that appeared to be killing this nepholophagus bacteria.

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Speaker 1: The doctor took notice of this and told his assistants, who,

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Speaker 1: instead of calling him disgusting, began to examine the mold,

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Speaker 1: identifying it as something that very well may have saved

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Speaker 1: your life a few times over. That is, if you've

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Speaker 1: ever gotten an ear infection, pneumonia, strep, throat boils, syphilis, gonorrhea,

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Speaker 1: meningitis a UTI, or a gastro intestinal infection, which probably

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Speaker 1: you have. This slab's name was doctor Alexander Fleming, and

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Speaker 1: his disgusting vacation mold was penicillin.

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Speaker 5: Filling battles with the medium and which will grow the

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Speaker 5: mold that produces penicillin Canadian.

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Speaker 6: I'd put of this amazing drug.

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Speaker 5: Perhaps the medical discovery of the war has been greatly increased.

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Speaker 1: It was a beautiful accident, one that was motivated by chance,

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Speaker 1: But it would not be the most beautiful mistake to

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Speaker 1: ever happen in the United Kingdom, No, dear listener, That

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Speaker 1: would not happen until two thousand and three. Two thousand

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Speaker 1: and three, in the year of Our Lord's School of

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Speaker 1: Rock and the best season of Gilmour Girls. In my opinion,

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Speaker 1: the product of another beautiful accident hit the Internet and

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Speaker 1: inspired not a medical miracle, but something even more powerful.

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Speaker 1: Johunt Picking was already a successful animator in the early

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Speaker 1: two thousands, but what most motivated him in his work

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Speaker 1: was finding new animation techniques that solved a technological problem

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Speaker 1: he was having. And in the two thousands, there was

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Speaker 1: no shortage of problems that came with distributing independent animation

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Speaker 1: on the Internet. In the days where buffering times could

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Speaker 1: be the difference between your work being seen or not.

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Speaker 1: When compressing a file could be the difference between being

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Speaker 1: able to afford to host your work or not. Jounty

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Speaker 1: took it upon himself to make animations that were memorable, musical,

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Speaker 1: and very fucking funny, and one day he cracked it.

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Speaker 1: What better way to create the illusion of a longer

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Speaker 1: animation than creating something that was a perfect loop, a

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Speaker 1: content or a boris if you will, one that hit

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Speaker 1: his target audience intentionally or not. People who would play

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Speaker 1: this loop until their parents threatened to shoot them with

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Speaker 1: a harpoon gun. It was a piece of art that

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Speaker 1: wasn't a mistake to make, but was born from a

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Speaker 1: problem solving stance and became a masterpiece, a piece of

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Speaker 1: art that inspired a generation of middle schoolers to be

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Speaker 1: more annoying than you could possibly imagine. The cartoon in

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Speaker 1: question was a simple one, a looping one pulled from

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Speaker 1: earlier Internet hits like real ones will know peanut butter

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Speaker 1: jelly time. But the colors in Jaunty's animation, though, are distinct.

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Speaker 1: It's imagery direct, its joke, perfectly calibrated to the senses

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Speaker 1: of a tween. It consists of three images and if

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Speaker 1: I'm evangelizing, and I am a holy trinity of images

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Speaker 1: of badgers, of mushrooms, and of snakes. It is this

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Speaker 1: cartoon that I feel is the penicillin of Internet flash animation.

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Speaker 1: All this delivered at sugar rush level speeds. On September third,

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Speaker 1: two thousand and three, a legend was born. Room Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger,

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Speaker 1: Mushroom aka mister Weeble aka John d Picking. Your sixteenth

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Speaker 1: Minute starts now that joy.

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Speaker 2: Time say it than.

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Speaker 7: Sixteen sixteen sixteen.

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Speaker 1: Welcome back to sixteenth Minute, the podcast where we take

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Speaker 1: a look back at the main characters of the Internet,

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Speaker 1: see how their moment in the spotlight affected them and

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Speaker 1: what that says about us and the Internet. I'm your host,

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Speaker 1: Jamie loftus in to round out our first year of

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Speaker 1: sixteenth Minute, where we've talked about a new Internet character

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Speaker 1: of the day every week, I wanted to revisit an

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Speaker 1: artist of the early Internet who was and is one

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Speaker 1: of my favorites, the one and only Weeble or English

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Speaker 1: animator Jaunty Picking, the mind behind some of the Internet's

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Speaker 1: most enduring flash animation classics and an artist whose work

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Speaker 1: encapsulated feeling like your favorite Internet cartoon was the best

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Speaker 1: kept secret in the world. And yes, of course we

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Speaker 1: spoke to the man himself. What do you take me for?

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Speaker 1: This video first became popular when I was in late

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Speaker 1: elementary early middle school, and was as popular as an

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Speaker 1: online video could be with a fifth grader at this time,

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Speaker 1: So of course it could be seen as a little

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Speaker 1: bit annoying, but that was so much of the early Internet,

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Speaker 1: right And I say that with love. Hashtag random humor

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Speaker 1: is always going to be popular with the middle school set,

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Speaker 1: but hashtag random humor was kind of popular with everyone

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Speaker 1: around the time of this video's release, at least everyone

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Speaker 1: who would dare step foot in a hot topic at

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Speaker 1: the mall. And I'm not pulling from anything scientific here,

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Speaker 1: but during the Bush into the Obama years, there was

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Speaker 1: this strain of comedy among gen X and millennials that

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Speaker 1: would rightfully come to be considered cringe. It's parodied quite

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Speaker 1: a bit. So I just did a thing, and what

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Speaker 1: intarnation could that be? He might ask. I bought pumpkin

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Speaker 1: chocolate chip muffins in true hufflepuff fashion, but cringe is

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Speaker 1: not exclusive to any particular generation. Gen Z is slowly

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Speaker 1: learning that their brand of random humor by way of

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Speaker 1: nihilism is going to be considered cringe by younger people

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Speaker 1: as well, even Gen Alpha, who will one day have

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Speaker 1: to answer for skibbity toilet. I do kind of like

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Speaker 1: to think that there will be a Jamie coated Jen

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Speaker 1: Alpha thirty year old one day intellectualizing skivity toilet, and

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Speaker 1: I bet they'll be great at it. The point is

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Speaker 1: that no one is immune here. Even gen X's most

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Speaker 1: famous comedic legacy, down to the little voices that tend

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Speaker 1: to appear in all of these videos, started as one

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Speaker 1: of the first viral videos ever in the early nineties,

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Speaker 1: South Park's Jesus versus Santa. You know, I don't think

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Speaker 1: that was the real zena guise, Oh no shit, Sherlock. Yes.

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Speaker 1: South Park began as a popular video e card before

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Speaker 1: moving to TV on Comedy Central. So while I know

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Speaker 1: that every generation thinks that they were the one to

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Speaker 1: invent random humor that appeals to twelve year olds, this

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Speaker 1: goes back to your parents, and we're going to jump

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Speaker 1: in to this story. The story of Jahunt Picking as

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Speaker 1: a twenty seven year old English tech guy with a

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Speaker 1: lot of weird energy and experimentation bounce aground in the

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Speaker 1: early two thousands in just a moment. But before we do,

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Speaker 1: Jahunty's deserved success needs a bit of grounding, a bit

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Speaker 1: of new grounding, one might even say. In two thousands,

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Speaker 1: internet culture and the way that home computing democratized extremely

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Speaker 1: silly art and building up skills in enthusiasts who would

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Speaker 1: use the Internet to become artists in their own right.

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Speaker 1: So come with me if you dare to the early

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Speaker 1: two thousands Internet. By two thousand and three, the increase

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Speaker 1: in Internet use in people's homes continued to rise in

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Speaker 1: the US, reaching sixty percent of households according to the

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Speaker 1: Census Bureau, doubling from less than ten years before. This

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Speaker 1: was the year that my neopad's account was hacked and

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Speaker 1: all one million of my neopoints were stolen, leading me

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Speaker 1: to leave the website, only to return when my dad died.

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Speaker 1: And now I have seventeen million neopoints. I'm talking two

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Speaker 1: thousand and three. The Internet of loud, primary colors, of

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Speaker 1: dial up tones and buffering, of defragmenting a desktop every

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Speaker 1: two weeks in the hopes that your mom wouldn't ban

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Speaker 1: you from neopets because it was allegedly breaking the computer.

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Speaker 1: And as that Internet access continued to grow, as these

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Speaker 1: massive machines migrated into homes and libraries and schools, it

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Speaker 1: really was Prina bund.

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Speaker 6: Of Gelatine rena bund.

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Speaker 1: Of gelatine on the dial up Internet. It would be

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Speaker 1: completely impossible to cover all of the sites and programs

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Speaker 1: that defined this era. So the things I'm going to

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Speaker 1: focus on here that had a hand not only in

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Speaker 1: Jaunty picking slash Weebel's success, but also with much of

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Speaker 1: the Flash Animation generational standbys we still talk about is

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Speaker 1: Flash Animation itself and the website new Grounds. Okay, Grandma,

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Speaker 1: go to bed, No, it's time to talk about Flash Animation.

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Speaker 1: Flash Animation was a program that became extremely popular in

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Speaker 1: the mid to late nineteen nineties and was this consumer

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Speaker 1: software that made it possible for at home users to

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Speaker 1: create their own amateurish animation in a very particular style,

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Speaker 1: very flat but more fluid than illustrating frames by hand.

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Speaker 1: The esthetic was high contrast, bright, often with noticeably bad

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Speaker 1: audio if you made it at home, because there wasn't

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Speaker 1: really a consumer equivalent of audio equipment at this time,

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Speaker 1: and while software made it much easier to create low

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Speaker 1: budget animation at home than it once did, it was

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Speaker 1: mainly used in TV in these early years. Some notable

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Speaker 1: early examples were on shows like Ren and Stimpy, The

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Speaker 1: Powerpuff Girls, Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, and later on

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Speaker 1: shows like My Little Pony, Friendship Is Magic, and Smiling Friends.

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Speaker 1: These shows all share common aesthetics, if not character design itself.

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Speaker 1: They were clearly digitally animated and usually brightly colored. But

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Speaker 1: flash wouldn't really break through to the everyday Internet user

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Speaker 1: until a few years later, largely in part because the

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Speaker 1: general online streaming speed wasn't fast enough to load these

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Speaker 1: kinds of animation without significant difficulty sidebar, but important, Flash

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Speaker 1: animation also needed the aesthetic of the Internet to catch

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Speaker 1: up to its aesthetic, something that was largely assisted by

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Speaker 1: the introduction of the looping gift I'm not saying, Jeff

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Speaker 1: sorry in nineteen ninety five, where the Internet mainly consisted

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Speaker 1: of text prior to that time, kind of this big

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Speaker 1: digital book, particularly when it came to self generated websites

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Speaker 1: and blogs. The wide dissemination of gifts made it possible

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Speaker 1: for everyday people to add little looping animations to their sites.

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Speaker 1: Think virtually every angel Fire fan site lurking in the

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Speaker 1: back of your mind, Think of and maybe I'm dating

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Speaker 1: myself here, and I know I am those blingy online

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Speaker 1: paper dolls where you could make your little brat's looking

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Speaker 1: dolls sparkle on an eternity loop Nut butter jellty Peanut

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Speaker 1: butter jelly time literally is just a looping gift of

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Speaker 1: a dancing banana accompanied by music. In twenty twenty, flash

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Speaker 1: animation plugins were discontinued, to the dismay of many early

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Speaker 1: Internet natives, even if the slow fade of the technology

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Speaker 1: kind of made sense. But in the early two thousands

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Speaker 1: into the twenty tens, Flash was king and was both

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Speaker 1: a major generator of culture for kids and launched a

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Speaker 1: lot of careers for animators that may not have had

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Speaker 1: access to the big studios or the ability to make

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Speaker 1: their own work without this tool, which brings us to

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Speaker 1: the big daddy, big Daddy of flash animation, one that

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Speaker 1: took advantage of increasing Internet speeds and however unintentionally had

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Speaker 1: a hand in curating how animation online is upvoted and

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Speaker 1: curated today New groundress. If you were on the internet

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Speaker 1: when cartoons like Badgers were spreading like wildfire and sending

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Speaker 1: parents into constant spirals of you're putting viruses on the computer,

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Speaker 1: you had a very specific attachment to a very specific

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Speaker 1: piece of flash animation. For me, obviously it's Badgers and

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Speaker 1: it's my podcast, so we're talking about that. But maybe

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Speaker 1: for you it was salad fingers. Hello, I like stay spoons,

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Speaker 1: I like to touch them. Or statistically, if you're any

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Speaker 1: man I've dated in my entire life, it is certainly

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Speaker 1: home Star Runner.

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Speaker 6: A wait full of pancakes in the championship, I'd like

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Speaker 6: to see a chuah.

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Speaker 1: I'm serious. My fiance is the smartest person that I know,

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Speaker 1: and yet he was born in nineteen ninety five, and therefore,

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Speaker 1: if Homestar Runner comes up, he instantly becomes the most

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Speaker 1: annoying person I've ever met. Okay, Grant, Yes, I'm going

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Speaker 1: to give you fifteen seconds to explain the appeal of

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Speaker 1: Homestar Runner. You ready, yes? Okay? Three? Two one.

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Speaker 5: It felt like a secret, like you had to find

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Speaker 5: it out from a friend on the playground, and it

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Speaker 5: had the humor of sort of witty simpson esque writing,

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Speaker 5: but it felt accessible and you could actually write into

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Speaker 5: it was interactive. It was an early proto interactive.

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Speaker 1: I really thought you were going to do the voice.

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Speaker 1: I'll give you a bonus five seconds.

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Speaker 8: An extra five seconds to do in a strong, bad voice.

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Speaker 6: I'll take it every time.

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Speaker 1: Gee, you're done, You're done.

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Speaker 5: Hold on, you gotta do a better home star. I

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Speaker 5: gotta do a better home start four seconds?

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Speaker 6: WHOA come on.

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Speaker 1: Another element I've noticed is that original music is a

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Speaker 1: big part of what separated the flash animation Wheat from

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Speaker 1: the chaff. Here and Badgers is a great example of

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Speaker 1: that because, as we'll talk about, John dy Picking was

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Speaker 1: a musician first and animator second, a quality that he

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Speaker 1: was not alone in. David Firth, the creator of Salad Fingers,

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Speaker 1: was also a musician first, as was Neil Csariga of

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Speaker 1: Potter Puppet Palace fame. And the marriage of a distinct

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Speaker 1: online visual with music makes a lot of difference, especially

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Speaker 1: the further back you go. But flash animation wasn't limited

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Speaker 1: to these short narrative cartoons. It was also games. There

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Speaker 1: is just as much of a culture around young game

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Speaker 1: developers making early experimental or silly work in flash and

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Speaker 1: gaming as there are in narrative animators. Okay, this is

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Speaker 1: becoming a young millennial endoored kid circle jerk. So if

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Speaker 1: you exist outside of those bounds, I'm going to try

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Speaker 1: to calcify the appeal of this style of animation. It

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Speaker 1: was funny, sure, but internet animation was funny in a

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Speaker 1: different way than what you enjoyed on TV. It's like

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Speaker 1: Grant was saying in his impassioned endorsement of Homestar Runner,

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Speaker 1: a lot of Internet cultures still felt like a secret

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Speaker 1: to a lot of kids at this time, and while

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Speaker 1: things like Badgers would become hugely successful, it wasn't the

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Speaker 1: kind of hugely successful that your parents would immediately understand

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Speaker 1: the reference to. And this feeling of secrecy and exclusivity

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Speaker 1: has carried on into the animation culture that exists online

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Speaker 1: in the last ten years, even as the popularity of

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Speaker 1: online animation has waned. I am literally living proof of this.

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Speaker 1: It was this generation of animators that later motivated me

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Speaker 1: to make my own jolty absurdist cartoons. Hi, I'm off

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Speaker 1: as a crimes and I'm off as a get on

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Speaker 1: the ground, Aweya the Boss and pd Zamboni Crimes Division.

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Speaker 1: That joint is called Bosting PD Zamboni Crimes Division link

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Speaker 1: in description unless you're scared. And animators like Jaunty Picking

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Speaker 1: and other early pioneers like my personal favorites Brad Neelye

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Speaker 1: and Amy Winfrey of Making Fiends really did create a

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Speaker 1: pathway for a lot of what would inform the next

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Speaker 1: generation of animated entertainment. But I'm not saying that the

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Speaker 1: existence of flash animation meant there were absolutely no barriers

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Speaker 1: to who could make something special online, because you'll notice

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Speaker 1: that most of the people I've cited, including John T.

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Speaker 1: Picking himself, were at the time they became famous, young

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Speaker 1: white men who came from at least middle class backgrounds.

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Speaker 1: And while the Internet has obviously become more widely available

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Speaker 1: over the years, early adaptation to home computing was largely

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Speaker 1: informed by class, meaning that financially privileged, disproportionately white families

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Speaker 1: were the first to get the big, monstrous gateways in

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Speaker 1: their homes. And add that to the highly gendered way

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Speaker 1: in which tech jobs are still viewed with As recently

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Speaker 1: as three years ago, over ninety percent of American software

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Speaker 1: developing jobs held by men, and you know, white patriarchy.

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Speaker 1: It even affects Badger Mushroom. In the early two thousands,

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Speaker 1: most animators would have to lure viewers to their personal

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Speaker 1: websites time and time again to maintain viewership because there

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Speaker 1: was no YouTube yet. There was no BuzzFeed clickbait culture.

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Speaker 1: There were no automated feeds. There were just shared links

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Speaker 1: on blogs and very little else in terms of pulling

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Speaker 1: a random middle schooler into your artistic vision, which is

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Speaker 1: where the website new Grounds comes in, and for the

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Speaker 1: purposes of this story, two of the most successful forum

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Speaker 1: slash video sharing slash have you seen this one? Prototypical

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Speaker 1: sites that would eventually give way to sites like Reddit.

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Speaker 1: New Grounds was the big one, Although there were many

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Speaker 1: imitators and successful ones at that You might remember names

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Speaker 1: like Albino, Black Sheep, Ebombsworld, smash dot Com, to name

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Speaker 1: a few, but it seems pretty commonly decided upon by

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Speaker 1: Internet historians that the new Grounds was where most now

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Speaker 1: iconic flash animation originally found its footing. I only ever

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Speaker 1: knew new Grounds as a website prior to researching this episode,

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Speaker 1: but it turns out that it's even more of a

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Speaker 1: gen x endeavor than I ever realized because new Grounds

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Speaker 1: actually began all the way back in the early nineteen

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Speaker 1: nineties as a physical fanzine for something called Neo Geo

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Speaker 1: that I've never heard of, but it was founded by

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Speaker 1: a then thirteen year old boy named Tom Fulp, who

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Speaker 1: eventually converted the zine into a website in nineteen ninety five.

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Speaker 1: But as time went on, what made new Grounds special

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Speaker 1: was that their greatest successes were both user generated and

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Speaker 1: originally hand curated by Tom Fulp and his brother. The

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Speaker 1: site started taking off in the late nineties into the

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Speaker 1: early two thousands, with Tom expanding from his own fan

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Speaker 1: cartoons into originally submission based content that ended up costing

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Speaker 1: the then college student upwards of one thousand dollars a

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Speaker 1: month to continue hosting. He shockingly managed to break even

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Speaker 1: as the site grew more popular by selling old school

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Speaker 1: banner ads, but the cartoon violence that was all but

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Speaker 1: inherent to this era of flash animation Joy.

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Speaker 6: Candy Mountain, oh like Mine Candy.

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Speaker 1: Mountain, would sometimes make it difficult to sell said ads,

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Speaker 1: But like so many sites before and since, new Grounds

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Speaker 1: both lost money and became really popular at the same time,

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Speaker 1: this was still very much the era of being paid

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Speaker 1: in exposure, being paid in just happy to be here,

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Speaker 1: an era that the Internet will never give up on.

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Speaker 1: But like most sites with generational poll, new Grounds didn't

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Speaker 1: last forever in terms of cultural poll, nor did animation,

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Speaker 1: but their legacy is genuinely important to some of the

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Speaker 1: most successful platforms today. There's no doubt that early YouTube

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Speaker 1: and other user uploaded sites, the same sites that alternatively

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Speaker 1: turn people into fascists and create compelling six hour video

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Speaker 1: essays about video games I've never heard of. We're taking

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Speaker 1: cues from the community building and viral techniques that came

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Speaker 1: together on sites like new Grounds. Just before new Grounds

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Speaker 1: and all of its imitators became the Western middle schoolers

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Speaker 1: de facto destination for annoying cartoons to talk loudly about

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Speaker 1: in algebra class, a star was born and he had

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Speaker 1: a really fun character designed for a dancing badger. Okay, class,

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Speaker 1: When we come back, we're talking johnt picking. Welcome back

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Speaker 1: to sixteenth minute, the show where we compare the Badger

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Speaker 1: Badger mushroom video to the invention of penicillin. Happy to

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Speaker 1: have you here, and now that you're fully thrown back

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Speaker 1: or caught up on the state of flash animation in

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Speaker 1: the early two thousands, we can jump into the story

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Speaker 1: of one Jaunt Picking aka mister Weeble aka the Badger

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Speaker 1: Badger Mushroom Guy, but make no mistake that was far

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Speaker 1: from his earliest hit. Like I mentioned earlier, a lot

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Speaker 1: of his independent work would continue to blow up once

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Speaker 1: it was re uploaded onto more curated sites like new

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Speaker 1: Grounds and Ebomb's World and eventually read it years after

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Speaker 1: their original publishing, and then would blow up again when

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Speaker 1: they were re uploaded to YouTube, where Johunty Picking's new

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Speaker 1: work still ends up today. So who is this guy?

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Speaker 1: Johnty was born in nineteen seventy five in what he

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Speaker 1: describes as a very boring suburb in South Yorkshire, England,

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Speaker 1: and was a kid who was really into both music

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Speaker 1: and technology, both of which would go on to heavily

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Speaker 1: inform his work. I'll let him tell you more in

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Speaker 1: the interview, but at the time he began experimenting on

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Speaker 1: flash animation, Johnty was working primarily as a sound engineer

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Speaker 1: in his early to mid twenties, and he would actually

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Speaker 1: go on to work in visual effects on the Resident

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Speaker 1: Evil movie in two thousand and three. Same year as

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Speaker 1: Badger's big year for Johnty, But in his twenties in

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Speaker 1: the late nineties, Johnty was a multi hyphenate with too

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Speaker 1: many passions to fully throw himself into. He really loved

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Speaker 1: music and sound design, but he also really loved messing

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Speaker 1: around with animated visuals and in a skill I am

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Speaker 1: so envious of. He had both a great sense of

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Speaker 1: humor and the ability to solve artistic problems with incredible

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Speaker 1: scientific precision. And it was from a technical problem he

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Speaker 1: was having at work while working in digital media that

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Speaker 1: we got john Ty's first successful animated hit, a series

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Speaker 1: called Weeble and Bob. There they are the little voices again.

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Speaker 1: Weeble and Bob was a series of simply animated cartoons

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Speaker 1: by Johnty following the titular characters who are literally wobbling,

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Speaker 1: talking eggs yapping against a hot pink background every single time.

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Speaker 1: The bigger egg Weebel Bull is obsessed with pie and

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Speaker 1: his best friend, the smaller egg Bob bobertson random alert,

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Speaker 1: is his best friend who also loves pie.

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Speaker 8: This is a.

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Speaker 1: Clip from the first Weebel and Bob short from the

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Speaker 1: early two thousands, Simply titled Hi.

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Speaker 6: Yeah Pa.

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Speaker 1: It's set against that bright magenta background, and we see

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Speaker 1: both eggs rocking gently back and forth and chatting unintelligibly.

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Speaker 1: If you recognize the voice, it's because both of these

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Speaker 1: eggs are voiced by Jahunty Picking, who also voices the

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Speaker 1: Badger video. And the only way you ever really know

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Speaker 1: what Weevil or Bob is saying is by reading the

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Speaker 1: caption speech bubbles that come out of them. The Weebel

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Speaker 1: and Bob shorts were very low fi, partially because Jaunty

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Speaker 1: was learning how to animate, and because the more low

430
00:29:54,880 --> 00:29:58,120
Speaker 1: fi the cartoons he was making, the easier he found

431
00:29:58,120 --> 00:30:01,600
Speaker 1: it was for them to stream on an Internet with

432
00:30:01,720 --> 00:30:04,880
Speaker 1: a much slower speed than today, and the easier a

433
00:30:04,960 --> 00:30:08,080
Speaker 1: short was to stream, the more people could see it.

434
00:30:08,640 --> 00:30:12,200
Speaker 1: And this experiment very much worked. We Will and Bob

435
00:30:12,280 --> 00:30:16,880
Speaker 1: were so successful in this early iteration that it eventually

436
00:30:16,920 --> 00:30:20,280
Speaker 1: expanded into over one hundred and twenty episodes of the

437
00:30:20,320 --> 00:30:24,680
Speaker 1: show in the same short, simply animated format that is

438
00:30:24,720 --> 00:30:28,720
Speaker 1: scored with Johnty's voice and music. It was so successful,

439
00:30:28,720 --> 00:30:31,160
Speaker 1: in fact, that we Will and Bob made it to

440
00:30:31,320 --> 00:30:35,800
Speaker 1: mainstream television. And keep in mind, this was really early

441
00:30:36,200 --> 00:30:40,960
Speaker 1: in the process of major TV networks attempting to understand

442
00:30:41,080 --> 00:30:44,640
Speaker 1: the Internet, and it would be years before the Internet

443
00:30:44,800 --> 00:30:48,080
Speaker 1: was written for TV by people who had an intimate

444
00:30:48,160 --> 00:30:50,640
Speaker 1: understanding of it. But when we Will and Bob was

445
00:30:50,640 --> 00:30:54,200
Speaker 1: put onto MTV UK and the early two thousands, the

446
00:30:54,280 --> 00:30:56,920
Speaker 1: suits were at least paying attention to what the kids

447
00:30:56,920 --> 00:30:59,400
Speaker 1: were watching, and they had the good sense to not

448
00:30:59,640 --> 00:31:03,480
Speaker 1: just try to replicate it. Instead they hired the guy

449
00:31:03,520 --> 00:31:06,840
Speaker 1: that was making it. There was a stretch of six

450
00:31:07,200 --> 00:31:11,840
Speaker 1: exclusively televised Weebel and Bob Schwartz on MTV UK that

451
00:31:11,880 --> 00:31:16,440
Speaker 1: We're met with positive reception, and this increased attention and

452
00:31:16,600 --> 00:31:20,920
Speaker 1: financial flow meant that Jaunty was able to experiment with

453
00:31:21,040 --> 00:31:25,440
Speaker 1: his work using other animated concepts online when the MTV

454
00:31:25,560 --> 00:31:28,120
Speaker 1: deal made it possible for him to leave his day job,

455
00:31:28,800 --> 00:31:32,760
Speaker 1: and it was this that led to his grand opis

456
00:31:33,120 --> 00:31:36,960
Speaker 1: on September second, two thousand and three. But you know

457
00:31:37,000 --> 00:31:41,440
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about. An animation with badgers appearing in

458
00:31:41,480 --> 00:31:46,520
Speaker 1: a meadow, dancing identically and perfect harmony, with one more

459
00:31:46,560 --> 00:31:51,920
Speaker 1: badger appearing slightly further away with each subsequent pronouncement of

460
00:31:51,960 --> 00:31:57,160
Speaker 1: the species, and then we go to a bright red

461
00:31:57,200 --> 00:32:00,600
Speaker 1: cartoon mushroom with a push zoom for every repetition of

462
00:32:00,640 --> 00:32:03,160
Speaker 1: the phrase, and just when you thought it would go

463
00:32:03,200 --> 00:32:11,240
Speaker 1: on that way forever, a danger is presented, a bright

464
00:32:11,320 --> 00:32:15,760
Speaker 1: green cartoon snake presenting a danger to our badger, and

465
00:32:15,960 --> 00:32:19,440
Speaker 1: probably not the mushroom. Do badgers eat mushrooms? I don't know.

466
00:32:19,800 --> 00:32:23,360
Speaker 1: But while the snake is presented visually and orally as

467
00:32:23,400 --> 00:32:28,000
Speaker 1: a sense of existential danger, nothing ever happens to the badger,

468
00:32:28,480 --> 00:32:31,480
Speaker 1: because as soon as we see the snake, the animation

469
00:32:31,640 --> 00:32:32,920
Speaker 1: just loops back to the beginning.

470
00:32:33,080 --> 00:32:34,760
Speaker 7: Bugs budget Bude.

471
00:32:34,840 --> 00:32:39,400
Speaker 1: And long before YouTube hits, the Badgers became big, slowly

472
00:32:39,480 --> 00:32:43,640
Speaker 1: growing there and Jaunty slash mister Weeble's audience to a

473
00:32:43,720 --> 00:32:47,840
Speaker 1: level of public recognition that was so popular that his

474
00:32:47,960 --> 00:32:51,320
Speaker 1: body of work won a UK People's Choice Awards in

475
00:32:51,400 --> 00:32:55,240
Speaker 1: early two thousand and five. The inspiration for this short,

476
00:32:55,280 --> 00:32:58,240
Speaker 1: according to Johnty, was pulled from a novelty track that

477
00:32:58,400 --> 00:33:02,160
Speaker 1: was popular in the UK his childhood, a song called

478
00:33:02,200 --> 00:33:07,640
Speaker 1: Saturday Night by Wigfeld, and specifically a very particular element

479
00:33:07,760 --> 00:33:10,320
Speaker 1: of that song, and see if you can spot it

480
00:33:10,760 --> 00:33:24,640
Speaker 1: here is how the song starts. It was not clear

481
00:33:24,680 --> 00:33:28,280
Speaker 1: to me immediately either. But the little repeating thing you

482
00:33:28,360 --> 00:33:32,280
Speaker 1: hear in this song is a duck sound, one that

483
00:33:32,360 --> 00:33:36,080
Speaker 1: apparently inspired John d Picking to do something equally loopy

484
00:33:36,480 --> 00:33:40,120
Speaker 1: and looped and silly. So from the duck sound in

485
00:33:40,240 --> 00:33:45,560
Speaker 1: Saturday Night, we get Art is great. And the benefit

486
00:33:45,800 --> 00:33:49,520
Speaker 1: for viewers of John Dy's first becoming successful with Badgers

487
00:33:49,880 --> 00:33:53,400
Speaker 1: pre new Grounds is that he had already made follow

488
00:33:53,480 --> 00:33:57,200
Speaker 1: ups in response to the cartoon's success, meaning that by

489
00:33:57,240 --> 00:34:00,640
Speaker 1: the time I saw Badgers on new Grounds, there was

490
00:34:00,840 --> 00:34:04,720
Speaker 1: already a lot more to watch in this universe, and

491
00:34:04,880 --> 00:34:08,000
Speaker 1: all of the follow ups to Badgers hit these very

492
00:34:08,160 --> 00:34:13,120
Speaker 1: of the moment cultural touch points, including themes like zombies

493
00:34:20,239 --> 00:34:25,759
Speaker 1: or Santa Son Son Son Son Son good Son and

494
00:34:25,880 --> 00:34:29,520
Speaker 1: Son Sign the Press. This I think was my favorite

495
00:34:29,560 --> 00:34:31,400
Speaker 1: one as a kid, so I do want to include

496
00:34:31,480 --> 00:34:41,840
Speaker 1: what went in the place of the snake. That's funny,

497
00:34:42,160 --> 00:34:45,480
Speaker 1: you're laughing. And in a relatively short amount of time,

498
00:34:45,960 --> 00:34:50,200
Speaker 1: the animations became beloved, particularly in the UK at first,

499
00:34:50,560 --> 00:34:53,359
Speaker 1: where Wee Bile and Bob were already popular by being

500
00:34:53,400 --> 00:34:57,680
Speaker 1: seen on MTV. In two thousand and four, Johnty released

501
00:34:57,800 --> 00:35:01,239
Speaker 1: a soccer football I Don't care what you call it

502
00:35:01,320 --> 00:35:05,120
Speaker 1: both Countries suck themed version of the Badger's video for

503
00:35:05,280 --> 00:35:10,000
Speaker 1: the two thousand and four FIFA Tournament Pooch Pooch, Pochi,

504
00:35:10,080 --> 00:35:17,799
Speaker 1: Pochi Pochio. What made this format so sticky was its simplicity,

505
00:35:18,360 --> 00:35:23,200
Speaker 1: while remaining very distinct in both look and sound. It

506
00:35:23,400 --> 00:35:28,160
Speaker 1: was absolute drugs for middle schoolers and went on to

507
00:35:28,480 --> 00:35:32,479
Speaker 1: experience many subsequent lives on new grounds. Albino Black Sheep,

508
00:35:32,520 --> 00:35:39,080
Speaker 1: Ebomb's World and YouTube Badgers is Internet cannon, But like

509
00:35:39,200 --> 00:35:43,000
Speaker 1: many animators of this time, this only empowered Jaunty Picking

510
00:35:43,120 --> 00:35:47,520
Speaker 1: to continue exploring his ideas through one off flash animations

511
00:35:47,600 --> 00:35:51,720
Speaker 1: with weird concepts, stuff like narwhals.

512
00:35:52,800 --> 00:35:56,799
Speaker 6: While swimming in the Ushian causing of commotion because.

513
00:35:58,320 --> 00:36:00,080
Speaker 1: Like amazing horse.

514
00:36:01,320 --> 00:36:08,239
Speaker 6: Look is amazing, give it a leg, or like.

515
00:36:08,360 --> 00:36:12,080
Speaker 1: Johnty's personal favorite in his catalog, a cartoon called a

516
00:36:12,239 --> 00:36:15,640
Speaker 1: Walk in the Woods, which is both very beautiful and

517
00:36:15,920 --> 00:36:19,400
Speaker 1: also ninety percent cartoon animals shitting so hard that they fly.

518
00:36:20,080 --> 00:36:23,320
Speaker 1: And while some of Johnty's work could get violent or sexual,

519
00:36:23,920 --> 00:36:27,120
Speaker 1: his work isn't characterized by these qualities in a way

520
00:36:27,239 --> 00:36:31,400
Speaker 1: that much early flash animation was I'm gonna cut your

521
00:36:31,440 --> 00:36:35,640
Speaker 1: throat open and use your bloody syrup on my pancakes. Yeah,

522
00:36:36,920 --> 00:36:41,600
Speaker 1: Jahunty or mister Weebles's work was musical and silly first,

523
00:36:42,160 --> 00:36:45,320
Speaker 1: and so even when it did fall into violence or sex,

524
00:36:45,680 --> 00:36:49,759
Speaker 1: it was never defined by shock. And again, so much

525
00:36:49,800 --> 00:36:53,000
Speaker 1: of what makes his work special is that Johnty composed

526
00:36:53,320 --> 00:36:56,760
Speaker 1: all of the music, and he's continued to release music

527
00:36:57,040 --> 00:37:00,440
Speaker 1: on his own. He's been releasing full versions of his

528
00:37:00,560 --> 00:37:03,719
Speaker 1: original songs and war on band camp since at least

529
00:37:03,760 --> 00:37:08,279
Speaker 1: twenty ten, and transitioned into making full albums of just

530
00:37:08,520 --> 00:37:13,040
Speaker 1: music independent of his work in animation starting in twenty fourteen.

531
00:37:13,719 --> 00:37:18,000
Speaker 1: His current band, Savlonic is his most music forward blend

532
00:37:18,239 --> 00:37:22,279
Speaker 1: of music and animation to date. It's mainly jaunty, but

533
00:37:22,480 --> 00:37:27,839
Speaker 1: the animated band is composed of virtual members similar to Gorillas.

534
00:37:28,360 --> 00:37:32,360
Speaker 6: Hi story, okay, because you're still my god. It seems

535
00:37:32,480 --> 00:37:38,040
Speaker 6: like a zoo me now, I will drive around in

536
00:37:38,160 --> 00:37:41,560
Speaker 6: the cor tells me too, feel free.

537
00:37:42,840 --> 00:37:45,880
Speaker 1: But as you can hear, the animation and a lot

538
00:37:45,960 --> 00:37:50,360
Speaker 1: of the voice and instrumentation is still very much jaunty,

539
00:37:50,840 --> 00:37:54,799
Speaker 1: as well as some of his most common collaborators. As

540
00:37:54,840 --> 00:37:58,680
Speaker 1: of this writing, Savlonik has released two cover albums and

541
00:37:58,920 --> 00:38:02,160
Speaker 1: four full albums. I'll let him tell you more about

542
00:38:02,200 --> 00:38:05,120
Speaker 1: it in the interview, but the work itself is cynthie

543
00:38:05,440 --> 00:38:08,720
Speaker 1: and really cool. This is from their most recent album,

544
00:38:11,880 --> 00:38:13,360
Speaker 1: I Don't Feel Like.

545
00:38:15,280 --> 00:38:19,800
Speaker 5: With Us.

546
00:38:19,960 --> 00:38:23,680
Speaker 1: Johnty remained a creature of the Internet post Badgers, after

547
00:38:23,800 --> 00:38:27,600
Speaker 1: emerging from a generation of online animators that I would

548
00:38:27,680 --> 00:38:32,040
Speaker 1: say split the difference in terms of pursuing mainstream success

549
00:38:32,200 --> 00:38:37,719
Speaker 1: in traditional animated media versus maintaining increased creative freedom for

550
00:38:37,840 --> 00:38:41,520
Speaker 1: their audience on the Internet. And in Johnty's case, we

551
00:38:41,640 --> 00:38:45,160
Speaker 1: are richer for the fact that he stayed online because

552
00:38:45,200 --> 00:38:49,200
Speaker 1: while he's never pigeonholed himself as particularly fixated on any

553
00:38:49,280 --> 00:38:53,880
Speaker 1: one project, he's also never resisted the positive legacy that

554
00:38:54,080 --> 00:38:57,880
Speaker 1: projects like Badgers and Weeble and Bob have associated him with,

555
00:38:58,520 --> 00:39:01,880
Speaker 1: which maybe brings me to the weirdest offshoot of Badgers

556
00:39:01,960 --> 00:39:05,360
Speaker 1: that exists from ten full years after its release.

557
00:39:05,880 --> 00:39:18,640
Speaker 8: Listen to this, Oh No, John.

558
00:39:18,719 --> 00:39:22,120
Speaker 1: Now, if you're thinking, wait, why did the introduction to

559
00:39:22,200 --> 00:39:26,880
Speaker 1: that Badger's video sound like Queen? Well, that is Brian

560
00:39:27,080 --> 00:39:30,880
Speaker 1: May of Queen, who reached out to johunt Picking in

561
00:39:30,960 --> 00:39:37,000
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen asking to help him preserve actual English badgers,

562
00:39:37,600 --> 00:39:41,960
Speaker 1: real badgers as a part of his conservation work. And

563
00:39:42,080 --> 00:39:44,400
Speaker 1: so what you're hearing at the beginning there in a

564
00:39:44,520 --> 00:39:48,960
Speaker 1: beautiful twist of fate, is a song from Queen called Flash.

565
00:39:49,800 --> 00:39:52,080
Speaker 1: Brian May said of the project at the time of

566
00:39:52,160 --> 00:39:53,040
Speaker 1: the release.

567
00:39:53,280 --> 00:39:56,440
Speaker 5: The British people are speaking in their many thousands, and

568
00:39:56,600 --> 00:39:59,920
Speaker 5: yet the government is refusing to listen. We think that

569
00:40:00,200 --> 00:40:03,000
Speaker 5: for buying this track and giving the badgers a voice,

570
00:40:03,680 --> 00:40:06,840
Speaker 5: let's get this to number one so David Cameron cannot

571
00:40:06,920 --> 00:40:12,040
Speaker 5: avoid it. The cull is unscientific, unethical and won't work.

572
00:40:12,440 --> 00:40:16,080
Speaker 5: The government is set to murder five thousand badges, and

573
00:40:16,239 --> 00:40:20,160
Speaker 5: yet all the peer reviewed scientific evidence shows that the

574
00:40:20,239 --> 00:40:23,480
Speaker 5: answer to the problem of bovine tb in cattle does

575
00:40:23,600 --> 00:40:26,920
Speaker 5: not lie in this slaughter, and that this action will

576
00:40:26,960 --> 00:40:30,479
Speaker 5: be ineffective and potentially damaging to the welfare of both

577
00:40:30,560 --> 00:40:32,600
Speaker 5: farm animals and wildlife.

578
00:40:33,200 --> 00:40:38,319
Speaker 1: And so the badger became politicized to the point where

579
00:40:39,000 --> 00:40:44,040
Speaker 1: this song titled Save the Badger, Badger Badger literally played

580
00:40:44,440 --> 00:40:48,000
Speaker 1: in the House of Lords in protest to the David

581
00:40:48,080 --> 00:40:52,560
Speaker 1: Cameron back proposal to exterminate real life badgers. Far beyond

582
00:40:52,680 --> 00:40:56,120
Speaker 1: any ethical limit, and the intention of the song is

583
00:40:56,239 --> 00:40:59,640
Speaker 1: to prevent their slaughter. Johnt Picking said this in a

584
00:40:59,719 --> 00:41:02,840
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen interview on how the project came together.

585
00:41:03,480 --> 00:41:06,880
Speaker 5: The new version was based on the soundtrack to Flash Gordon,

586
00:41:06,880 --> 00:41:09,880
Speaker 5: written by Queen and Brian May. He asked me what

587
00:41:10,000 --> 00:41:13,000
Speaker 5: we could do to make something together featuring my Badgers,

588
00:41:13,120 --> 00:41:15,680
Speaker 5: and that was the first thought in my head. I

589
00:41:16,040 --> 00:41:19,520
Speaker 5: love Flash Gordon. I did a rough remix using my

590
00:41:19,719 --> 00:41:22,600
Speaker 5: track and samples, and sang the new lyrics I'd come

591
00:41:22,680 --> 00:41:25,720
Speaker 5: up with in a Queen style, and sure, I'll.

592
00:41:25,680 --> 00:41:29,480
Speaker 1: Risk a copyrights strike to share Brian May shredding, because

593
00:41:29,800 --> 00:41:33,120
Speaker 1: it's Brian May shredding. For Christ's sake, here it is.

594
00:41:40,600 --> 00:41:44,520
Speaker 1: The video ends on a screen that says, be the mushroom,

595
00:41:44,920 --> 00:41:48,560
Speaker 1: stop the call, and the song ended up charting on

596
00:41:48,680 --> 00:41:52,560
Speaker 1: the UK charts, peaking at number seventy nine. And by

597
00:41:52,640 --> 00:41:55,840
Speaker 1: this time this was a ten year old meme and

598
00:41:55,960 --> 00:42:02,320
Speaker 1: a very niche political issue. Badgers had and meaning. And

599
00:42:02,400 --> 00:42:06,080
Speaker 1: while I couldn't possibly rain all of the influence of

600
00:42:06,200 --> 00:42:09,240
Speaker 1: Jaunty Picking's work in the space of a single episode,

601
00:42:09,840 --> 00:42:12,560
Speaker 1: I do think this is a really cool example of

602
00:42:12,760 --> 00:42:15,959
Speaker 1: how much it really meant to people, and the rest

603
00:42:16,000 --> 00:42:19,120
Speaker 1: of the story I'll let him tell you himself. He

604
00:42:19,320 --> 00:42:23,719
Speaker 1: is incredibly funny and still innovating any animation and music

605
00:42:23,800 --> 00:42:27,799
Speaker 1: space to this day now a married dad of two preteens,

606
00:42:28,640 --> 00:42:32,000
Speaker 1: and as you'll hear, he is incredibly patient with an

607
00:42:32,040 --> 00:42:36,560
Speaker 1: interviewer that has active bronchitis. When we come back my

608
00:42:36,719 --> 00:42:55,080
Speaker 1: interview with Jaunty Picking. Welcome back to sixteenth minute. I

609
00:42:55,239 --> 00:42:57,800
Speaker 1: just got back from visiting my nephew and all he

610
00:42:57,960 --> 00:43:01,560
Speaker 1: watched was Blues Clues and it sent me into a

611
00:43:01,680 --> 00:43:04,520
Speaker 1: death spiral of listening to every interview on the phase

612
00:43:04,560 --> 00:43:07,240
Speaker 1: of the Earth that's available with any of the hosts

613
00:43:07,320 --> 00:43:10,600
Speaker 1: of Blues Clues in order to compare their general vibes

614
00:43:10,800 --> 00:43:14,200
Speaker 1: and relationship to the blue screen. And they're my friends

615
00:43:14,239 --> 00:43:18,520
Speaker 1: and I love them. Anyways. My interview with the wonderful

616
00:43:18,600 --> 00:43:21,520
Speaker 1: Jaunty Picking is up next. But a quick note at

617
00:43:21,600 --> 00:43:25,600
Speaker 1: the top, my voice sounds very bad in this interview.

618
00:43:26,040 --> 00:43:29,120
Speaker 1: I'm aware of that. There is no need to contact

619
00:43:29,160 --> 00:43:32,840
Speaker 1: me about this. This interview was recorded back in January

620
00:43:32,960 --> 00:43:37,400
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five, shortly after the Los Angeles fires had happened,

621
00:43:37,840 --> 00:43:40,880
Speaker 1: which while I was very fortunate to not be affected

622
00:43:40,960 --> 00:43:44,160
Speaker 1: by and you can listen to our episode about relief

623
00:43:44,200 --> 00:43:46,440
Speaker 1: efforts that came out at the time. But I did

624
00:43:46,520 --> 00:43:50,240
Speaker 1: have bronchitis and ended up leaving town because I couldn't

625
00:43:50,280 --> 00:43:53,960
Speaker 1: breathe well. And these are the circumstances the interview was

626
00:43:54,120 --> 00:43:58,440
Speaker 1: conducted in. So leave me alone and please enjoy this

627
00:43:58,560 --> 00:44:01,120
Speaker 1: interview with the lovely Johunty picking.

628
00:44:01,680 --> 00:44:04,040
Speaker 6: I know it is actually pressure because loads of people

629
00:44:04,160 --> 00:44:07,200
Speaker 6: call me Weebel or mister Weeble, which was a terrible

630
00:44:07,320 --> 00:44:10,360
Speaker 6: choice of name, by the way, never do that. Some

631
00:44:10,480 --> 00:44:13,600
Speaker 6: people call me John t. Some people call me Jonathan,

632
00:44:13,840 --> 00:44:17,359
Speaker 6: usually only if I've been very bad. I'd make cartoons

633
00:44:17,480 --> 00:44:21,320
Speaker 6: and music on the internet mainly, but every now and

634
00:44:21,440 --> 00:44:25,239
Speaker 6: again not on the internet, just to mix things up.

635
00:44:26,000 --> 00:44:27,320
Speaker 6: I like to keep it interesting.

636
00:44:27,400 --> 00:44:30,319
Speaker 7: You know, you do buy many names, are you? Are

637
00:44:30,400 --> 00:44:32,880
Speaker 7: you sick of weebel? Is that what I'm picking up on.

638
00:44:33,239 --> 00:44:35,759
Speaker 6: I'm sick of the fact that I chose a word

639
00:44:35,920 --> 00:44:38,880
Speaker 6: that's not spelled how you assume it would be spelt. No,

640
00:44:39,120 --> 00:44:41,480
Speaker 6: it was a terrible choice of name. I watch your

641
00:44:41,520 --> 00:44:45,720
Speaker 6: website and you go, it's mister whit's weeple without at

642
00:44:45,760 --> 00:44:49,960
Speaker 6: the end, and then there's like and then stuff, Yes,

643
00:44:50,160 --> 00:44:52,640
Speaker 6: like the word stuff dot com. So you'd be like

644
00:44:52,719 --> 00:44:53,399
Speaker 6: that all the time.

645
00:44:53,760 --> 00:44:57,160
Speaker 9: Like, that's a lot of early Internet mistakes. Is a

646
00:44:57,320 --> 00:44:59,719
Speaker 9: name that looks funny but it is impossible to say

647
00:44:59,760 --> 00:45:02,759
Speaker 9: out loud. Yeah, I've had my share of like, well,

648
00:45:03,440 --> 00:45:05,880
Speaker 9: it's funny to me, but it's humiliating to have to

649
00:45:05,960 --> 00:45:10,080
Speaker 9: spell out for others. There's tell me a little bit

650
00:45:10,160 --> 00:45:14,160
Speaker 9: about to the extent you're comfortable, how you grew up,

651
00:45:14,200 --> 00:45:15,800
Speaker 9: Where you grew up, What kind of kid were you?

652
00:45:16,160 --> 00:45:20,760
Speaker 6: I grew up in the North of England, in South Yorkshire,

653
00:45:20,880 --> 00:45:22,880
Speaker 6: which is you know, in the North, in the South

654
00:45:23,440 --> 00:45:28,719
Speaker 6: of the North, in the North in York, in Doncaster,

655
00:45:29,000 --> 00:45:33,640
Speaker 6: which was a mining town. What they're up to now,

656
00:45:33,800 --> 00:45:38,200
Speaker 6: it's apparently very honest accent. I sounded real trustworthy me,

657
00:45:38,440 --> 00:45:41,800
Speaker 6: but that's why I grew up in like the eighties

658
00:45:41,920 --> 00:45:44,560
Speaker 6: really quite a depressing place, if I'm honest. Me ping

659
00:45:44,640 --> 00:45:47,080
Speaker 6: me didn't really have much of a plan. Flailed around

660
00:45:47,120 --> 00:45:51,040
Speaker 6: for many years doing music bits and bobs, and eventually

661
00:45:51,080 --> 00:45:54,360
Speaker 6: got into the side stuff fire and music courts, and

662
00:45:54,440 --> 00:45:57,040
Speaker 6: then a company in London took notice of what I

663
00:45:57,120 --> 00:46:00,799
Speaker 6: was doing flash and hired me and that was my life,

664
00:46:01,040 --> 00:46:01,319
Speaker 6: I think.

665
00:46:02,719 --> 00:46:06,399
Speaker 9: So I know that like music and animation, it sounds

666
00:46:06,440 --> 00:46:08,640
Speaker 9: like this they've all sort of like coexisted for you

667
00:46:08,800 --> 00:46:11,840
Speaker 9: for so long when you were a kid in like

668
00:46:11,920 --> 00:46:15,520
Speaker 9: figuring out what you liked, Like, was it one particular

669
00:46:15,680 --> 00:46:17,640
Speaker 9: thing that you're like, Oh, this is my thing, and

670
00:46:17,719 --> 00:46:19,080
Speaker 9: then more things came later.

671
00:46:19,600 --> 00:46:21,960
Speaker 6: It was it was always a mix of like art

672
00:46:22,040 --> 00:46:26,359
Speaker 6: and music. If I'm honest, I had the Commodore sixty four,

673
00:46:26,480 --> 00:46:29,800
Speaker 6: which had like this weird one and a half octave

674
00:46:29,960 --> 00:46:35,040
Speaker 6: plastically overlay on the key. It's awful and sampler. I

675
00:46:35,160 --> 00:46:37,040
Speaker 6: loved the music of the Commodore sixty four, and that

676
00:46:37,320 --> 00:46:40,320
Speaker 6: kind of electronic music was what I listened to, not

677
00:46:41,000 --> 00:46:43,960
Speaker 6: sort of like the prog rock or anything. I was

678
00:46:44,080 --> 00:46:48,000
Speaker 6: very much into since sense of fantastic love them new

679
00:46:48,080 --> 00:46:50,120
Speaker 6: noises all the time. It's like, oh this is great.

680
00:46:50,320 --> 00:46:52,480
Speaker 7: That's a very particular kind of eighties kid.

681
00:46:52,640 --> 00:46:53,080
Speaker 8: I love that.

682
00:46:55,280 --> 00:46:58,000
Speaker 6: Like when synthwave happened, I was like, whoa wait a minute,

683
00:46:58,080 --> 00:46:59,520
Speaker 6: this is my shine.

684
00:47:00,000 --> 00:47:03,840
Speaker 9: What were your early experiences with the Internet. Do you

685
00:47:03,960 --> 00:47:06,080
Speaker 9: have like memories of like, oh, this was like a

686
00:47:06,200 --> 00:47:08,840
Speaker 9: website or a creator online that I really liked At

687
00:47:08,880 --> 00:47:11,680
Speaker 9: the beginning. I'm curious who who you were into or

688
00:47:11,719 --> 00:47:14,000
Speaker 9: what you were into when you started making your own stuff.

689
00:47:14,400 --> 00:47:18,040
Speaker 6: I was on AOL You've Got mail all that business terrible,

690
00:47:18,440 --> 00:47:21,279
Speaker 6: quite text heavy back then. Obviously you couldn't really have this.

691
00:47:21,480 --> 00:47:24,040
Speaker 6: And then Flash came along and things started picking up.

692
00:47:24,600 --> 00:47:27,040
Speaker 6: I ended up on new grounds, like looking through that

693
00:47:27,080 --> 00:47:30,200
Speaker 6: I think it was. Yes, it's like the Britney Spears

694
00:47:30,600 --> 00:47:34,359
Speaker 6: Munster Truck Jump Challenge or something. It was a different time.

695
00:47:34,760 --> 00:47:39,120
Speaker 6: It was quite violent and very edgy. The Random movie,

696
00:47:39,600 --> 00:47:42,120
Speaker 6: which was a Flash thing. I love that. It kind

697
00:47:42,160 --> 00:47:44,480
Speaker 6: of opened my eyes and I started I was messing

698
00:47:44,480 --> 00:47:48,839
Speaker 6: around in Flash obviously for work, so I started doing

699
00:47:48,880 --> 00:47:51,239
Speaker 6: animations more as a sort of technical thing, like what

700
00:47:51,400 --> 00:47:54,719
Speaker 6: can I do and have it straight away on like

701
00:47:54,800 --> 00:47:56,880
Speaker 6: a fifty six K mode? And I think that was

702
00:47:56,920 --> 00:47:58,680
Speaker 6: a lot of it, And the loops came around that

703
00:47:58,800 --> 00:48:02,040
Speaker 6: way as well, because just keeping file sizes down. Really

704
00:48:02,320 --> 00:48:06,279
Speaker 6: it was kind of just more problem solving. Oh this

705
00:48:06,440 --> 00:48:07,240
Speaker 6: is good animation.

706
00:48:08,160 --> 00:48:11,160
Speaker 7: WHOA wait, that's that's really interesting. I didn't know that, Yeah,

707
00:48:11,520 --> 00:48:11,759
Speaker 7: you were.

708
00:48:11,880 --> 00:48:14,160
Speaker 9: So it was sort of like as an experiment to see,

709
00:48:14,280 --> 00:48:16,560
Speaker 9: like what how much you could get away with on

710
00:48:16,680 --> 00:48:18,040
Speaker 9: a certain modem.

711
00:48:18,239 --> 00:48:20,480
Speaker 7: Were you working at day job throughout all of the

712
00:48:20,600 --> 00:48:22,320
Speaker 7: early cartoons.

713
00:48:22,400 --> 00:48:27,120
Speaker 6: Yeah, and then work in the evening doing my own stuff.

714
00:48:27,360 --> 00:48:30,040
Speaker 6: Then one day out of the blue, NTV phoned up

715
00:48:30,080 --> 00:48:32,920
Speaker 6: and said, do you want a series on UK MTV?

716
00:48:33,120 --> 00:48:35,880
Speaker 6: Not you know, fancy MTV. Yeah, So they got me

717
00:48:35,920 --> 00:48:38,080
Speaker 6: in to do that, and then I quit my job

718
00:48:38,120 --> 00:48:41,520
Speaker 6: and took a chance on doing this Friday. I think

719
00:48:41,560 --> 00:48:43,600
Speaker 6: it was a year to make it something like that.

720
00:48:43,920 --> 00:48:46,680
Speaker 7: What projects specifically was it like? Was it Weil.

721
00:48:47,920 --> 00:48:48,520
Speaker 6: Bob? Yeah?

722
00:48:48,800 --> 00:48:51,480
Speaker 9: I have such a hard time explaining new Grounds to

723
00:48:51,640 --> 00:48:54,000
Speaker 9: someone who was not there to experience it.

724
00:48:54,280 --> 00:48:55,000
Speaker 7: Can you help me?

725
00:48:55,600 --> 00:48:59,040
Speaker 6: It was a lot of people could get poted copies

726
00:48:59,080 --> 00:49:02,640
Speaker 6: of Flash is what it breaks down to. So teenage

727
00:49:02,719 --> 00:49:06,840
Speaker 6: boys in their bedrooms were playing around as teenage boys do,

728
00:49:08,120 --> 00:49:10,520
Speaker 6: and I count myself among them, even I was much

729
00:49:10,560 --> 00:49:15,120
Speaker 6: older than in my teens. Probably i'd so madness happened

730
00:49:15,239 --> 00:49:19,640
Speaker 6: and you'd see just the weirdest stuff. It's very hard

731
00:49:19,680 --> 00:49:21,560
Speaker 6: to describe. You've put me on the spot, haven't you.

732
00:49:21,640 --> 00:49:23,560
Speaker 6: It's in my head, but trying to put it into

733
00:49:23,640 --> 00:49:25,320
Speaker 6: words is surprisingly difficult.

734
00:49:25,360 --> 00:49:27,719
Speaker 9: Because it was also like you're saying, really really edgy

735
00:49:27,840 --> 00:49:32,239
Speaker 9: humor sometimes like the cartoon violence, especially cartoon.

736
00:49:31,960 --> 00:49:32,920
Speaker 7: Violence and flash.

737
00:49:33,600 --> 00:49:33,799
Speaker 6: Yeah.

738
00:49:33,840 --> 00:49:36,600
Speaker 7: I think it's always very funny and never very scary,

739
00:49:36,800 --> 00:49:37,520
Speaker 7: which is great.

740
00:49:38,080 --> 00:49:40,320
Speaker 9: I guess I want to talk a little bit about

741
00:49:41,120 --> 00:49:46,320
Speaker 9: weeble and because that comes before Badermania, how do you

742
00:49:46,400 --> 00:49:47,480
Speaker 9: come up with the idea for.

743
00:49:47,520 --> 00:49:49,160
Speaker 6: Weebl and Bob You're gonna hate me?

744
00:49:49,520 --> 00:49:51,640
Speaker 7: No, I like you so much, don't worry about it.

745
00:49:51,840 --> 00:49:56,080
Speaker 6: It was a technical challenge. Oh really, they were very

746
00:49:56,200 --> 00:50:00,560
Speaker 6: simple shapes. I'd figured out that processes were very very

747
00:50:00,680 --> 00:50:03,160
Speaker 6: poor back then, like you could and you didn't really

748
00:50:03,200 --> 00:50:05,600
Speaker 6: have fancy graphic cards either. It was all done with

749
00:50:05,760 --> 00:50:11,359
Speaker 6: the CPU, so shapes. I think I used about four

750
00:50:11,480 --> 00:50:14,600
Speaker 6: points for each shape of the bodies and then the

751
00:50:14,760 --> 00:50:18,160
Speaker 6: eyes are like too. Possibly. It was made to be

752
00:50:18,280 --> 00:50:21,000
Speaker 6: as simple as possible. And the only reason they actually

753
00:50:21,080 --> 00:50:24,160
Speaker 6: spoke was because Rob Manuel and Peter said I think

754
00:50:24,200 --> 00:50:28,120
Speaker 6: they should actually speak, which really annoyed me at the time,

755
00:50:28,200 --> 00:50:29,800
Speaker 6: but I accepted his sage advice.

756
00:50:30,000 --> 00:50:32,680
Speaker 7: What was the experiment for? Was it like another web

757
00:50:32,719 --> 00:50:33,880
Speaker 7: to sign experiment or.

758
00:50:34,400 --> 00:50:39,080
Speaker 6: Yeah, it was can I make this playback smoothly with

759
00:50:39,200 --> 00:50:43,400
Speaker 6: a very much file size for as many people as possible?

760
00:50:43,680 --> 00:50:46,080
Speaker 9: And so how how long were you making we Will

761
00:50:46,120 --> 00:50:49,320
Speaker 9: and Bob? It started online and then it went to MTV.

762
00:50:49,600 --> 00:50:52,000
Speaker 9: What was that process? Was there a big change in

763
00:50:52,120 --> 00:50:53,680
Speaker 9: process when you took it to TV?

764
00:50:54,000 --> 00:50:58,160
Speaker 6: The only real problem was exporting them in a TV

765
00:50:58,360 --> 00:51:02,799
Speaker 6: friendly video format, which turned out surprisingly tricky. So if

766
00:51:02,840 --> 00:51:06,160
Speaker 6: you ever saw the Monkey Song on MTV, all the

767
00:51:06,239 --> 00:51:08,760
Speaker 6: frames were all over the shop it was it was awful,

768
00:51:09,000 --> 00:51:11,200
Speaker 6: and I said, please let me fix it, and they went, no,

769
00:51:11,840 --> 00:51:12,839
Speaker 6: that's how it is now.

770
00:51:15,000 --> 00:51:20,279
Speaker 7: From or maybe during Weebel and Bob, Badgers happens, the

771
00:51:20,360 --> 00:51:23,400
Speaker 7: world changes forever. Two thousand and three big year for

772
00:51:23,520 --> 00:51:27,120
Speaker 7: me because Badgers came out and so did School of Rock,

773
00:51:28,000 --> 00:51:31,080
Speaker 7: and these were transformative pieces of art for me personally.

774
00:51:31,400 --> 00:51:34,919
Speaker 7: Take me through your process. Where does Badgers come from?

775
00:51:35,400 --> 00:51:40,839
Speaker 6: Okay, so there's a song called the Riddle I think

776
00:51:41,200 --> 00:51:44,799
Speaker 6: by I'm going to say Nick kersh or However, there

777
00:51:44,800 --> 00:51:46,960
Speaker 6: were a couple of Nicks around at that time, so

778
00:51:47,080 --> 00:51:50,120
Speaker 6: it's hard to say one hundred percent everyone's what you mean.

779
00:51:50,200 --> 00:51:52,360
Speaker 6: And it turned out that it had no meaning. It

780
00:51:52,480 --> 00:51:55,640
Speaker 6: was all just placeholder words and they went, yeah, that'll do.

781
00:51:56,040 --> 00:51:58,480
Speaker 6: So I kind of had that going on with the

782
00:51:58,640 --> 00:52:02,920
Speaker 6: lyrics side. Of Badge in the musical side of things.

783
00:52:02,960 --> 00:52:06,880
Speaker 6: I've become obsessed at tune will get people's attention because

784
00:52:06,920 --> 00:52:10,279
Speaker 6: of the wig Field theory. Which do you remember Saturday Night?

785
00:52:10,360 --> 00:52:12,880
Speaker 6: Maybe it wasn't big in the US. I don't. I

786
00:52:12,960 --> 00:52:16,120
Speaker 6: don't know if like the way you moved, there's a

787
00:52:16,200 --> 00:52:18,839
Speaker 6: duck quacking all the way through it, I swear to God.

788
00:52:19,239 --> 00:52:21,680
Speaker 6: So Badgers has an annoying squeak all the way through it.

789
00:52:21,920 --> 00:52:26,239
Speaker 6: So I paired that mess, and Badger has happened, and

790
00:52:26,560 --> 00:52:28,400
Speaker 6: you know, the rest is history. And people were like,

791
00:52:28,560 --> 00:52:31,520
Speaker 6: I love how people love to apply meaning to nonsense.

792
00:52:31,920 --> 00:52:33,120
Speaker 6: It's intrigued me for years.

793
00:52:33,320 --> 00:52:33,799
Speaker 1: So I.

794
00:52:35,360 --> 00:52:37,920
Speaker 6: Kind of abuse that a bit. Really, I like to

795
00:52:38,080 --> 00:52:39,080
Speaker 6: just be very vague.

796
00:52:39,320 --> 00:52:42,719
Speaker 9: When Badgers started to really like explode, I mean, how

797
00:52:42,760 --> 00:52:44,960
Speaker 9: does that feel as like the artist?

798
00:52:45,080 --> 00:52:47,240
Speaker 7: Does it feel like oh cool? Like there's this validation?

799
00:52:47,600 --> 00:52:49,239
Speaker 7: Is there pressure to make more? Like?

800
00:52:49,360 --> 00:52:49,640
Speaker 9: How do you?

801
00:52:50,320 --> 00:52:51,400
Speaker 7: Yeah? What was that like?

802
00:52:51,640 --> 00:52:55,319
Speaker 6: The first happened, it was very cool. I remember I'd

803
00:52:55,360 --> 00:52:58,160
Speaker 6: gone away for the weekend, so I wasn't near the

804
00:52:58,239 --> 00:53:01,760
Speaker 6: internet because I don't think why. I was widely popular

805
00:53:02,360 --> 00:53:04,040
Speaker 6: and I got back and I think it was like

806
00:53:04,200 --> 00:53:06,880
Speaker 6: fifty thousand views which at the time was huge for me.

807
00:53:07,880 --> 00:53:10,320
Speaker 6: And then it just kept going bigger and bigger and bigger,

808
00:53:10,360 --> 00:53:13,640
Speaker 6: and it was appearing everywhere, and it's like, wow, what

809
00:53:13,880 --> 00:53:15,800
Speaker 6: is going on? And I think at that point my

810
00:53:15,960 --> 00:53:19,759
Speaker 6: website costs just got ridiculous. That's hosting. Yeah, we were

811
00:53:19,880 --> 00:53:22,800
Speaker 6: on fancy hosts. I can't remember when we managed to

812
00:53:22,840 --> 00:53:25,560
Speaker 6: get adverts on the website, but for a while there

813
00:53:25,640 --> 00:53:27,960
Speaker 6: was nothing, and I had no idea of how to

814
00:53:28,040 --> 00:53:30,279
Speaker 6: monetize anything. So I'm just like, yeah, here you go.

815
00:53:31,160 --> 00:53:35,080
Speaker 9: Wow, okay, so yeah, I mean, how did you manage

816
00:53:35,160 --> 00:53:37,319
Speaker 9: to adjust that so that you could make a living?

817
00:53:37,400 --> 00:53:40,600
Speaker 9: I was always so curious was it possible to do

818
00:53:40,680 --> 00:53:43,279
Speaker 9: full time? I know now that it was, but like, yeah,

819
00:53:43,320 --> 00:53:44,359
Speaker 9: how did you make that work?

820
00:53:44,520 --> 00:53:47,760
Speaker 6: There are a lot more sensible people with business minds

821
00:53:47,920 --> 00:53:50,680
Speaker 6: who I hung around with on the internet, and again

822
00:53:51,000 --> 00:53:53,200
Speaker 6: it was a lot easier to collaborate with people in

823
00:53:53,320 --> 00:53:58,120
Speaker 6: many different ways. And one guy I knew knew another

824
00:53:58,239 --> 00:54:02,839
Speaker 6: guy and he was in advertising. What he said, well,

825
00:54:03,640 --> 00:54:07,440
Speaker 6: I'll set up an ad company online and we'll get you.

826
00:54:07,520 --> 00:54:10,840
Speaker 6: Certainly would go off and do deals and all that

827
00:54:11,040 --> 00:54:13,560
Speaker 6: sort of thing and find the banner rads. This was

828
00:54:13,880 --> 00:54:16,719
Speaker 6: pre ad sense as well. It was all very new

829
00:54:16,800 --> 00:54:21,000
Speaker 6: and exciting and odd, very like tied to the website.

830
00:54:21,080 --> 00:54:23,279
Speaker 6: Adverts would happen, so it was kind of fun. I

831
00:54:23,440 --> 00:54:24,040
Speaker 6: was all for it.

832
00:54:24,320 --> 00:54:27,080
Speaker 9: So as this video takes buff, you do a series

833
00:54:27,200 --> 00:54:32,400
Speaker 9: of it was also featured during a football championship.

834
00:54:32,520 --> 00:54:32,960
Speaker 7: Is that true?

835
00:54:33,200 --> 00:54:40,080
Speaker 6: Yes, fans were singing it wild Badgers. Yeah, it was crazy,

836
00:54:40,320 --> 00:54:42,600
Speaker 6: but there was a lot of good vibes in the

837
00:54:42,640 --> 00:54:45,799
Speaker 6: country at that point. I'm not deeply into football at all,

838
00:54:46,160 --> 00:54:47,800
Speaker 6: but that one got me. I seem to remember.

839
00:54:47,960 --> 00:54:50,640
Speaker 9: I'm always curious when it's like, oh, you became the

840
00:54:50,760 --> 00:54:53,880
Speaker 9: Badger's guy, right, did that sit well with you?

841
00:54:54,080 --> 00:54:55,480
Speaker 7: Or you're like, oh, I want to I.

842
00:54:55,560 --> 00:54:58,319
Speaker 9: Better make something else so I don't become the Badgers guy,

843
00:54:58,800 --> 00:55:02,719
Speaker 9: Like how did you you know, like creatively think about that.

844
00:55:03,840 --> 00:55:07,799
Speaker 6: I never really thought of that at all, because I'd

845
00:55:07,840 --> 00:55:11,040
Speaker 6: always be I'd always been making other stuff as it

846
00:55:11,160 --> 00:55:13,719
Speaker 6: went along anyway, So I was always I think, I

847
00:55:13,840 --> 00:55:15,800
Speaker 6: do weeble and Bob do Badges do?

848
00:55:16,440 --> 00:55:16,480
Speaker 8: It?

849
00:55:16,640 --> 00:55:20,320
Speaker 6: Never really could Now it's very clear that Badgers is

850
00:55:20,480 --> 00:55:23,800
Speaker 6: the one that everyone remembers. I never really thought of

851
00:55:23,880 --> 00:55:27,960
Speaker 6: myself as the Badger's guy until later on. Really, I'm

852
00:55:27,960 --> 00:55:30,400
Speaker 6: not sure I do now, to be honest, maybe it

853
00:55:30,440 --> 00:55:32,480
Speaker 6: doesn't sit well with me. Maybe this is what we

854
00:55:32,560 --> 00:55:34,799
Speaker 6: can take from this. I don't want to be it's

855
00:55:34,840 --> 00:55:37,440
Speaker 6: like Bart Simpson in that episode and or you know,

856
00:55:37,960 --> 00:55:40,759
Speaker 6: we've just got a duty catchphrase. I've always hated sort

857
00:55:40,760 --> 00:55:43,520
Speaker 6: of catch race humor and yet here well, but it's.

858
00:55:43,560 --> 00:55:47,560
Speaker 9: I want to you have built out like an expanded

859
00:55:47,760 --> 00:55:52,640
Speaker 9: universe of characters and works like before and since.

860
00:55:53,200 --> 00:55:57,719
Speaker 7: What is your favorite series of animations that you've made?

861
00:55:58,200 --> 00:56:01,080
Speaker 7: Series or I mean, doesn't have to be serious.

862
00:56:01,360 --> 00:56:05,080
Speaker 6: I think my favorite to D animation, if you're like

863
00:56:05,239 --> 00:56:08,279
Speaker 6: looking that way, probably be the Walk in the Woods one,

864
00:56:08,960 --> 00:56:11,840
Speaker 6: just because it amused me so much to do. What

865
00:56:12,040 --> 00:56:14,239
Speaker 6: if this happens and the bunny would come in and

866
00:56:14,280 --> 00:56:16,560
Speaker 6: then it pooped its way off screen and that was

867
00:56:16,640 --> 00:56:19,160
Speaker 6: going to be the end. But then I thought to myself,

868
00:56:19,520 --> 00:56:21,640
Speaker 6: well what if it isn't the end? So I had,

869
00:56:21,880 --> 00:56:24,279
Speaker 6: I had. I had a really good time making it,

870
00:56:24,360 --> 00:56:26,920
Speaker 6: so maybe that's part of why it's one of my favorites.

871
00:56:27,160 --> 00:56:29,960
Speaker 6: I think it came out pretty well exactly a few

872
00:56:30,000 --> 00:56:32,320
Speaker 6: things I really want to change, which is is pretty

873
00:56:32,320 --> 00:56:32,759
Speaker 6: good for me.

874
00:56:33,080 --> 00:56:37,560
Speaker 9: You started your own production company is does that change

875
00:56:37,600 --> 00:56:38,399
Speaker 9: the way you work?

876
00:56:38,480 --> 00:56:41,040
Speaker 7: Does it just expand it? Are you a boss now? Like?

877
00:56:41,440 --> 00:56:42,520
Speaker 7: How does that work?

878
00:56:42,840 --> 00:56:47,160
Speaker 6: I've always been a boss now, so it's kind of

879
00:56:47,360 --> 00:56:52,560
Speaker 6: It's just a comfortable space, really, I guess where someone

880
00:56:52,600 --> 00:56:56,399
Speaker 6: else deals with the business side of things and keeps

881
00:56:56,440 --> 00:56:59,279
Speaker 6: me under control, which is fantastic because I need that

882
00:56:59,640 --> 00:57:01,680
Speaker 6: my part and also joins him with writing and stuff.

883
00:57:02,040 --> 00:57:05,000
Speaker 6: It's very much a partnership now and I love it

884
00:57:05,080 --> 00:57:09,279
Speaker 6: to bits. I'd love to do like stuff external as well.

885
00:57:09,320 --> 00:57:12,960
Speaker 6: I'd love to be a director on something and just

886
00:57:13,120 --> 00:57:15,479
Speaker 6: be around people every now and again would be nice.

887
00:57:16,200 --> 00:57:18,160
Speaker 6: Twenty years in a room is quite a lot.

888
00:57:18,560 --> 00:57:21,560
Speaker 7: How is making stuff now for the Internet different than

889
00:57:21,600 --> 00:57:22,680
Speaker 7: it was when you started?

890
00:57:22,880 --> 00:57:25,560
Speaker 6: It's much harder to get noticed. I would do it

891
00:57:25,960 --> 00:57:29,200
Speaker 6: for everyone, and just because there was less people making

892
00:57:29,320 --> 00:57:32,200
Speaker 6: stuff initially, I would say, and now it's very easy,

893
00:57:32,480 --> 00:57:36,000
Speaker 6: which is great in many ways. The algorithmical changes, you

894
00:57:36,040 --> 00:57:39,520
Speaker 6: could talk about those endlessly, and whether that's interesting or not,

895
00:57:39,720 --> 00:57:42,680
Speaker 6: I don't know. The whole tailored search thing is a

896
00:57:42,760 --> 00:57:47,600
Speaker 6: huge bugbear of minds, Like there's not much natural growth

897
00:57:47,720 --> 00:57:50,200
Speaker 6: of things anymore, I would say, but maybe I'm just

898
00:57:50,280 --> 00:57:52,800
Speaker 6: doing it wrong. Maybe I'm an old guy in his

899
00:57:52,960 --> 00:57:58,560
Speaker 6: ways who can't really see the future anymore. My favorite thing, though,

900
00:57:58,640 --> 00:58:01,160
Speaker 6: is just I love problems solve and I love puzzles.

901
00:58:01,200 --> 00:58:04,520
Speaker 6: So changing with the software and that sort of side

902
00:58:04,560 --> 00:58:07,360
Speaker 6: of things it has been fantastic. I've taught myself blended

903
00:58:07,440 --> 00:58:11,280
Speaker 6: now and I'm loving that's sort of the creative tools

904
00:58:11,320 --> 00:58:13,360
Speaker 6: that we have at our fingertips now, Like from where

905
00:58:13,400 --> 00:58:16,680
Speaker 6: we were with Flash, which was it Okay, I guess

906
00:58:16,960 --> 00:58:19,880
Speaker 6: at times he served a purpose, but now we can

907
00:58:20,040 --> 00:58:21,560
Speaker 6: just do Oh, I want to do this and you

908
00:58:21,720 --> 00:58:24,480
Speaker 6: can do it. Madness that that's where we're at.

909
00:58:24,680 --> 00:58:28,400
Speaker 9: You started doing this because you wanted to problems off something,

910
00:58:28,560 --> 00:58:30,600
Speaker 9: so of course you've grown with the times.

911
00:58:30,880 --> 00:58:31,040
Speaker 1: Yeah.

912
00:58:31,040 --> 00:58:35,000
Speaker 6: I like surreality because life is surreal and I just

913
00:58:35,760 --> 00:58:37,720
Speaker 6: kind of look at things to go, oh, I'm now

914
00:58:37,760 --> 00:58:40,320
Speaker 6: going to poorly explain this part of life.

915
00:58:40,600 --> 00:58:43,560
Speaker 7: Is there anything that you haven't done?

916
00:58:43,640 --> 00:58:46,200
Speaker 9: Are there characters that you're like, oh, or just even

917
00:58:46,280 --> 00:58:48,400
Speaker 9: concepts you've wanted to get off the grounds for years

918
00:58:48,440 --> 00:58:51,080
Speaker 9: and it's like someday, someday.

919
00:58:52,080 --> 00:58:55,280
Speaker 6: Yeah, this is part of why I've been teaching myself blender.

920
00:58:55,480 --> 00:58:57,840
Speaker 6: There's two things I want to do I'm kind of

921
00:58:57,960 --> 00:59:02,880
Speaker 6: obsessed with. I realized that asking two D animators to

922
00:59:02,960 --> 00:59:05,360
Speaker 6: do what I wanted to do was just not fair

923
00:59:05,480 --> 00:59:07,560
Speaker 6: on anyone. The other thing is I want to do

924
00:59:07,680 --> 00:59:10,640
Speaker 6: a three D stage show for Sablonik with the sort

925
00:59:10,680 --> 00:59:14,160
Speaker 6: of Pepper's Ghost things. I've been working towards that, like

926
00:59:14,360 --> 00:59:18,600
Speaker 6: trying to do live motion capture all DIY and Indie.

927
00:59:19,000 --> 00:59:22,160
Speaker 6: So I'm getting there, but it's a slow road.

928
00:59:22,920 --> 00:59:23,680
Speaker 7: That's so quiet.

929
00:59:23,800 --> 00:59:26,120
Speaker 9: I wanted to ask you more about Savlonic because I

930
00:59:26,160 --> 00:59:30,400
Speaker 9: feel like that's like your you know, music, first project,

931
00:59:30,480 --> 00:59:32,400
Speaker 9: and I know you've released other stuff over the years,

932
00:59:32,440 --> 00:59:33,920
Speaker 9: but how did that come together?

933
00:59:34,000 --> 00:59:36,720
Speaker 7: When was it like the right time to start that project.

934
00:59:36,920 --> 00:59:40,120
Speaker 6: I think was the first one was two Thousand Nights

935
00:59:40,640 --> 00:59:43,040
Speaker 6: that it was meant to be a parody back then.

936
00:59:44,120 --> 00:59:46,960
Speaker 6: So the original songs are very silly, and over the

937
00:59:47,080 --> 00:59:51,440
Speaker 6: years they've grown up really and I think when we

938
00:59:51,560 --> 00:59:53,520
Speaker 6: finished this album, we all kind of looked at each

939
00:59:53,560 --> 00:59:56,320
Speaker 6: of them like this is a proper grown up adult album.

940
00:59:56,440 --> 00:59:59,040
Speaker 6: Now feels good. But I do love about the Internet

941
00:59:59,040 --> 01:00:01,080
Speaker 6: as well as like the fact that we've been given

942
01:00:01,160 --> 01:00:04,840
Speaker 6: the room to change from a silly band doing the

943
01:00:04,920 --> 01:00:10,200
Speaker 6: almost parodies to whatever they are now, or because all

944
01:00:10,280 --> 01:00:12,680
Speaker 6: these things are on the internet to let people do this,

945
01:00:13,200 --> 01:00:17,000
Speaker 6: it wouldn't have been possible. Like it's fantastic, like whenever

946
01:00:17,040 --> 01:00:19,200
Speaker 6: I'm down on myself and just like you know, I'm

947
01:00:19,280 --> 01:00:21,040
Speaker 6: very lucky. Really you've got all this stuff.

948
01:00:21,200 --> 01:00:22,920
Speaker 9: I wanted to touch on this just because it is

949
01:00:23,040 --> 01:00:27,480
Speaker 9: like such a weird fun thing in you in your catalog, brilliant.

950
01:00:27,520 --> 01:00:29,600
Speaker 9: Back to badgers for a second. I do want to

951
01:00:29,640 --> 01:00:33,560
Speaker 9: talk about save the Badger, Badger Badger from twenty thirteen.

952
01:00:34,160 --> 01:00:38,440
Speaker 7: What a singular? How did that come together?

953
01:00:39,000 --> 01:00:42,400
Speaker 6: Like most things, it's just odd things happen and you

954
01:00:42,560 --> 01:00:45,280
Speaker 6: kind of have to say, yes, I'll do that. That's

955
01:00:45,320 --> 01:00:48,800
Speaker 6: sounds ridiculous. I got Yeah, I got a phone call

956
01:00:48,880 --> 01:00:52,960
Speaker 6: from Brian May himself and he's looking to someone about

957
01:00:53,000 --> 01:00:57,040
Speaker 6: badgers and they was said, I'm paraphrasing a lot. You're

958
01:00:57,120 --> 01:00:59,720
Speaker 6: the badger guy to talk to. Do you want to

959
01:00:59,760 --> 01:01:02,440
Speaker 6: help save badgers? And of course yes I do. Well

960
01:01:02,480 --> 01:01:04,040
Speaker 6: I'd love to help out as well. What do you

961
01:01:04,160 --> 01:01:08,240
Speaker 6: see me doing on it? I think was what he said. Well,

962
01:01:08,280 --> 01:01:11,200
Speaker 6: your Brian mate, I assume you'll play guitar.

963
01:01:11,560 --> 01:01:14,600
Speaker 7: It's like, yeah, okay, and play guitar. He did, He did.

964
01:01:14,920 --> 01:01:17,040
Speaker 6: He enjoyed it as well. He had a good time.

965
01:01:17,520 --> 01:01:19,080
Speaker 7: It shred. It's so good.

966
01:01:20,160 --> 01:01:23,240
Speaker 6: He's quite a good guitar player, it turns out. But

967
01:01:23,320 --> 01:01:25,640
Speaker 6: I got to play around with like the master tapes

968
01:01:25,640 --> 01:01:28,440
Speaker 6: of flashcrdon as well, which is my favorite film of

969
01:01:28,520 --> 01:01:31,560
Speaker 6: all time, and I'm not joking. It's literally my favorite

970
01:01:31,560 --> 01:01:34,640
Speaker 6: film of all time. That was just magical for me.

971
01:01:35,080 --> 01:01:37,000
Speaker 7: Oh and then it seems like it was it was.

972
01:01:37,320 --> 01:01:39,640
Speaker 7: It was really well. It did exactly what he was hoping.

973
01:01:39,880 --> 01:01:42,760
Speaker 6: Just played in the House of Lords, which again is insane,

974
01:01:43,360 --> 01:01:46,240
Speaker 6: what is going on? But life is ridiculous, and it's

975
01:01:46,720 --> 01:01:50,800
Speaker 6: wonderful that this ridiculousness has been seen in ridiculous places.

976
01:01:51,360 --> 01:01:55,600
Speaker 9: Has that changed the like way you've interacted with the

977
01:01:55,680 --> 01:01:57,200
Speaker 9: internet as having kids to use it.

978
01:01:57,480 --> 01:02:00,320
Speaker 6: I was very aware of what the Internet was like

979
01:02:00,840 --> 01:02:05,680
Speaker 6: when they were growing up. For sure, they've been encouraged

980
01:02:05,680 --> 01:02:10,440
Speaker 6: to stay away from social media sites, but they're welcome

981
01:02:10,520 --> 01:02:13,680
Speaker 6: to like chat to their friends and all that. And

982
01:02:14,200 --> 01:02:17,680
Speaker 6: my daughter loves Pinterest. My son just loves gaming anyway,

983
01:02:17,800 --> 01:02:19,960
Speaker 6: so it's not He plays with his friends and they

984
01:02:20,080 --> 01:02:23,840
Speaker 6: chat to each other, so that it's quite a wall

985
01:02:23,960 --> 01:02:26,800
Speaker 6: garden Internet that their experience at the moment. I think

986
01:02:27,080 --> 01:02:29,680
Speaker 6: I'd like to think, so who knows what goes off? Really,

987
01:02:31,360 --> 01:02:34,960
Speaker 6: i'd like to they're very sensible, much more sensible than me,

988
01:02:35,760 --> 01:02:39,520
Speaker 6: which is wonderful to see. I do remember my mom

989
01:02:39,600 --> 01:02:43,560
Speaker 6: phoning me up once at work telling me she was

990
01:02:43,760 --> 01:02:47,600
Speaker 6: very disappointed in me about one of my cartoons. Oh

991
01:02:49,160 --> 01:02:50,920
Speaker 6: she's quite religious.

992
01:02:51,000 --> 01:02:55,880
Speaker 9: My parents, how they Well, that's actually that's that's the

993
01:02:56,000 --> 01:02:59,400
Speaker 9: question I should have asked you is because you're, you know,

994
01:02:59,800 --> 01:03:04,000
Speaker 9: like one of the first waves of those.

995
01:03:03,880 --> 01:03:07,240
Speaker 7: Kind of like super absurd cartoons on the Internet. Yeah,

996
01:03:07,320 --> 01:03:08,920
Speaker 7: how did your family receive that?

997
01:03:10,680 --> 01:03:14,760
Speaker 6: I've tried to just say to them, this isn't for

998
01:03:14,920 --> 01:03:18,440
Speaker 6: you who don't watch everyone and again there will be

999
01:03:18,480 --> 01:03:20,480
Speaker 6: one I can go you can watch this one, that's

1000
01:03:20,560 --> 01:03:23,200
Speaker 6: fine for you, but yeah, general is like, it's not

1001
01:03:23,400 --> 01:03:28,520
Speaker 6: for you, please don't watch as my main Yeah, that's

1002
01:03:29,120 --> 01:03:32,280
Speaker 6: that's what I'll say. And generally they don't watch. But

1003
01:03:32,480 --> 01:03:35,640
Speaker 6: my mom is quite proud of me, like you'll tell

1004
01:03:35,720 --> 01:03:36,760
Speaker 6: her friend, oh he does this.

1005
01:03:37,920 --> 01:03:41,120
Speaker 9: And I guess my last question to kind of dovetails

1006
01:03:41,160 --> 01:03:43,480
Speaker 9: with talking about your kids relationship with the internet.

1007
01:03:43,880 --> 01:03:48,680
Speaker 7: How has your relationship to both like the Internet and

1008
01:03:49,400 --> 01:03:52,760
Speaker 7: the work you two. How is it change, Like, how

1009
01:03:52,920 --> 01:03:55,960
Speaker 7: is distributing art on the internet changed for you?

1010
01:03:56,280 --> 01:03:59,840
Speaker 6: I mean everything's become a lot more sort of homogenized, really,

1011
01:04:00,080 --> 01:04:04,680
Speaker 6: So don't have you work popping up on like Albino,

1012
01:04:04,800 --> 01:04:08,200
Speaker 6: Black Sheep and ebombs and all that stuff. It's generally

1013
01:04:08,440 --> 01:04:10,920
Speaker 6: it's on YouTube and that's where everyone goes, or it's

1014
01:04:10,960 --> 01:04:14,280
Speaker 6: on TikTok and that's where everyone goes. I can't stand

1015
01:04:14,360 --> 01:04:19,360
Speaker 6: this vertical video from it, but that's you know, I've

1016
01:04:19,400 --> 01:04:22,280
Speaker 6: got someone who does it for me. They're doing really well.

1017
01:04:22,480 --> 01:04:25,720
Speaker 6: I have no idea how they're doing it or what

1018
01:04:25,880 --> 01:04:29,080
Speaker 6: they're doing. I don't want to know. I concentrate fully

1019
01:04:29,160 --> 01:04:31,080
Speaker 6: on the YouTuber. It's like this is how I want

1020
01:04:31,200 --> 01:04:33,720
Speaker 6: my heart to be seeing. Thank y. Yes, I've become

1021
01:04:33,880 --> 01:04:37,560
Speaker 6: kind of nobby about that. It spent ages with the

1022
01:04:38,440 --> 01:04:41,280
Speaker 6: zab Lonic video just making the red slightly less red

1023
01:04:41,320 --> 01:04:44,160
Speaker 6: so it wouldn't look look pixelated on YouTube. But again

1024
01:04:44,240 --> 01:04:46,720
Speaker 6: that's problem solving again, I guess. So it all comes

1025
01:04:46,800 --> 01:04:49,120
Speaker 6: back to there's a problem, let's fix that.

1026
01:04:49,480 --> 01:04:50,920
Speaker 7: For It's just different problems.

1027
01:04:51,640 --> 01:04:54,960
Speaker 6: Yeah, always new problems. Always be scared that's my motto.

1028
01:04:55,600 --> 01:04:58,440
Speaker 1: Thank you so so much to John D. Picking, not

1029
01:04:58,680 --> 01:05:01,320
Speaker 1: just for his amazing work of the years, but for

1030
01:05:01,640 --> 01:05:06,760
Speaker 1: patiently tolerating my traumatized bronchias voice. You can follow his

1031
01:05:06,880 --> 01:05:09,800
Speaker 1: work at the links in the description, and I really

1032
01:05:09,840 --> 01:05:14,440
Speaker 1: hope you do. Johnty is a breed of Internet artists

1033
01:05:14,520 --> 01:05:18,480
Speaker 1: that I worry that we won't get more of in

1034
01:05:18,560 --> 01:05:23,760
Speaker 1: a landscape that is increasingly driven by algorithms. And while

1035
01:05:23,800 --> 01:05:27,800
Speaker 1: there were certainly trends during this era of online video

1036
01:05:27,920 --> 01:05:31,280
Speaker 1: that we were talking about today, there was also room

1037
01:05:31,440 --> 01:05:34,520
Speaker 1: for experimentation in a way that I find to be

1038
01:05:34,680 --> 01:05:38,360
Speaker 1: way more limited now. And this criticism scales out to

1039
01:05:38,480 --> 01:05:43,080
Speaker 1: mainstream media too, so many experimental shows are being pushed

1040
01:05:43,120 --> 01:05:46,240
Speaker 1: out of production in favor of what is perceived as

1041
01:05:46,280 --> 01:05:49,720
Speaker 1: a sure thing with wide appeal. And when it comes

1042
01:05:49,760 --> 01:05:52,760
Speaker 1: to work that appeals to young people, that seems to

1043
01:05:52,840 --> 01:05:56,440
Speaker 1: me in a lot more emphasis on trend following than

1044
01:05:56,560 --> 01:06:00,600
Speaker 1: any encouragement to experiment or try something weird and new.

1045
01:06:01,400 --> 01:06:04,840
Speaker 1: I really hope I'm wrong, because I think every kid

1046
01:06:05,640 --> 01:06:11,520
Speaker 1: deserves their looping jaunt picking Badger's video, So jaunt Picking

1047
01:06:12,000 --> 01:06:16,720
Speaker 1: your time will never be over. But Badgers your sixteenth

1048
01:06:16,760 --> 01:06:22,680
Speaker 1: minute ends. Now, okay, here's your moment of fun. Grant

1049
01:06:23,200 --> 01:06:26,360
Speaker 1: really in his element here doing some strong bad impressions

1050
01:06:26,920 --> 01:06:29,960
Speaker 1: and giving me a headache. I can't tell you why,

1051
01:06:30,160 --> 01:06:32,880
Speaker 1: but that cartoon it really makes me mad.

1052
01:06:33,320 --> 01:06:33,760
Speaker 7: Here it is.

1053
01:06:35,600 --> 01:06:39,560
Speaker 5: Wow, holy sixteen minutes of fame for Hope star Water.

1054
01:06:39,880 --> 01:06:40,919
Speaker 5: What a great time?

1055
01:06:42,000 --> 01:06:42,120
Speaker 7: Is that?

1056
01:06:42,280 --> 01:06:42,720
Speaker 5: Pretty good?

1057
01:06:43,320 --> 01:06:50,200
Speaker 1: I don't know. I wouldn't watch it. Sixteenth minute as

1058
01:06:50,240 --> 01:06:53,520
Speaker 1: a production of Whole Zone Media and iheardwod apps. It

1059
01:06:53,640 --> 01:06:57,120
Speaker 1: is written, posted, and produced by me, Jamie Loftus. Our

1060
01:06:57,160 --> 01:07:00,720
Speaker 1: executive producers are Sophie Lickderman and Robert Evans. He amazing.

1061
01:07:00,800 --> 01:07:05,080
Speaker 1: Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor. Our

1062
01:07:05,240 --> 01:07:09,320
Speaker 1: theme song is by Sad thirteen. Voice acting is from Grant,

1063
01:07:09,440 --> 01:07:12,800
Speaker 1: Crater and Pet. Shout outs to our dog producer Anderson,

1064
01:07:13,000 --> 01:07:15,400
Speaker 1: my Kat's Flee and Casper and my pet rock Bert,

1065
01:07:15,520 --> 01:07:17,400
Speaker 1: who will outlive us all. Bye