Speaker 1: Cool Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, sixteenth Minute listeners. Jamie here and we have one
Speaker 2: more weekly episode of Sixteenth Minute next week before we're
Speaker 2: going on a short hiatus. We will be coming back
Speaker 2: in the summer with a brand new season.
Speaker 3: But before we go, my book Raw Dog is out
Speaker 3: in paperback too today and today I am on tour
Speaker 3: starting literally the moment this episode comes out, So for one.
Speaker 4: Last time, I want to remind you this is where
Speaker 4: I'm going to be, with more dates to be added
Speaker 4: in the summer during full Hot Dog season. But if
Speaker 4: you are in the following cities in the days to come,
Speaker 4: this is where I'll be. Tonight, May thirteenth, I will
Speaker 4: be in Los Angeles at North Fig Bookshop. Tomorrow May fourteenth,
Speaker 4: I will be in Louisville, Kentucky at Carmichael's Bookstore. May fifteenth,
Speaker 4: I will be in Cambridge, Massachusetts at Cambridge.
Speaker 1: Public Library with Tory Bedford. May nineteenth, I will be
Speaker 1: in Portland, Maine with my friend Maya Williams at Longfellow Books.
Speaker 1: May twentieth, I will be in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania at Midtown
Speaker 1: Scholar Bookstore. May twenty first, I'll be in Richmond, Virginia
Speaker 1: at Fountain Bookstore. May twenty second, I will be in Pataluma,
Speaker 1: California at Copperfields Books. And May thirty first, I will
Speaker 1: be in Larkspur, California at the Marin Country Mart. And
Speaker 1: that is just to start. All of these events are free,
Speaker 1: so there are a few places you have to sign up,
Speaker 1: so just check the link in the description and I
Speaker 1: hope to see you soon and welcome to the Badger Zone.
Speaker 1: Some of our planet's most defining moments are the results
Speaker 1: of years, centuries of concerted effort, a singular vision willed
Speaker 1: into reality, and others are complete fucking mistakes. My favorite
Speaker 1: example of this is from the late nineteen twenties. In
Speaker 1: a science lab in London, a certain doctor and I
Speaker 1: won't say who because it gives it away to all
Speaker 1: you dorks. So let's just say a certain doctor went
Speaker 1: on vacation and like many people who just got back
Speaker 1: from vacation, he had left his station at work a
Speaker 1: complete mess. But scientists don't have desks like mine covered
Speaker 1: in coke zero bottles and collectible minions figurines. Scientists have
Speaker 1: workspaces that, if left untidy, can become dangerous ecosystems. What
Speaker 1: was on this doctor's desk was a collection of petrie
Speaker 1: dishes that contained bacteria in them, which, now that I
Speaker 1: say it, could actually describe my desk at varying times
Speaker 1: depending on which dishes were left on them. But when
Speaker 1: it's a scientist, the bacteria is there, at least intentionally,
Speaker 1: and in these petrie dishes were I'm going to try
Speaker 1: to read it staff O lock Cook. Nuphilophagus a bacteria
Speaker 1: that causes abscess's sore throat and boils, probably something that
Speaker 1: the scientists should have rinsed out before going on vacation,
Speaker 1: But in this case it was world changing that he
Speaker 1: was a slob because in one of these dishes a
Speaker 1: mold had grown that appeared to be killing this nepholophagus bacteria.
Speaker 1: The doctor took notice of this and told his assistants, who,
Speaker 1: instead of calling him disgusting, began to examine the mold,
Speaker 1: identifying it as something that very well may have saved
Speaker 1: your life a few times over. That is, if you've
Speaker 1: ever gotten an ear infection, pneumonia, strep, throat boils, syphilis, gonorrhea,
Speaker 1: meningitis a UTI, or a gastro intestinal infection, which probably
Speaker 1: you have. This slab's name was doctor Alexander Fleming, and
Speaker 1: his disgusting vacation mold was penicillin.
Speaker 5: Filling battles with the medium and which will grow the
Speaker 5: mold that produces penicillin Canadian.
Speaker 6: I'd put of this amazing drug.
Speaker 5: Perhaps the medical discovery of the war has been greatly increased.
Speaker 1: It was a beautiful accident, one that was motivated by chance,
Speaker 1: But it would not be the most beautiful mistake to
Speaker 1: ever happen in the United Kingdom, No, dear listener, That
Speaker 1: would not happen until two thousand and three. Two thousand
Speaker 1: and three, in the year of Our Lord's School of
Speaker 1: Rock and the best season of Gilmour Girls. In my opinion,
Speaker 1: the product of another beautiful accident hit the Internet and
Speaker 1: inspired not a medical miracle, but something even more powerful.
Speaker 1: Johunt Picking was already a successful animator in the early
Speaker 1: two thousands, but what most motivated him in his work
Speaker 1: was finding new animation techniques that solved a technological problem
Speaker 1: he was having. And in the two thousands, there was
Speaker 1: no shortage of problems that came with distributing independent animation
Speaker 1: on the Internet. In the days where buffering times could
Speaker 1: be the difference between your work being seen or not.
Speaker 1: When compressing a file could be the difference between being
Speaker 1: able to afford to host your work or not. Jounty
Speaker 1: took it upon himself to make animations that were memorable, musical,
Speaker 1: and very fucking funny, and one day he cracked it.
Speaker 1: What better way to create the illusion of a longer
Speaker 1: animation than creating something that was a perfect loop, a
Speaker 1: content or a boris if you will, one that hit
Speaker 1: his target audience intentionally or not. People who would play
Speaker 1: this loop until their parents threatened to shoot them with
Speaker 1: a harpoon gun. It was a piece of art that
Speaker 1: wasn't a mistake to make, but was born from a
Speaker 1: problem solving stance and became a masterpiece, a piece of
Speaker 1: art that inspired a generation of middle schoolers to be
Speaker 1: more annoying than you could possibly imagine. The cartoon in
Speaker 1: question was a simple one, a looping one pulled from
Speaker 1: earlier Internet hits like real ones will know peanut butter
Speaker 1: jelly time. But the colors in Jaunty's animation, though, are distinct.
Speaker 1: It's imagery direct, its joke, perfectly calibrated to the senses
Speaker 1: of a tween. It consists of three images and if
Speaker 1: I'm evangelizing, and I am a holy trinity of images
Speaker 1: of badgers, of mushrooms, and of snakes. It is this
Speaker 1: cartoon that I feel is the penicillin of Internet flash animation.
Speaker 1: All this delivered at sugar rush level speeds. On September third,
Speaker 1: two thousand and three, a legend was born. Room Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger,
Speaker 1: Mushroom aka mister Weeble aka John d Picking. Your sixteenth
Speaker 1: Minute starts now that joy.
Speaker 2: Time say it than.
Speaker 7: Sixteen sixteen sixteen.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to sixteenth Minute, the podcast where we take
Speaker 1: a look back at the main characters of the Internet,
Speaker 1: see how their moment in the spotlight affected them and
Speaker 1: what that says about us and the Internet. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jamie loftus in to round out our first year of
Speaker 1: sixteenth Minute, where we've talked about a new Internet character
Speaker 1: of the day every week, I wanted to revisit an
Speaker 1: artist of the early Internet who was and is one
Speaker 1: of my favorites, the one and only Weeble or English
Speaker 1: animator Jaunty Picking, the mind behind some of the Internet's
Speaker 1: most enduring flash animation classics and an artist whose work
Speaker 1: encapsulated feeling like your favorite Internet cartoon was the best
Speaker 1: kept secret in the world. And yes, of course we
Speaker 1: spoke to the man himself. What do you take me for?
Speaker 1: This video first became popular when I was in late
Speaker 1: elementary early middle school, and was as popular as an
Speaker 1: online video could be with a fifth grader at this time,
Speaker 1: So of course it could be seen as a little
Speaker 1: bit annoying, but that was so much of the early Internet,
Speaker 1: right And I say that with love. Hashtag random humor
Speaker 1: is always going to be popular with the middle school set,
Speaker 1: but hashtag random humor was kind of popular with everyone
Speaker 1: around the time of this video's release, at least everyone
Speaker 1: who would dare step foot in a hot topic at
Speaker 1: the mall. And I'm not pulling from anything scientific here,
Speaker 1: but during the Bush into the Obama years, there was
Speaker 1: this strain of comedy among gen X and millennials that
Speaker 1: would rightfully come to be considered cringe. It's parodied quite
Speaker 1: a bit. So I just did a thing, and what
Speaker 1: intarnation could that be? He might ask. I bought pumpkin
Speaker 1: chocolate chip muffins in true hufflepuff fashion, but cringe is
Speaker 1: not exclusive to any particular generation. Gen Z is slowly
Speaker 1: learning that their brand of random humor by way of
Speaker 1: nihilism is going to be considered cringe by younger people
Speaker 1: as well, even Gen Alpha, who will one day have
Speaker 1: to answer for skibbity toilet. I do kind of like
Speaker 1: to think that there will be a Jamie coated Jen
Speaker 1: Alpha thirty year old one day intellectualizing skivity toilet, and
Speaker 1: I bet they'll be great at it. The point is
Speaker 1: that no one is immune here. Even gen X's most
Speaker 1: famous comedic legacy, down to the little voices that tend
Speaker 1: to appear in all of these videos, started as one
Speaker 1: of the first viral videos ever in the early nineties,
Speaker 1: South Park's Jesus versus Santa. You know, I don't think
Speaker 1: that was the real zena guise, Oh no shit, Sherlock. Yes.
Speaker 1: South Park began as a popular video e card before
Speaker 1: moving to TV on Comedy Central. So while I know
Speaker 1: that every generation thinks that they were the one to
Speaker 1: invent random humor that appeals to twelve year olds, this
Speaker 1: goes back to your parents, and we're going to jump
Speaker 1: in to this story. The story of Jahunt Picking as
Speaker 1: a twenty seven year old English tech guy with a
Speaker 1: lot of weird energy and experimentation bounce aground in the
Speaker 1: early two thousands in just a moment. But before we do,
Speaker 1: Jahunty's deserved success needs a bit of grounding, a bit
Speaker 1: of new grounding, one might even say. In two thousands,
Speaker 1: internet culture and the way that home computing democratized extremely
Speaker 1: silly art and building up skills in enthusiasts who would
Speaker 1: use the Internet to become artists in their own right.
Speaker 1: So come with me if you dare to the early
Speaker 1: two thousands Internet. By two thousand and three, the increase
Speaker 1: in Internet use in people's homes continued to rise in
Speaker 1: the US, reaching sixty percent of households according to the
Speaker 1: Census Bureau, doubling from less than ten years before. This
Speaker 1: was the year that my neopad's account was hacked and
Speaker 1: all one million of my neopoints were stolen, leading me
Speaker 1: to leave the website, only to return when my dad died.
Speaker 1: And now I have seventeen million neopoints. I'm talking two
Speaker 1: thousand and three. The Internet of loud, primary colors, of
Speaker 1: dial up tones and buffering, of defragmenting a desktop every
Speaker 1: two weeks in the hopes that your mom wouldn't ban
Speaker 1: you from neopets because it was allegedly breaking the computer.
Speaker 1: And as that Internet access continued to grow, as these
Speaker 1: massive machines migrated into homes and libraries and schools, it
Speaker 1: really was Prina bund.
Speaker 6: Of Gelatine rena bund.
Speaker 1: Of gelatine on the dial up Internet. It would be
Speaker 1: completely impossible to cover all of the sites and programs
Speaker 1: that defined this era. So the things I'm going to
Speaker 1: focus on here that had a hand not only in
Speaker 1: Jaunty picking slash Weebel's success, but also with much of
Speaker 1: the Flash Animation generational standbys we still talk about is
Speaker 1: Flash Animation itself and the website new Grounds. Okay, Grandma,
Speaker 1: go to bed, No, it's time to talk about Flash Animation.
Speaker 1: Flash Animation was a program that became extremely popular in
Speaker 1: the mid to late nineteen nineties and was this consumer
Speaker 1: software that made it possible for at home users to
Speaker 1: create their own amateurish animation in a very particular style,
Speaker 1: very flat but more fluid than illustrating frames by hand.
Speaker 1: The esthetic was high contrast, bright, often with noticeably bad
Speaker 1: audio if you made it at home, because there wasn't
Speaker 1: really a consumer equivalent of audio equipment at this time,
Speaker 1: and while software made it much easier to create low
Speaker 1: budget animation at home than it once did, it was
Speaker 1: mainly used in TV in these early years. Some notable
Speaker 1: early examples were on shows like Ren and Stimpy, The
Speaker 1: Powerpuff Girls, Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, and later on
Speaker 1: shows like My Little Pony, Friendship Is Magic, and Smiling Friends.
Speaker 1: These shows all share common aesthetics, if not character design itself.
Speaker 1: They were clearly digitally animated and usually brightly colored. But
Speaker 1: flash wouldn't really break through to the everyday Internet user
Speaker 1: until a few years later, largely in part because the
Speaker 1: general online streaming speed wasn't fast enough to load these
Speaker 1: kinds of animation without significant difficulty sidebar, but important, Flash
Speaker 1: animation also needed the aesthetic of the Internet to catch
Speaker 1: up to its aesthetic, something that was largely assisted by
Speaker 1: the introduction of the looping gift I'm not saying, Jeff
Speaker 1: sorry in nineteen ninety five, where the Internet mainly consisted
Speaker 1: of text prior to that time, kind of this big
Speaker 1: digital book, particularly when it came to self generated websites
Speaker 1: and blogs. The wide dissemination of gifts made it possible
Speaker 1: for everyday people to add little looping animations to their sites.
Speaker 1: Think virtually every angel Fire fan site lurking in the
Speaker 1: back of your mind, Think of and maybe I'm dating
Speaker 1: myself here, and I know I am those blingy online
Speaker 1: paper dolls where you could make your little brat's looking
Speaker 1: dolls sparkle on an eternity loop Nut butter jellty Peanut
Speaker 1: butter jelly time literally is just a looping gift of
Speaker 1: a dancing banana accompanied by music. In twenty twenty, flash
Speaker 1: animation plugins were discontinued, to the dismay of many early
Speaker 1: Internet natives, even if the slow fade of the technology
Speaker 1: kind of made sense. But in the early two thousands
Speaker 1: into the twenty tens, Flash was king and was both
Speaker 1: a major generator of culture for kids and launched a
Speaker 1: lot of careers for animators that may not have had
Speaker 1: access to the big studios or the ability to make
Speaker 1: their own work without this tool, which brings us to
Speaker 1: the big daddy, big Daddy of flash animation, one that
Speaker 1: took advantage of increasing Internet speeds and however unintentionally had
Speaker 1: a hand in curating how animation online is upvoted and
Speaker 1: curated today New groundress. If you were on the internet
Speaker 1: when cartoons like Badgers were spreading like wildfire and sending
Speaker 1: parents into constant spirals of you're putting viruses on the computer,
Speaker 1: you had a very specific attachment to a very specific
Speaker 1: piece of flash animation. For me, obviously it's Badgers and
Speaker 1: it's my podcast, so we're talking about that. But maybe
Speaker 1: for you it was salad fingers. Hello, I like stay spoons,
Speaker 1: I like to touch them. Or statistically, if you're any
Speaker 1: man I've dated in my entire life, it is certainly
Speaker 1: home Star Runner.
Speaker 6: A wait full of pancakes in the championship, I'd like
Speaker 6: to see a chuah.
Speaker 1: I'm serious. My fiance is the smartest person that I know,
Speaker 1: and yet he was born in nineteen ninety five, and therefore,
Speaker 1: if Homestar Runner comes up, he instantly becomes the most
Speaker 1: annoying person I've ever met. Okay, Grant, Yes, I'm going
Speaker 1: to give you fifteen seconds to explain the appeal of
Speaker 1: Homestar Runner. You ready, yes? Okay? Three? Two one.
Speaker 5: It felt like a secret, like you had to find
Speaker 5: it out from a friend on the playground, and it
Speaker 5: had the humor of sort of witty simpson esque writing,
Speaker 5: but it felt accessible and you could actually write into
Speaker 5: it was interactive. It was an early proto interactive.
Speaker 1: I really thought you were going to do the voice.
Speaker 1: I'll give you a bonus five seconds.
Speaker 8: An extra five seconds to do in a strong, bad voice.
Speaker 6: I'll take it every time.
Speaker 1: Gee, you're done, You're done.
Speaker 5: Hold on, you gotta do a better home star. I
Speaker 5: gotta do a better home start four seconds?
Speaker 6: WHOA come on.
Speaker 1: Another element I've noticed is that original music is a
Speaker 1: big part of what separated the flash animation Wheat from
Speaker 1: the chaff. Here and Badgers is a great example of
Speaker 1: that because, as we'll talk about, John dy Picking was
Speaker 1: a musician first and animator second, a quality that he
Speaker 1: was not alone in. David Firth, the creator of Salad Fingers,
Speaker 1: was also a musician first, as was Neil Csariga of
Speaker 1: Potter Puppet Palace fame. And the marriage of a distinct
Speaker 1: online visual with music makes a lot of difference, especially
Speaker 1: the further back you go. But flash animation wasn't limited
Speaker 1: to these short narrative cartoons. It was also games. There
Speaker 1: is just as much of a culture around young game
Speaker 1: developers making early experimental or silly work in flash and
Speaker 1: gaming as there are in narrative animators. Okay, this is
Speaker 1: becoming a young millennial endoored kid circle jerk. So if
Speaker 1: you exist outside of those bounds, I'm going to try
Speaker 1: to calcify the appeal of this style of animation. It
Speaker 1: was funny, sure, but internet animation was funny in a
Speaker 1: different way than what you enjoyed on TV. It's like
Speaker 1: Grant was saying in his impassioned endorsement of Homestar Runner,
Speaker 1: a lot of Internet cultures still felt like a secret
Speaker 1: to a lot of kids at this time, and while
Speaker 1: things like Badgers would become hugely successful, it wasn't the
Speaker 1: kind of hugely successful that your parents would immediately understand
Speaker 1: the reference to. And this feeling of secrecy and exclusivity
Speaker 1: has carried on into the animation culture that exists online
Speaker 1: in the last ten years, even as the popularity of
Speaker 1: online animation has waned. I am literally living proof of this.
Speaker 1: It was this generation of animators that later motivated me
Speaker 1: to make my own jolty absurdist cartoons. Hi, I'm off
Speaker 1: as a crimes and I'm off as a get on
Speaker 1: the ground, Aweya the Boss and pd Zamboni Crimes Division.
Speaker 1: That joint is called Bosting PD Zamboni Crimes Division link
Speaker 1: in description unless you're scared. And animators like Jaunty Picking
Speaker 1: and other early pioneers like my personal favorites Brad Neelye
Speaker 1: and Amy Winfrey of Making Fiends really did create a
Speaker 1: pathway for a lot of what would inform the next
Speaker 1: generation of animated entertainment. But I'm not saying that the
Speaker 1: existence of flash animation meant there were absolutely no barriers
Speaker 1: to who could make something special online, because you'll notice
Speaker 1: that most of the people I've cited, including John T.
Speaker 1: Picking himself, were at the time they became famous, young
Speaker 1: white men who came from at least middle class backgrounds.
Speaker 1: And while the Internet has obviously become more widely available
Speaker 1: over the years, early adaptation to home computing was largely
Speaker 1: informed by class, meaning that financially privileged, disproportionately white families
Speaker 1: were the first to get the big, monstrous gateways in
Speaker 1: their homes. And add that to the highly gendered way
Speaker 1: in which tech jobs are still viewed with As recently
Speaker 1: as three years ago, over ninety percent of American software
Speaker 1: developing jobs held by men, and you know, white patriarchy.
Speaker 1: It even affects Badger Mushroom. In the early two thousands,
Speaker 1: most animators would have to lure viewers to their personal
Speaker 1: websites time and time again to maintain viewership because there
Speaker 1: was no YouTube yet. There was no BuzzFeed clickbait culture.
Speaker 1: There were no automated feeds. There were just shared links
Speaker 1: on blogs and very little else in terms of pulling
Speaker 1: a random middle schooler into your artistic vision, which is
Speaker 1: where the website new Grounds comes in, and for the
Speaker 1: purposes of this story, two of the most successful forum
Speaker 1: slash video sharing slash have you seen this one? Prototypical
Speaker 1: sites that would eventually give way to sites like Reddit.
Speaker 1: New Grounds was the big one, Although there were many
Speaker 1: imitators and successful ones at that You might remember names
Speaker 1: like Albino, Black Sheep, Ebombsworld, smash dot Com, to name
Speaker 1: a few, but it seems pretty commonly decided upon by
Speaker 1: Internet historians that the new Grounds was where most now
Speaker 1: iconic flash animation originally found its footing. I only ever
Speaker 1: knew new Grounds as a website prior to researching this episode,
Speaker 1: but it turns out that it's even more of a
Speaker 1: gen x endeavor than I ever realized because new Grounds
Speaker 1: actually began all the way back in the early nineteen
Speaker 1: nineties as a physical fanzine for something called Neo Geo
Speaker 1: that I've never heard of, but it was founded by
Speaker 1: a then thirteen year old boy named Tom Fulp, who
Speaker 1: eventually converted the zine into a website in nineteen ninety five.
Speaker 1: But as time went on, what made new Grounds special
Speaker 1: was that their greatest successes were both user generated and
Speaker 1: originally hand curated by Tom Fulp and his brother. The
Speaker 1: site started taking off in the late nineties into the
Speaker 1: early two thousands, with Tom expanding from his own fan
Speaker 1: cartoons into originally submission based content that ended up costing
Speaker 1: the then college student upwards of one thousand dollars a
Speaker 1: month to continue hosting. He shockingly managed to break even
Speaker 1: as the site grew more popular by selling old school
Speaker 1: banner ads, but the cartoon violence that was all but
Speaker 1: inherent to this era of flash animation Joy.
Speaker 6: Candy Mountain, oh like Mine Candy.
Speaker 1: Mountain, would sometimes make it difficult to sell said ads,
Speaker 1: But like so many sites before and since, new Grounds
Speaker 1: both lost money and became really popular at the same time,
Speaker 1: this was still very much the era of being paid
Speaker 1: in exposure, being paid in just happy to be here,
Speaker 1: an era that the Internet will never give up on.
Speaker 1: But like most sites with generational poll, new Grounds didn't
Speaker 1: last forever in terms of cultural poll, nor did animation,
Speaker 1: but their legacy is genuinely important to some of the
Speaker 1: most successful platforms today. There's no doubt that early YouTube
Speaker 1: and other user uploaded sites, the same sites that alternatively
Speaker 1: turn people into fascists and create compelling six hour video
Speaker 1: essays about video games I've never heard of. We're taking
Speaker 1: cues from the community building and viral techniques that came
Speaker 1: together on sites like new Grounds. Just before new Grounds
Speaker 1: and all of its imitators became the Western middle schoolers
Speaker 1: de facto destination for annoying cartoons to talk loudly about
Speaker 1: in algebra class, a star was born and he had
Speaker 1: a really fun character designed for a dancing badger. Okay, class,
Speaker 1: When we come back, we're talking johnt picking. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to sixteenth minute, the show where we compare the Badger
Speaker 1: Badger mushroom video to the invention of penicillin. Happy to
Speaker 1: have you here, and now that you're fully thrown back
Speaker 1: or caught up on the state of flash animation in
Speaker 1: the early two thousands, we can jump into the story
Speaker 1: of one Jaunt Picking aka mister Weeble aka the Badger
Speaker 1: Badger Mushroom Guy, but make no mistake that was far
Speaker 1: from his earliest hit. Like I mentioned earlier, a lot
Speaker 1: of his independent work would continue to blow up once
Speaker 1: it was re uploaded onto more curated sites like new
Speaker 1: Grounds and Ebomb's World and eventually read it years after
Speaker 1: their original publishing, and then would blow up again when
Speaker 1: they were re uploaded to YouTube, where Johunty Picking's new
Speaker 1: work still ends up today. So who is this guy?
Speaker 1: Johnty was born in nineteen seventy five in what he
Speaker 1: describes as a very boring suburb in South Yorkshire, England,
Speaker 1: and was a kid who was really into both music
Speaker 1: and technology, both of which would go on to heavily
Speaker 1: inform his work. I'll let him tell you more in
Speaker 1: the interview, but at the time he began experimenting on
Speaker 1: flash animation, Johnty was working primarily as a sound engineer
Speaker 1: in his early to mid twenties, and he would actually
Speaker 1: go on to work in visual effects on the Resident
Speaker 1: Evil movie in two thousand and three. Same year as
Speaker 1: Badger's big year for Johnty, But in his twenties in
Speaker 1: the late nineties, Johnty was a multi hyphenate with too
Speaker 1: many passions to fully throw himself into. He really loved
Speaker 1: music and sound design, but he also really loved messing
Speaker 1: around with animated visuals and in a skill I am
Speaker 1: so envious of. He had both a great sense of
Speaker 1: humor and the ability to solve artistic problems with incredible
Speaker 1: scientific precision. And it was from a technical problem he
Speaker 1: was having at work while working in digital media that
Speaker 1: we got john Ty's first successful animated hit, a series
Speaker 1: called Weeble and Bob. There they are the little voices again.
Speaker 1: Weeble and Bob was a series of simply animated cartoons
Speaker 1: by Johnty following the titular characters who are literally wobbling,
Speaker 1: talking eggs yapping against a hot pink background every single time.
Speaker 1: The bigger egg Weebel Bull is obsessed with pie and
Speaker 1: his best friend, the smaller egg Bob bobertson random alert,
Speaker 1: is his best friend who also loves pie.
Speaker 8: This is a.
Speaker 1: Clip from the first Weebel and Bob short from the
Speaker 1: early two thousands, Simply titled Hi.
Speaker 6: Yeah Pa.
Speaker 1: It's set against that bright magenta background, and we see
Speaker 1: both eggs rocking gently back and forth and chatting unintelligibly.
Speaker 1: If you recognize the voice, it's because both of these
Speaker 1: eggs are voiced by Jahunty Picking, who also voices the
Speaker 1: Badger video. And the only way you ever really know
Speaker 1: what Weevil or Bob is saying is by reading the
Speaker 1: caption speech bubbles that come out of them. The Weebel
Speaker 1: and Bob shorts were very low fi, partially because Jaunty
Speaker 1: was learning how to animate, and because the more low
Speaker 1: fi the cartoons he was making, the easier he found
Speaker 1: it was for them to stream on an Internet with
Speaker 1: a much slower speed than today, and the easier a
Speaker 1: short was to stream, the more people could see it.
Speaker 1: And this experiment very much worked. We Will and Bob
Speaker 1: were so successful in this early iteration that it eventually
Speaker 1: expanded into over one hundred and twenty episodes of the
Speaker 1: show in the same short, simply animated format that is
Speaker 1: scored with Johnty's voice and music. It was so successful,
Speaker 1: in fact, that we Will and Bob made it to
Speaker 1: mainstream television. And keep in mind, this was really early
Speaker 1: in the process of major TV networks attempting to understand
Speaker 1: the Internet, and it would be years before the Internet
Speaker 1: was written for TV by people who had an intimate
Speaker 1: understanding of it. But when we Will and Bob was
Speaker 1: put onto MTV UK and the early two thousands, the
Speaker 1: suits were at least paying attention to what the kids
Speaker 1: were watching, and they had the good sense to not
Speaker 1: just try to replicate it. Instead they hired the guy
Speaker 1: that was making it. There was a stretch of six
Speaker 1: exclusively televised Weebel and Bob Schwartz on MTV UK that
Speaker 1: We're met with positive reception, and this increased attention and
Speaker 1: financial flow meant that Jaunty was able to experiment with
Speaker 1: his work using other animated concepts online when the MTV
Speaker 1: deal made it possible for him to leave his day job,
Speaker 1: and it was this that led to his grand opis
Speaker 1: on September second, two thousand and three. But you know
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about. An animation with badgers appearing in
Speaker 1: a meadow, dancing identically and perfect harmony, with one more
Speaker 1: badger appearing slightly further away with each subsequent pronouncement of
Speaker 1: the species, and then we go to a bright red
Speaker 1: cartoon mushroom with a push zoom for every repetition of
Speaker 1: the phrase, and just when you thought it would go
Speaker 1: on that way forever, a danger is presented, a bright
Speaker 1: green cartoon snake presenting a danger to our badger, and
Speaker 1: probably not the mushroom. Do badgers eat mushrooms? I don't know.
Speaker 1: But while the snake is presented visually and orally as
Speaker 1: a sense of existential danger, nothing ever happens to the badger,
Speaker 1: because as soon as we see the snake, the animation
Speaker 1: just loops back to the beginning.
Speaker 7: Bugs budget Bude.
Speaker 1: And long before YouTube hits, the Badgers became big, slowly
Speaker 1: growing there and Jaunty slash mister Weeble's audience to a
Speaker 1: level of public recognition that was so popular that his
Speaker 1: body of work won a UK People's Choice Awards in
Speaker 1: early two thousand and five. The inspiration for this short,
Speaker 1: according to Johnty, was pulled from a novelty track that
Speaker 1: was popular in the UK his childhood, a song called
Speaker 1: Saturday Night by Wigfeld, and specifically a very particular element
Speaker 1: of that song, and see if you can spot it
Speaker 1: here is how the song starts. It was not clear
Speaker 1: to me immediately either. But the little repeating thing you
Speaker 1: hear in this song is a duck sound, one that
Speaker 1: apparently inspired John d Picking to do something equally loopy
Speaker 1: and looped and silly. So from the duck sound in
Speaker 1: Saturday Night, we get Art is great. And the benefit
Speaker 1: for viewers of John Dy's first becoming successful with Badgers
Speaker 1: pre new Grounds is that he had already made follow
Speaker 1: ups in response to the cartoon's success, meaning that by
Speaker 1: the time I saw Badgers on new Grounds, there was
Speaker 1: already a lot more to watch in this universe, and
Speaker 1: all of the follow ups to Badgers hit these very
Speaker 1: of the moment cultural touch points, including themes like zombies
Speaker 1: or Santa Son Son Son Son Son good Son and
Speaker 1: Son Sign the Press. This I think was my favorite
Speaker 1: one as a kid, so I do want to include
Speaker 1: what went in the place of the snake. That's funny,
Speaker 1: you're laughing. And in a relatively short amount of time,
Speaker 1: the animations became beloved, particularly in the UK at first,
Speaker 1: where Wee Bile and Bob were already popular by being
Speaker 1: seen on MTV. In two thousand and four, Johnty released
Speaker 1: a soccer football I Don't care what you call it
Speaker 1: both Countries suck themed version of the Badger's video for
Speaker 1: the two thousand and four FIFA Tournament Pooch Pooch, Pochi,
Speaker 1: Pochi Pochio. What made this format so sticky was its simplicity,
Speaker 1: while remaining very distinct in both look and sound. It
Speaker 1: was absolute drugs for middle schoolers and went on to
Speaker 1: experience many subsequent lives on new grounds. Albino Black Sheep,
Speaker 1: Ebomb's World and YouTube Badgers is Internet cannon, But like
Speaker 1: many animators of this time, this only empowered Jaunty Picking
Speaker 1: to continue exploring his ideas through one off flash animations
Speaker 1: with weird concepts, stuff like narwhals.
Speaker 6: While swimming in the Ushian causing of commotion because.
Speaker 1: Like amazing horse.
Speaker 6: Look is amazing, give it a leg, or like.
Speaker 1: Johnty's personal favorite in his catalog, a cartoon called a
Speaker 1: Walk in the Woods, which is both very beautiful and
Speaker 1: also ninety percent cartoon animals shitting so hard that they fly.
Speaker 1: And while some of Johnty's work could get violent or sexual,
Speaker 1: his work isn't characterized by these qualities in a way
Speaker 1: that much early flash animation was I'm gonna cut your
Speaker 1: throat open and use your bloody syrup on my pancakes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Jahunty or mister Weebles's work was musical and silly first,
Speaker 1: and so even when it did fall into violence or sex,
Speaker 1: it was never defined by shock. And again, so much
Speaker 1: of what makes his work special is that Johnty composed
Speaker 1: all of the music, and he's continued to release music
Speaker 1: on his own. He's been releasing full versions of his
Speaker 1: original songs and war on band camp since at least
Speaker 1: twenty ten, and transitioned into making full albums of just
Speaker 1: music independent of his work in animation starting in twenty fourteen.
Speaker 1: His current band, Savlonic is his most music forward blend
Speaker 1: of music and animation to date. It's mainly jaunty, but
Speaker 1: the animated band is composed of virtual members similar to Gorillas.
Speaker 6: Hi story, okay, because you're still my god. It seems
Speaker 6: like a zoo me now, I will drive around in
Speaker 6: the cor tells me too, feel free.
Speaker 1: But as you can hear, the animation and a lot
Speaker 1: of the voice and instrumentation is still very much jaunty,
Speaker 1: as well as some of his most common collaborators. As
Speaker 1: of this writing, Savlonik has released two cover albums and
Speaker 1: four full albums. I'll let him tell you more about
Speaker 1: it in the interview, but the work itself is cynthie
Speaker 1: and really cool. This is from their most recent album,
Speaker 1: I Don't Feel Like.
Speaker 5: With Us.
Speaker 1: Johnty remained a creature of the Internet post Badgers, after
Speaker 1: emerging from a generation of online animators that I would
Speaker 1: say split the difference in terms of pursuing mainstream success
Speaker 1: in traditional animated media versus maintaining increased creative freedom for
Speaker 1: their audience on the Internet. And in Johnty's case, we
Speaker 1: are richer for the fact that he stayed online because
Speaker 1: while he's never pigeonholed himself as particularly fixated on any
Speaker 1: one project, he's also never resisted the positive legacy that
Speaker 1: projects like Badgers and Weeble and Bob have associated him with,
Speaker 1: which maybe brings me to the weirdest offshoot of Badgers
Speaker 1: that exists from ten full years after its release.
Speaker 8: Listen to this, Oh No, John.
Speaker 1: Now, if you're thinking, wait, why did the introduction to
Speaker 1: that Badger's video sound like Queen? Well, that is Brian
Speaker 1: May of Queen, who reached out to johunt Picking in
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen asking to help him preserve actual English badgers,
Speaker 1: real badgers as a part of his conservation work. And
Speaker 1: so what you're hearing at the beginning there in a
Speaker 1: beautiful twist of fate, is a song from Queen called Flash.
Speaker 1: Brian May said of the project at the time of
Speaker 1: the release.
Speaker 5: The British people are speaking in their many thousands, and
Speaker 5: yet the government is refusing to listen. We think that
Speaker 5: for buying this track and giving the badgers a voice,
Speaker 5: let's get this to number one so David Cameron cannot
Speaker 5: avoid it. The cull is unscientific, unethical and won't work.
Speaker 5: The government is set to murder five thousand badges, and
Speaker 5: yet all the peer reviewed scientific evidence shows that the
Speaker 5: answer to the problem of bovine tb in cattle does
Speaker 5: not lie in this slaughter, and that this action will
Speaker 5: be ineffective and potentially damaging to the welfare of both
Speaker 5: farm animals and wildlife.
Speaker 1: And so the badger became politicized to the point where
Speaker 1: this song titled Save the Badger, Badger Badger literally played
Speaker 1: in the House of Lords in protest to the David
Speaker 1: Cameron back proposal to exterminate real life badgers. Far beyond
Speaker 1: any ethical limit, and the intention of the song is
Speaker 1: to prevent their slaughter. Johnt Picking said this in a
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen interview on how the project came together.
Speaker 5: The new version was based on the soundtrack to Flash Gordon,
Speaker 5: written by Queen and Brian May. He asked me what
Speaker 5: we could do to make something together featuring my Badgers,
Speaker 5: and that was the first thought in my head. I
Speaker 5: love Flash Gordon. I did a rough remix using my
Speaker 5: track and samples, and sang the new lyrics I'd come
Speaker 5: up with in a Queen style, and sure, I'll.
Speaker 1: Risk a copyrights strike to share Brian May shredding, because
Speaker 1: it's Brian May shredding. For Christ's sake, here it is.
Speaker 1: The video ends on a screen that says, be the mushroom,
Speaker 1: stop the call, and the song ended up charting on
Speaker 1: the UK charts, peaking at number seventy nine. And by
Speaker 1: this time this was a ten year old meme and
Speaker 1: a very niche political issue. Badgers had and meaning. And
Speaker 1: while I couldn't possibly rain all of the influence of
Speaker 1: Jaunty Picking's work in the space of a single episode,
Speaker 1: I do think this is a really cool example of
Speaker 1: how much it really meant to people, and the rest
Speaker 1: of the story I'll let him tell you himself. He
Speaker 1: is incredibly funny and still innovating any animation and music
Speaker 1: space to this day now a married dad of two preteens,
Speaker 1: and as you'll hear, he is incredibly patient with an
Speaker 1: interviewer that has active bronchitis. When we come back my
Speaker 1: interview with Jaunty Picking. Welcome back to sixteenth minute. I
Speaker 1: just got back from visiting my nephew and all he
Speaker 1: watched was Blues Clues and it sent me into a
Speaker 1: death spiral of listening to every interview on the phase
Speaker 1: of the Earth that's available with any of the hosts
Speaker 1: of Blues Clues in order to compare their general vibes
Speaker 1: and relationship to the blue screen. And they're my friends
Speaker 1: and I love them. Anyways. My interview with the wonderful
Speaker 1: Jaunty Picking is up next. But a quick note at
Speaker 1: the top, my voice sounds very bad in this interview.
Speaker 1: I'm aware of that. There is no need to contact
Speaker 1: me about this. This interview was recorded back in January
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five, shortly after the Los Angeles fires had happened,
Speaker 1: which while I was very fortunate to not be affected
Speaker 1: by and you can listen to our episode about relief
Speaker 1: efforts that came out at the time. But I did
Speaker 1: have bronchitis and ended up leaving town because I couldn't
Speaker 1: breathe well. And these are the circumstances the interview was
Speaker 1: conducted in. So leave me alone and please enjoy this
Speaker 1: interview with the lovely Johunty picking.
Speaker 6: I know it is actually pressure because loads of people
Speaker 6: call me Weebel or mister Weeble, which was a terrible
Speaker 6: choice of name, by the way, never do that. Some
Speaker 6: people call me John t. Some people call me Jonathan,
Speaker 6: usually only if I've been very bad. I'd make cartoons
Speaker 6: and music on the internet mainly, but every now and
Speaker 6: again not on the internet, just to mix things up.
Speaker 6: I like to keep it interesting.
Speaker 7: You know, you do buy many names, are you? Are
Speaker 7: you sick of weebel? Is that what I'm picking up on.
Speaker 6: I'm sick of the fact that I chose a word
Speaker 6: that's not spelled how you assume it would be spelt. No,
Speaker 6: it was a terrible choice of name. I watch your
Speaker 6: website and you go, it's mister whit's weeple without at
Speaker 6: the end, and then there's like and then stuff, Yes,
Speaker 6: like the word stuff dot com. So you'd be like
Speaker 6: that all the time.
Speaker 9: Like, that's a lot of early Internet mistakes. Is a
Speaker 9: name that looks funny but it is impossible to say
Speaker 9: out loud. Yeah, I've had my share of like, well,
Speaker 9: it's funny to me, but it's humiliating to have to
Speaker 9: spell out for others. There's tell me a little bit
Speaker 9: about to the extent you're comfortable, how you grew up,
Speaker 9: Where you grew up, What kind of kid were you?
Speaker 6: I grew up in the North of England, in South Yorkshire,
Speaker 6: which is you know, in the North, in the South
Speaker 6: of the North, in the North in York, in Doncaster,
Speaker 6: which was a mining town. What they're up to now,
Speaker 6: it's apparently very honest accent. I sounded real trustworthy me,
Speaker 6: but that's why I grew up in like the eighties
Speaker 6: really quite a depressing place, if I'm honest. Me ping
Speaker 6: me didn't really have much of a plan. Flailed around
Speaker 6: for many years doing music bits and bobs, and eventually
Speaker 6: got into the side stuff fire and music courts, and
Speaker 6: then a company in London took notice of what I
Speaker 6: was doing flash and hired me and that was my life,
Speaker 6: I think.
Speaker 9: So I know that like music and animation, it sounds
Speaker 9: like this they've all sort of like coexisted for you
Speaker 9: for so long when you were a kid in like
Speaker 9: figuring out what you liked, Like, was it one particular
Speaker 9: thing that you're like, Oh, this is my thing, and
Speaker 9: then more things came later.
Speaker 6: It was it was always a mix of like art
Speaker 6: and music. If I'm honest, I had the Commodore sixty four,
Speaker 6: which had like this weird one and a half octave
Speaker 6: plastically overlay on the key. It's awful and sampler. I
Speaker 6: loved the music of the Commodore sixty four, and that
Speaker 6: kind of electronic music was what I listened to, not
Speaker 6: sort of like the prog rock or anything. I was
Speaker 6: very much into since sense of fantastic love them new
Speaker 6: noises all the time. It's like, oh this is great.
Speaker 7: That's a very particular kind of eighties kid.
Speaker 8: I love that.
Speaker 6: Like when synthwave happened, I was like, whoa wait a minute,
Speaker 6: this is my shine.
Speaker 9: What were your early experiences with the Internet. Do you
Speaker 9: have like memories of like, oh, this was like a
Speaker 9: website or a creator online that I really liked At
Speaker 9: the beginning. I'm curious who who you were into or
Speaker 9: what you were into when you started making your own stuff.
Speaker 6: I was on AOL You've Got mail all that business terrible,
Speaker 6: quite text heavy back then. Obviously you couldn't really have this.
Speaker 6: And then Flash came along and things started picking up.
Speaker 6: I ended up on new grounds, like looking through that
Speaker 6: I think it was. Yes, it's like the Britney Spears
Speaker 6: Munster Truck Jump Challenge or something. It was a different time.
Speaker 6: It was quite violent and very edgy. The Random movie,
Speaker 6: which was a Flash thing. I love that. It kind
Speaker 6: of opened my eyes and I started I was messing
Speaker 6: around in Flash obviously for work, so I started doing
Speaker 6: animations more as a sort of technical thing, like what
Speaker 6: can I do and have it straight away on like
Speaker 6: a fifty six K mode? And I think that was
Speaker 6: a lot of it, And the loops came around that
Speaker 6: way as well, because just keeping file sizes down. Really
Speaker 6: it was kind of just more problem solving. Oh this
Speaker 6: is good animation.
Speaker 7: WHOA wait, that's that's really interesting. I didn't know that, Yeah,
Speaker 7: you were.
Speaker 9: So it was sort of like as an experiment to see,
Speaker 9: like what how much you could get away with on
Speaker 9: a certain modem.
Speaker 7: Were you working at day job throughout all of the
Speaker 7: early cartoons.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and then work in the evening doing my own stuff.
Speaker 6: Then one day out of the blue, NTV phoned up
Speaker 6: and said, do you want a series on UK MTV?
Speaker 6: Not you know, fancy MTV. Yeah, So they got me
Speaker 6: in to do that, and then I quit my job
Speaker 6: and took a chance on doing this Friday. I think
Speaker 6: it was a year to make it something like that.
Speaker 7: What projects specifically was it like? Was it Weil.
Speaker 6: Bob? Yeah?
Speaker 9: I have such a hard time explaining new Grounds to
Speaker 9: someone who was not there to experience it.
Speaker 7: Can you help me?
Speaker 6: It was a lot of people could get poted copies
Speaker 6: of Flash is what it breaks down to. So teenage
Speaker 6: boys in their bedrooms were playing around as teenage boys do,
Speaker 6: and I count myself among them, even I was much
Speaker 6: older than in my teens. Probably i'd so madness happened
Speaker 6: and you'd see just the weirdest stuff. It's very hard
Speaker 6: to describe. You've put me on the spot, haven't you.
Speaker 6: It's in my head, but trying to put it into
Speaker 6: words is surprisingly difficult.
Speaker 9: Because it was also like you're saying, really really edgy
Speaker 9: humor sometimes like the cartoon violence, especially cartoon.
Speaker 7: Violence and flash.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 7: I think it's always very funny and never very scary,
Speaker 7: which is great.
Speaker 9: I guess I want to talk a little bit about
Speaker 9: weeble and because that comes before Badermania, how do you
Speaker 9: come up with the idea for.
Speaker 6: Weebl and Bob You're gonna hate me?
Speaker 7: No, I like you so much, don't worry about it.
Speaker 6: It was a technical challenge. Oh really, they were very
Speaker 6: simple shapes. I'd figured out that processes were very very
Speaker 6: poor back then, like you could and you didn't really
Speaker 6: have fancy graphic cards either. It was all done with
Speaker 6: the CPU, so shapes. I think I used about four
Speaker 6: points for each shape of the bodies and then the
Speaker 6: eyes are like too. Possibly. It was made to be
Speaker 6: as simple as possible. And the only reason they actually
Speaker 6: spoke was because Rob Manuel and Peter said I think
Speaker 6: they should actually speak, which really annoyed me at the time,
Speaker 6: but I accepted his sage advice.
Speaker 7: What was the experiment for? Was it like another web
Speaker 7: to sign experiment or.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it was can I make this playback smoothly with
Speaker 6: a very much file size for as many people as possible?
Speaker 9: And so how how long were you making we Will
Speaker 9: and Bob? It started online and then it went to MTV.
Speaker 9: What was that process? Was there a big change in
Speaker 9: process when you took it to TV?
Speaker 6: The only real problem was exporting them in a TV
Speaker 6: friendly video format, which turned out surprisingly tricky. So if
Speaker 6: you ever saw the Monkey Song on MTV, all the
Speaker 6: frames were all over the shop it was it was awful,
Speaker 6: and I said, please let me fix it, and they went, no,
Speaker 6: that's how it is now.
Speaker 7: From or maybe during Weebel and Bob, Badgers happens, the
Speaker 7: world changes forever. Two thousand and three big year for
Speaker 7: me because Badgers came out and so did School of Rock,
Speaker 7: and these were transformative pieces of art for me personally.
Speaker 7: Take me through your process. Where does Badgers come from?
Speaker 6: Okay, so there's a song called the Riddle I think
Speaker 6: by I'm going to say Nick kersh or However, there
Speaker 6: were a couple of Nicks around at that time, so
Speaker 6: it's hard to say one hundred percent everyone's what you mean.
Speaker 6: And it turned out that it had no meaning. It
Speaker 6: was all just placeholder words and they went, yeah, that'll do.
Speaker 6: So I kind of had that going on with the
Speaker 6: lyrics side. Of Badge in the musical side of things.
Speaker 6: I've become obsessed at tune will get people's attention because
Speaker 6: of the wig Field theory. Which do you remember Saturday Night?
Speaker 6: Maybe it wasn't big in the US. I don't. I
Speaker 6: don't know if like the way you moved, there's a
Speaker 6: duck quacking all the way through it, I swear to God.
Speaker 6: So Badgers has an annoying squeak all the way through it.
Speaker 6: So I paired that mess, and Badger has happened, and
Speaker 6: you know, the rest is history. And people were like,
Speaker 6: I love how people love to apply meaning to nonsense.
Speaker 6: It's intrigued me for years.
Speaker 1: So I.
Speaker 6: Kind of abuse that a bit. Really, I like to
Speaker 6: just be very vague.
Speaker 9: When Badgers started to really like explode, I mean, how
Speaker 9: does that feel as like the artist?
Speaker 7: Does it feel like oh cool? Like there's this validation?
Speaker 7: Is there pressure to make more? Like?
Speaker 9: How do you?
Speaker 7: Yeah? What was that like?
Speaker 6: The first happened, it was very cool. I remember I'd
Speaker 6: gone away for the weekend, so I wasn't near the
Speaker 6: internet because I don't think why. I was widely popular
Speaker 6: and I got back and I think it was like
Speaker 6: fifty thousand views which at the time was huge for me.
Speaker 6: And then it just kept going bigger and bigger and bigger,
Speaker 6: and it was appearing everywhere, and it's like, wow, what
Speaker 6: is going on? And I think at that point my
Speaker 6: website costs just got ridiculous. That's hosting. Yeah, we were
Speaker 6: on fancy hosts. I can't remember when we managed to
Speaker 6: get adverts on the website, but for a while there
Speaker 6: was nothing, and I had no idea of how to
Speaker 6: monetize anything. So I'm just like, yeah, here you go.
Speaker 9: Wow, okay, so yeah, I mean, how did you manage
Speaker 9: to adjust that so that you could make a living?
Speaker 9: I was always so curious was it possible to do
Speaker 9: full time? I know now that it was, but like, yeah,
Speaker 9: how did you make that work?
Speaker 6: There are a lot more sensible people with business minds
Speaker 6: who I hung around with on the internet, and again
Speaker 6: it was a lot easier to collaborate with people in
Speaker 6: many different ways. And one guy I knew knew another
Speaker 6: guy and he was in advertising. What he said, well,
Speaker 6: I'll set up an ad company online and we'll get you.
Speaker 6: Certainly would go off and do deals and all that
Speaker 6: sort of thing and find the banner rads. This was
Speaker 6: pre ad sense as well. It was all very new
Speaker 6: and exciting and odd, very like tied to the website.
Speaker 6: Adverts would happen, so it was kind of fun. I
Speaker 6: was all for it.
Speaker 9: So as this video takes buff, you do a series
Speaker 9: of it was also featured during a football championship.
Speaker 7: Is that true?
Speaker 6: Yes, fans were singing it wild Badgers. Yeah, it was crazy,
Speaker 6: but there was a lot of good vibes in the
Speaker 6: country at that point. I'm not deeply into football at all,
Speaker 6: but that one got me. I seem to remember.
Speaker 9: I'm always curious when it's like, oh, you became the
Speaker 9: Badger's guy, right, did that sit well with you?
Speaker 7: Or you're like, oh, I want to I.
Speaker 9: Better make something else so I don't become the Badgers guy,
Speaker 9: Like how did you you know, like creatively think about that.
Speaker 6: I never really thought of that at all, because I'd
Speaker 6: always be I'd always been making other stuff as it
Speaker 6: went along anyway, So I was always I think, I
Speaker 6: do weeble and Bob do Badges do?
Speaker 8: It?
Speaker 6: Never really could Now it's very clear that Badgers is
Speaker 6: the one that everyone remembers. I never really thought of
Speaker 6: myself as the Badger's guy until later on. Really, I'm
Speaker 6: not sure I do now, to be honest, maybe it
Speaker 6: doesn't sit well with me. Maybe this is what we
Speaker 6: can take from this. I don't want to be it's
Speaker 6: like Bart Simpson in that episode and or you know,
Speaker 6: we've just got a duty catchphrase. I've always hated sort
Speaker 6: of catch race humor and yet here well, but it's.
Speaker 9: I want to you have built out like an expanded
Speaker 9: universe of characters and works like before and since.
Speaker 7: What is your favorite series of animations that you've made?
Speaker 7: Series or I mean, doesn't have to be serious.
Speaker 6: I think my favorite to D animation, if you're like
Speaker 6: looking that way, probably be the Walk in the Woods one,
Speaker 6: just because it amused me so much to do. What
Speaker 6: if this happens and the bunny would come in and
Speaker 6: then it pooped its way off screen and that was
Speaker 6: going to be the end. But then I thought to myself,
Speaker 6: well what if it isn't the end? So I had,
Speaker 6: I had. I had a really good time making it,
Speaker 6: so maybe that's part of why it's one of my favorites.
Speaker 6: I think it came out pretty well exactly a few
Speaker 6: things I really want to change, which is is pretty
Speaker 6: good for me.
Speaker 9: You started your own production company is does that change
Speaker 9: the way you work?
Speaker 7: Does it just expand it? Are you a boss now? Like?
Speaker 7: How does that work?
Speaker 6: I've always been a boss now, so it's kind of
Speaker 6: It's just a comfortable space, really, I guess where someone
Speaker 6: else deals with the business side of things and keeps
Speaker 6: me under control, which is fantastic because I need that
Speaker 6: my part and also joins him with writing and stuff.
Speaker 6: It's very much a partnership now and I love it
Speaker 6: to bits. I'd love to do like stuff external as well.
Speaker 6: I'd love to be a director on something and just
Speaker 6: be around people every now and again would be nice.
Speaker 6: Twenty years in a room is quite a lot.
Speaker 7: How is making stuff now for the Internet different than
Speaker 7: it was when you started?
Speaker 6: It's much harder to get noticed. I would do it
Speaker 6: for everyone, and just because there was less people making
Speaker 6: stuff initially, I would say, and now it's very easy,
Speaker 6: which is great in many ways. The algorithmical changes, you
Speaker 6: could talk about those endlessly, and whether that's interesting or not,
Speaker 6: I don't know. The whole tailored search thing is a
Speaker 6: huge bugbear of minds, Like there's not much natural growth
Speaker 6: of things anymore, I would say, but maybe I'm just
Speaker 6: doing it wrong. Maybe I'm an old guy in his
Speaker 6: ways who can't really see the future anymore. My favorite thing, though,
Speaker 6: is just I love problems solve and I love puzzles.
Speaker 6: So changing with the software and that sort of side
Speaker 6: of things it has been fantastic. I've taught myself blended
Speaker 6: now and I'm loving that's sort of the creative tools
Speaker 6: that we have at our fingertips now, Like from where
Speaker 6: we were with Flash, which was it Okay, I guess
Speaker 6: at times he served a purpose, but now we can
Speaker 6: just do Oh, I want to do this and you
Speaker 6: can do it. Madness that that's where we're at.
Speaker 9: You started doing this because you wanted to problems off something,
Speaker 9: so of course you've grown with the times.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I like surreality because life is surreal and I just
Speaker 6: kind of look at things to go, oh, I'm now
Speaker 6: going to poorly explain this part of life.
Speaker 7: Is there anything that you haven't done?
Speaker 9: Are there characters that you're like, oh, or just even
Speaker 9: concepts you've wanted to get off the grounds for years
Speaker 9: and it's like someday, someday.
Speaker 6: Yeah, this is part of why I've been teaching myself blender.
Speaker 6: There's two things I want to do I'm kind of
Speaker 6: obsessed with. I realized that asking two D animators to
Speaker 6: do what I wanted to do was just not fair
Speaker 6: on anyone. The other thing is I want to do
Speaker 6: a three D stage show for Sablonik with the sort
Speaker 6: of Pepper's Ghost things. I've been working towards that, like
Speaker 6: trying to do live motion capture all DIY and Indie.
Speaker 6: So I'm getting there, but it's a slow road.
Speaker 7: That's so quiet.
Speaker 9: I wanted to ask you more about Savlonic because I
Speaker 9: feel like that's like your you know, music, first project,
Speaker 9: and I know you've released other stuff over the years,
Speaker 9: but how did that come together?
Speaker 7: When was it like the right time to start that project.
Speaker 6: I think was the first one was two Thousand Nights
Speaker 6: that it was meant to be a parody back then.
Speaker 6: So the original songs are very silly, and over the
Speaker 6: years they've grown up really and I think when we
Speaker 6: finished this album, we all kind of looked at each
Speaker 6: of them like this is a proper grown up adult album.
Speaker 6: Now feels good. But I do love about the Internet
Speaker 6: as well as like the fact that we've been given
Speaker 6: the room to change from a silly band doing the
Speaker 6: almost parodies to whatever they are now, or because all
Speaker 6: these things are on the internet to let people do this,
Speaker 6: it wouldn't have been possible. Like it's fantastic, like whenever
Speaker 6: I'm down on myself and just like you know, I'm
Speaker 6: very lucky. Really you've got all this stuff.
Speaker 9: I wanted to touch on this just because it is
Speaker 9: like such a weird fun thing in you in your catalog, brilliant.
Speaker 9: Back to badgers for a second. I do want to
Speaker 9: talk about save the Badger, Badger Badger from twenty thirteen.
Speaker 7: What a singular? How did that come together?
Speaker 6: Like most things, it's just odd things happen and you
Speaker 6: kind of have to say, yes, I'll do that. That's
Speaker 6: sounds ridiculous. I got Yeah, I got a phone call
Speaker 6: from Brian May himself and he's looking to someone about
Speaker 6: badgers and they was said, I'm paraphrasing a lot. You're
Speaker 6: the badger guy to talk to. Do you want to
Speaker 6: help save badgers? And of course yes I do. Well
Speaker 6: I'd love to help out as well. What do you
Speaker 6: see me doing on it? I think was what he said. Well,
Speaker 6: your Brian mate, I assume you'll play guitar.
Speaker 7: It's like, yeah, okay, and play guitar. He did, He did.
Speaker 6: He enjoyed it as well. He had a good time.
Speaker 7: It shred. It's so good.
Speaker 6: He's quite a good guitar player, it turns out. But
Speaker 6: I got to play around with like the master tapes
Speaker 6: of flashcrdon as well, which is my favorite film of
Speaker 6: all time, and I'm not joking. It's literally my favorite
Speaker 6: film of all time. That was just magical for me.
Speaker 7: Oh and then it seems like it was it was.
Speaker 7: It was really well. It did exactly what he was hoping.
Speaker 6: Just played in the House of Lords, which again is insane,
Speaker 6: what is going on? But life is ridiculous, and it's
Speaker 6: wonderful that this ridiculousness has been seen in ridiculous places.
Speaker 9: Has that changed the like way you've interacted with the
Speaker 9: internet as having kids to use it.
Speaker 6: I was very aware of what the Internet was like
Speaker 6: when they were growing up. For sure, they've been encouraged
Speaker 6: to stay away from social media sites, but they're welcome
Speaker 6: to like chat to their friends and all that. And
Speaker 6: my daughter loves Pinterest. My son just loves gaming anyway,
Speaker 6: so it's not He plays with his friends and they
Speaker 6: chat to each other, so that it's quite a wall
Speaker 6: garden Internet that their experience at the moment. I think
Speaker 6: I'd like to think, so who knows what goes off? Really,
Speaker 6: i'd like to they're very sensible, much more sensible than me,
Speaker 6: which is wonderful to see. I do remember my mom
Speaker 6: phoning me up once at work telling me she was
Speaker 6: very disappointed in me about one of my cartoons. Oh
Speaker 6: she's quite religious.
Speaker 9: My parents, how they Well, that's actually that's that's the
Speaker 9: question I should have asked you is because you're, you know,
Speaker 9: like one of the first waves of those.
Speaker 7: Kind of like super absurd cartoons on the Internet. Yeah,
Speaker 7: how did your family receive that?
Speaker 6: I've tried to just say to them, this isn't for
Speaker 6: you who don't watch everyone and again there will be
Speaker 6: one I can go you can watch this one, that's
Speaker 6: fine for you, but yeah, general is like, it's not
Speaker 6: for you, please don't watch as my main Yeah, that's
Speaker 6: that's what I'll say. And generally they don't watch. But
Speaker 6: my mom is quite proud of me, like you'll tell
Speaker 6: her friend, oh he does this.
Speaker 9: And I guess my last question to kind of dovetails
Speaker 9: with talking about your kids relationship with the internet.
Speaker 7: How has your relationship to both like the Internet and
Speaker 7: the work you two. How is it change, Like, how
Speaker 7: is distributing art on the internet changed for you?
Speaker 6: I mean everything's become a lot more sort of homogenized, really,
Speaker 6: So don't have you work popping up on like Albino,
Speaker 6: Black Sheep and ebombs and all that stuff. It's generally
Speaker 6: it's on YouTube and that's where everyone goes, or it's
Speaker 6: on TikTok and that's where everyone goes. I can't stand
Speaker 6: this vertical video from it, but that's you know, I've
Speaker 6: got someone who does it for me. They're doing really well.
Speaker 6: I have no idea how they're doing it or what
Speaker 6: they're doing. I don't want to know. I concentrate fully
Speaker 6: on the YouTuber. It's like this is how I want
Speaker 6: my heart to be seeing. Thank y. Yes, I've become
Speaker 6: kind of nobby about that. It spent ages with the
Speaker 6: zab Lonic video just making the red slightly less red
Speaker 6: so it wouldn't look look pixelated on YouTube. But again
Speaker 6: that's problem solving again, I guess. So it all comes
Speaker 6: back to there's a problem, let's fix that.
Speaker 7: For It's just different problems.
Speaker 6: Yeah, always new problems. Always be scared that's my motto.
Speaker 1: Thank you so so much to John D. Picking, not
Speaker 1: just for his amazing work of the years, but for
Speaker 1: patiently tolerating my traumatized bronchias voice. You can follow his
Speaker 1: work at the links in the description, and I really
Speaker 1: hope you do. Johnty is a breed of Internet artists
Speaker 1: that I worry that we won't get more of in
Speaker 1: a landscape that is increasingly driven by algorithms. And while
Speaker 1: there were certainly trends during this era of online video
Speaker 1: that we were talking about today, there was also room
Speaker 1: for experimentation in a way that I find to be
Speaker 1: way more limited now. And this criticism scales out to
Speaker 1: mainstream media too, so many experimental shows are being pushed
Speaker 1: out of production in favor of what is perceived as
Speaker 1: a sure thing with wide appeal. And when it comes
Speaker 1: to work that appeals to young people, that seems to
Speaker 1: me in a lot more emphasis on trend following than
Speaker 1: any encouragement to experiment or try something weird and new.
Speaker 1: I really hope I'm wrong, because I think every kid
Speaker 1: deserves their looping jaunt picking Badger's video, So jaunt Picking
Speaker 1: your time will never be over. But Badgers your sixteenth
Speaker 1: minute ends. Now, okay, here's your moment of fun. Grant
Speaker 1: really in his element here doing some strong bad impressions
Speaker 1: and giving me a headache. I can't tell you why,
Speaker 1: but that cartoon it really makes me mad.
Speaker 7: Here it is.
Speaker 5: Wow, holy sixteen minutes of fame for Hope star Water.
Speaker 5: What a great time?
Speaker 7: Is that?
Speaker 5: Pretty good?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I wouldn't watch it. Sixteenth minute as
Speaker 1: a production of Whole Zone Media and iheardwod apps. It
Speaker 1: is written, posted, and produced by me, Jamie Loftus. Our
Speaker 1: executive producers are Sophie Lickderman and Robert Evans. He amazing.
Speaker 1: Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor. Our
Speaker 1: theme song is by Sad thirteen. Voice acting is from Grant,
Speaker 1: Crater and Pet. Shout outs to our dog producer Anderson,
Speaker 1: my Kat's Flee and Casper and my pet rock Bert,
Speaker 1: who will outlive us all. Bye