00:00:01.71 Kurt Crenwelge Hello and welcome to our fourth panel style episode of our series of discussions that we call Parlays at the Platter. ah The goal is to invite guests of the podcast who share ah similar field of expertise or passion to invite them to come together, have a lovely hour or so on the topic. 00:00:20.21 Kurt Crenwelge Our topic for this panel is entitled Art, Creativity, and D&D, and seeks to find the intersection of these three ideas. Human creativity and expression is as old as time, and certainly when we use our imaginations and our love of fantasy, we can all call to mind stunning, brilliant, and wondrous artistic expressions of our favorite fantasy elements. 00:00:43.21 Kurt Crenwelge From fan art of our favorite stories, ah stylistic challenges and renderings through different themes and mediums, to just seeing what elements of a piece reflect the truth of the subject and of its creator. 00:00:55.67 Kurt Crenwelge Since the earliest days of the TTRPG hobby, art and imagination have helped us to visualize in both gridded maps, miniatures, and theater of the mind in what monstrous creatures lurked in dungeons, what NPCs awaited us in town, and how we visualize our heroes. 00:01:12.81 Kurt Crenwelge And now, with the internet connecting more people and digital tools enhancing our abilities to capture what lies inside our minds, we have to consider where the boundaries lie. Can you close the lid on the Pandora's box? 00:01:25.42 Kurt Crenwelge All these questions and more we shall be discussing today with our panelists. So I'm joined by wonderful guests of our podcast. Those of you at the wealthy and aristocratic tiers of patronage of olde Patreon are hearing this as an early release ah on on Patreon. 00:01:41.14 Kurt Crenwelge And so if you are listening to this on the RSS feed, it's Christmas time. So Merry Christmas. 00:01:47.05 Mandi Q. Thank you. 00:01:47.05 Kurt Crenwelge Here's your Christmas present for this year from good old Sidekicks and Sidequests. So if you want to be able to listen to this early instead of waiting for the RSS feed, you could just join the Patreon. That'd be really cool to help support the podcast and to continue to help foster these much needed conversations in our hobby, in our hobby and our space. 00:02:05.25 Kurt Crenwelge So for the introductions, I know you're waiting. we've got ah We've got a killer lineup for you today. So to begin my introductions of our panel, my first guest is any award-winning illustrator and character designer, as well as the creator of Wobble, a cute little slime just trying his best. 00:02:20.94 Kurt Crenwelge ah They've illustrated two puzzles for Critical Role and served as lead character illustrator on Tal'Dorei Reborn, published by Darrington Press. ah She's also worked with Wizards of the Coast, Disney, Lorcanna, Hit Point Press, Bioware, Dynamite Entertainment, and IDW Publishing. 00:02:38.67 Kurt Crenwelge She lives in Philadelphia with her cat, Kiri. You'll recognize this panelist as the maker behind Krongar, the Red Mare, the Red Slaw, just chilling in the Astral Sea, featured in episode number 91. 00:02:50.48 Kurt Crenwelge Please welcome Lauren Walsh. 00:02:52.89 LaurenWalshArt Hello. 00:02:56.03 Kurt Crenwelge All right. And our second guest is an artist who has worked as an illustrator for commercial products, television, animation, and games. After hours, she moonlights as her mall mannequin VTuber persona, where she uses streaming as a way to share her art process, provide art education, and bring her community together by fostering creativity. 00:03:16.54 Kurt Crenwelge She spends her free time playing D&D and other TTRPGs. You may also recognize this panelist as the inspiration behind the adorable little Pyrex the Heron Gone Chicken Egg Collector on episode number 123. Please welcome Quinn. 00:03:29.76 Kurt Crenwelge please welcome mandy quinn 00:03:32.16 Mandi Q. Hello. 00:03:34.02 Kurt Crenwelge And there we go. Lovely. Our third panelist is a designer and illustrator with over nine years of experience in character and prop design, illustration, TTRPGs, social media apps and board games. 00:03:47.91 Kurt Crenwelge She's worked with Marvel Animation Studios, TikTok and Dice Throne. You've probably seen her awesome character designs and fan art for Critical Role, Dimension 20 and Worlds Beyond Numbers. 00:03:58.39 Kurt Crenwelge ah You will recognize this guest as the creator of Thorsten, the teen troglodyte vermin rancher of the Underdark with guinea pigs ah featured in episode number 148. 00:04:09.31 Kurt Crenwelge Please welcome Britt Anderson. 00:04:14.02 Kurt Crenwelge She is stunned silence. All right. Or her camera's frozen. I don't know. We'll fix it in post. Don't worry. Okay. 00:04:21.62 LaurenWalshArt I think it's frozen. I think it's definitely it's definitely frozen. 00:04:23.03 Kurt Crenwelge Oh, there we go. 00:04:26.34 Kurt Crenwelge We'll fix it in post. 00:04:27.28 LaurenWalshArt Yeah, yeah, yeah. 00:04:29.04 Kurt Crenwelge Our fourth panelist is a frequent collaborator with me, and she's entirely too humble sometimes, in my personal opinion. She's an accomplished graphic designer and lover of all things nerdy, including Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Lord of the Rings, Critical Role, and of course, Dungeons & Dragons. 00:04:45.65 Kurt Crenwelge She's back in the swing of a weekly in-person game, and she's been in a solo campaign with me, and she's the player character, and I'm the dungeon master, and that game is like getting close to three years now, which is like wild to think about, I think. 00:04:58.49 Kurt Crenwelge Or maybe two. I don't know. We'll fix it in post. ah She has her own little JRPG, TTRPG story that she's doing. ah She finally has her own growing art presence back online under Sombrisa Art, which you should all go follow on the Instagrams and Cara and Threads and Blue Sky, all the good places, and be awesome cheerleaders for her to continue to produce art. 00:05:21.00 Kurt Crenwelge She's a wife and mom to two awesome kids. ah She's a wife and she's a mom to two awesome kids. ah You'll recognize this panelist as the creator behind Thistle, the Sky Elf Painter, featured on episode number 70, as well as ah episode number 119 for our second ever Parlays at the Platter ah when we discuss Tolkien, Catholicism, and D&D. Please welcome back to the podcast, Catherine. 00:05:48.24 Katherine Hello, glad to be here. 00:05:50.72 Kurt Crenwelge All right. And our fifth and final panelists, ah he's ah well, at the time of this recording, he's just been on the RSS feed, but he's a delightful new discovery of for me ah via Instagram. He's adamant that cartoonists are born in middle school math classes. 00:06:06.70 Kurt Crenwelge And so he's doing that every day when he rolls random dice and he doodles a unique and fun TTRPG character through his aptly named Dean Doodles. He hopes to be able to expand Dean Doodles to create tangible, fun memories of your tabletop campaigns where simple look we're simply looking for a custom portrait of your original character or an entire series of handcrafted comic books of epic journeys. 00:06:30.06 Kurt Crenwelge You'll recognize this doodler as the one who helped to create Evelina, the Tortle Blacksmith, just recently here on the time of recording, episode 153. Please say hello to Henry Hank McCarthy. 00:06:43.82 Kurt Crenwelge Dean Doodles. 00:06:47.25 Hank Howdy doody. 00:06:49.32 Kurt Crenwelge Alright, so we got everyone. All of us are here. The the panelists are here. how How are we feeling, everybody? Artists? 00:06:58.72 Mandi Q. Feeling pretty good. 00:07:00.05 Katherine Good? 00:07:00.35 Hank i'm I'm feeling very competent when it comes to technology and software. 00:07:00.92 Katherine Excited? 00:07:05.12 Mandi Q. Oh, same. 00:07:05.30 LaurenWalshArt but 00:07:06.23 Mandi Q. ah 00:07:07.71 Britt Anderson I am also feeling very competent where it's a, oh, if it's not working, let's just refresh the page so I can join again. 00:07:07.91 LaurenWalshArt excited 00:07:15.00 Mandi Q. Turn it on and turn it back off again. 00:07:18.24 Kurt Crenwelge classic Classic IT t strategy for sure. 00:07:18.45 LaurenWalshArt ah 00:07:21.52 Britt Anderson It works every time. 00:07:24.50 LaurenWalshArt honestly kind of excited to start talking about ah creativity and all that jazz and TTRPGs. 00:07:28.33 Britt Anderson Yes. 00:07:29.70 Katherine Yes. 00:07:30.02 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 00:07:30.07 Hank Hell yeah. 00:07:31.64 Kurt Crenwelge well well i get Well, we'll ease into this. As I've ah explained to the panelists, you know I try to keep this loosey-goosey. I've prepared a list of questions, but if everyone wants to deviate just like good player characters in an adventure, you're the dungeon master, you've prepared something, and they just go on a wild tangent, and you're like, all right, well, I guess this is the story now. 00:07:51.48 Kurt Crenwelge So if they want to do that, we can do that. But I prepared some questions, and so to kind of help ease us in and get ah the creativity flowing, as it were, 00:07:55.35 Britt Anderson Thank you. 00:07:59.70 Kurt Crenwelge Not to be pretentious, but panelists, what is art? 00:08:05.45 Mandi Q. What a question. 00:08:06.56 Katherine Easy question, right? right Right out the gate. 00:08:09.23 Hank I have ah an answer that is not mine, but hopefully some of y'all are familiar with his work. If you've read ah Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics, 00:08:21.62 Hank He defines art as anything that a human does that does not directly contribute to either survival or procreation, which is to say survival. 00:08:34.49 Hank So his his example of the earliest form of art is, let's say there is a caveman, and he's he's got his cavewoman at home. 00:08:36.51 Katherine Thank you. 00:08:43.98 Hank They're making cave babies. All that is is settled, ready to go. He's got food. He just killed a deer. you know they're They're set for survival, for food, for shelter, for water, all that stuff. 00:08:57.83 Hank So ah what he's doing is he's hanging out, and then suddenly he's attacked by a saber-toothed tiger. 00:09:00.23 Kurt Crenwelge Thank you. 00:09:03.85 Hank And ah he's saying he just happens to be standing on the ledge of a cliff. And he ducks right as the saber-toothed tiger lunges towards him. And the saber-tooth falls to its an and eventual demise. 00:09:16.11 Hank And the caveman is left with a decision, which is, you know, should I go find more food? Should I go find a mate? Should I go find shelter? 00:09:27.77 Hank But instead, what this caveman does is he looks down at the bottom of the ravine. He puts his hands up to his head and he goes, and that, that is art. 00:09:42.73 LaurenWalshArt ah 00:09:43.65 Katherine Bye. 00:09:44.78 Britt Anderson That's a beautiful answer. i wouldn't change a thing. 00:09:51.77 Mandi Q. Well, don't know I could top that. 00:09:52.18 Britt Anderson I love that. 00:09:53.84 Mandi Q. ah 00:09:58.79 LaurenWalshArt uh i guess you could say too that uh in the in the in the spirit of the caveman it's also an expression of the world around you um and like processing what's around you in a way like You know, if he's taunting the now-dead Saber, in a way, he's kind of... He's kind of... 00:10:21.56 LaurenWalshArt ah You know, experienc like processing the world and like putting out his own kind of... um ah emotions about the situation. 00:10:32.04 LaurenWalshArt So like, I feel like art is also, again, that interaction with the world and human experience, and like, a form of processing it as well, or like passing on information or 00:10:32.49 Hank I 00:10:42.89 Hank um like that. 00:10:44.21 Katherine Mm-hmm. 00:10:45.49 Mandi Q. Mm-hmm. 00:10:45.89 LaurenWalshArt um like very often you see that like with all pretty much any art that you see in any museum at this point like or even actually like um uh when i was in college i studied abroad in egypt for a brief period of time and um the professor that was on our thing like he could read hieroglyphs like he was like that kind of guy where he was just like 00:11:01.14 Britt Anderson Ooh. 00:11:09.65 LaurenWalshArt oh come over here and see see this corner where this cool little thing is and like he would take us away from like the tours and stuff and go and show us stuff and like you see these like little marks from like priests back then who are like marking like oh the nile was this high or like little pictures of like other little things and you're like they're almost again like processing what's around them and like showing what uh not necessarily like leaving a mark, but again, like they're processing what's around them. 00:11:38.39 LaurenWalshArt And like in time, we start to see that as art in a way, um which I think also gets reflective even in like kind of the games that we play in TTRPGs as well. We're kind of processing our own emotions and our own experiences through the eyes of a character kind of thing. yeah. 00:11:57.22 Britt Anderson I would add, I could add it's also a healthy dose of a person having curiosity and a want to discover more about something and not always just because of science. 00:12:08.87 LaurenWalshArt Mm-hmm. 00:12:12.40 Katherine Okay. 00:12:12.73 Mandi Q. Mm-hmm. 00:12:13.03 Britt Anderson Uh, like one of the, one of the things I think back to is, um, when people were exploring and they would bust out a sketchbook and start drawing things and it's observational, but there is a certain, 00:12:32.72 Britt Anderson despite the fact that they're drawing for scientific reasons, there's always these little flourishes and additional little fun little bits. 00:12:43.97 Britt Anderson I don't know how to describe it other than that, that kind of get added. 00:12:44.50 Katherine Okay. 00:12:48.12 Britt Anderson into it or if you want to jump into a movie that you see it actively happening when when hiccup 00:12:48.16 Kurt Crenwelge Thank 00:12:57.08 Britt Anderson is first interacting with Toothless and you get the montage of him kind of not really understanding Night Furies and then over the course of the film he observes, he sketches it down, he learns more about it. There's this beautiful arc to discovery of you don't know about a thing but you want to learn more about a thing and To me, creatives who are artists do it by drawing a thing that they don't really understand, but the more they draw it and the more they research, they find the beautiful things inside of it and then share the beautiful things that they discovered with other people. 00:13:24.88 Kurt Crenwelge you 00:13:39.43 Britt Anderson And I think that's really inspirational to me. but That really gets me going. 00:13:45.19 Mandi Q. Mm-hmm. 00:13:45.48 Hank Hell yeah. 00:13:45.48 LaurenWalshArt I love that. 00:13:46.55 Katherine That's awesome. Yeah. I guess the one only thing i would counterpoint to Hank, what you said, ah that that quote um from Scott McLeod about stuff that like doesn't serve any utility or any any purpose. 00:14:01.11 Katherine I think largely that's true. However, i think as obviously as time has gone on, I think people have found ways to incorporate art into functional ways. 00:14:10.62 Mandi Q. said 00:14:10.59 Katherine Things like like finding ways to imbue it into like inserting art, making mundane things um into art. 00:14:11.39 Hank For sure. 00:14:20.24 Katherine An example I have, um where I live, there's a lot of old homes and a lot of them are thankfully like restored and kind of kept the character. 00:14:30.70 Katherine And something that I found fascinating when I first moved here was there are a lot of homes where the inside of door hinges have these beautiful, ornate, intricate metalwork filigree. 00:14:44.37 Katherine Like you would only see it like when the door is open, but it didn't have to be like that, but someone took the time to, and it's just this like these beautiful little details of, yeah. 00:14:44.79 Britt Anderson Ooh. 00:14:48.75 Hank Mm-hmm. 00:14:52.95 Katherine So I don't know. And if I had to come up with some esoteric, you know, a lot of it everyone said, but yeah, I think it has a lot to do with like human expression, 00:14:58.45 Mandi Q. Thank 00:15:08.83 Katherine that is captured in some kind of observable, visual, tangible, hearable medium that in some way, at some magnitude, moves our senses and even goes so far as like the soul or the spirit. 00:15:26.52 Katherine It's just something that just moves you a bit, changes you, makes you curious, like Witt said. 00:15:31.16 LaurenWalshArt Mm-hmm. 00:15:31.76 Katherine um 00:15:31.97 Hank Or makes you uncomfortable or scared or anything. 00:15:33.45 Katherine Or exactly, it it just, it moves you a little bit. 00:15:33.89 Mandi Q. yeah 00:15:34.71 Britt Anderson yeah 00:15:35.23 Hank Yeah, for sure. Heard. 00:15:36.57 Katherine doesn't have to be good. It could be, yeah, like you said, discomfort, joy, sorrow, anger. Like it's, it's, ah yeah, there go. 00:15:45.54 Mandi Q. Yeah. It's, it's as to me, it's as much of portraying the world around you as it is portraying the world inside of you, um in a way that others can understand. 00:15:53.24 Katherine Yes. 00:15:56.12 Mandi Q. So, and, and most of the time you don't understand it yourself. 00:15:56.31 Hank turned 00:15:59.42 Mandi Q. So, um, One of the examples that I gave, i because I do a lot of art critiques to my my streaming community. And so um sometimes I can really see when somebody's focused on like the eyes of a character or their hands and then they have very specific ways of ah forming a shape or or coloring something. 00:16:19.62 Mandi Q. And a lot of that information is also coming from what you're seeing of yourself, whether or not you realize it. Like the way that I draw hands is a reflection of kind of what my hands are shaped like, what they look like. 00:16:30.67 Mandi Q. And that's my my mind interpreting that part of my body that I'm looking at almost all the time every day. And so um did I go to school and study how to draw hands from life and study all sorts of hands? Absolutely, I did. 00:16:44.62 Mandi Q. But in the end, the hands always end up looking like my own. So different people have ways of of bringing part of themselves, whether it's emotional, whether it's physical. 00:16:51.18 Katherine So. 00:16:53.21 Mandi Q. And for someone like myself, I have very intentionally curated and designed a character to represent my personality. There's a lot of color, there's a lot of shape and movement and, you know, hairstyle. And I can like curate that more specifically because I'm, it's a digital avatar. 00:17:09.49 Mandi Q. um But it's just some way which you're conveying your sense of self. um And that's sometimes formed by the world around you. Absolutely. 00:17:18.59 LaurenWalshArt Mm-hmm. 00:17:20.12 Britt Anderson Mm-hmm. 00:17:22.75 Hank Yeah, and I think that that ties into you know the sort of ah ubiquity of art and how it's like, you know, fashion is art. 00:17:33.31 Hank ah Hairstyling is art. Makeup is art. ah Art doesn't have to be something that ah has a purpose or has ah function, like we were saying before. I mean, obviously it it can. 00:17:48.55 Hank And I think that just because the outcome of something is hard to quantify doesn't mean that it's ah not important. you know I mean, we we are we are seeing the effects of you know things like ah poor mental health and how it affects all these different things. And it's like, how do you how do you quantify things like that? How do you how do you quantify how effective ah art is or how I mean, I can see things like, uh, user experience and user design. 00:18:18.49 Kurt Crenwelge Interesting. 00:18:21.87 Hank You know, there are people that are, you know, UX is kind of art plus science. It's like, Hey, what it's like, why is the, uh, uh, McDonald's red and yellow? Oh, it's because when people see yellow and red, they tend to get hungry or it's, it catches your eye. It's like, you know, you you're much likelier to pull over a bright yellow car than you are bright black car. 00:18:43.64 Hank So, uh, 00:18:45.06 LaurenWalshArt Hmm. 00:18:45.41 Kurt Crenwelge bright black interesting interesting 00:18:46.47 Hank Bright black car, yeah, shiny. 00:18:47.44 LaurenWalshArt Hmm. 00:18:47.66 Katherine Yeah. Yeah. 00:18:49.23 Britt Anderson Yeah, 00:18:49.99 Mandi Q. Yeah. 00:18:50.19 Kurt Crenwelge Well, yellow and red, that's like a french fry and ketchup. 00:18:53.74 Hank Yeah, oh, that too, yeah. 00:18:54.33 Katherine yeah 00:18:55.79 Britt Anderson reminds you of food. 00:18:55.87 Hank But I remember, I mean, I tend to take anything like this with a grain of salt when someone is like, oh, this color elicits this ah reaction from people, and this thing ah produces a desired effect. 00:18:56.49 Katherine yeah 00:19:10.13 Hank it's like, okay, well, maybe if if the sample size is large enough, but you can't really... 00:19:13.80 Britt Anderson Yeah. Mm-hmm. 00:19:14.36 Katherine Mm-hmm. 00:19:14.47 Hank ah 00:19:14.52 Katherine Mm-hmm. 00:19:15.45 Hank I don't think it's as simple as like yellow equals hungry. 00:19:15.47 LaurenWalshArt Well, I mean... Well, I mean, there is actually some data to show like things like um green. like Having a lot of green around you actually does improve your mood. 00:19:27.65 Hank I believe that. 00:19:27.90 LaurenWalshArt um like but But I think it's not necessarily that like color exists, therefore emotion exists. It's like it's more so like ah like if you see blood, if you see red, you're like it could be energy, it could be it could be a hunger thing, but it could also be tied to blood. 00:19:46.43 LaurenWalshArt It could be tied to anger. It could be tied to other things like there's, but that's again, it's like a human experience being expressed through color or rather a human experience being expressed through color, like a color that exists in a moment. 00:19:50.21 Hank Yeah. Mm-hmm. 00:20:00.47 LaurenWalshArt Whereas like green, having a lot of green around you or a lot of plants around you with that green also kind of makes you feel like you're in nature or makes you feel like you're in those spaces. 00:20:08.21 Hank yeah 00:20:10.42 LaurenWalshArt um but what i find interesting too is just like how humans need art almost it like um in the sense of like like for example um uh uh oh my gosh uh catherine i think with you have like that really like pretty like um shaw on right with like all like the different filigree and like um 00:20:17.66 Britt Anderson Yeah. 00:20:18.81 Katherine Oh 00:20:32.47 Katherine yes! 00:20:33.70 LaurenWalshArt Yeah, like, it's it's very pretty. And like, but like, at the same time, like, that's also art, but it's also clothing. And it's, it's also protection. And it's all these different things, but at the same time, expressive, and like, humans have found that way to you can't separate art from humanity, ah especially nowadays, I think, especially with the current conversations around AI. 00:20:55.24 Katherine Okay. 00:20:57.44 Hank Agreed. 00:21:00.71 LaurenWalshArt Like it is integral to the human experience. Like we literally just put our hands on walls and just blew paint on it. And we went, there we go. I'm expressing myself. 00:21:11.62 LaurenWalshArt Like it is such a core element to us. And like, and I've seen some hot takes online um where, 00:21:20.76 Britt Anderson but 00:21:22.06 LaurenWalshArt Where I've seen, i've seen, i won't name names, but I've seen some some some comments from people where they're like, well, art doesn't add any value ah to this video game, or it doesn't add such and such to whatever. 00:21:32.97 LaurenWalshArt And it's like, brother, are you aware of fact? 00:21:33.66 Mandi Q. Okay. 00:21:33.74 Katherine Ooh. 00:21:34.56 Britt Anderson o Are you aware the whole game itself is a piece of art? 00:21:38.39 LaurenWalshArt I didn't know what say! 00:21:38.55 Katherine Like. david 00:21:39.77 Hank Is art? 00:21:39.77 LaurenWalshArt Yeah. But... 1-0, 1-1-0, 1-0. you know what I mean? 00:21:41.40 Britt Anderson It's playable interactive arts. 00:21:41.53 Katherine Ugh. 00:21:43.61 Mandi Q. Have fun reading code, brother. 00:21:43.63 LaurenWalshArt But, like, 00:21:45.33 Katherine Those are fighting words. 00:21:45.73 Hank Thank you, thank you, thank you. 00:21:46.20 Britt Anderson No. 00:21:46.83 LaurenWalshArt one zero one one zero one zero so 00:21:49.81 Mandi Q. ah 00:21:50.05 LaurenWalshArt mean but 00:21:50.19 Kurt Crenwelge that exists and all that is is just digital characters like like keys on a on a screen and then it all makes the mapper and the characters and stuff and that's code true 00:21:51.48 LaurenWalshArt like 00:21:57.05 LaurenWalshArt yeah yeah yeah but even that's art you know like with like the little key you know what i mean like it wouldn't exist without the visual and art itself is magic in a way like you're taking it's it it is sorcery the fact that anyone because i have moments i don't know if about anybody else in here but like i have moments where i'm like damn i did that that came out of me like yeah where i'm like 00:21:58.26 Britt Anderson no 00:22:02.65 Mandi Q. Yeah. 00:22:03.22 Hank hang 00:22:04.57 Katherine Yes, 100%. 00:22:09.65 Mandi Q. Mm-hmm. 00:22:09.71 Hank Facts. 00:22:09.70 Kurt Crenwelge hmm 00:22:10.19 Katherine and 00:22:20.71 Mandi Q. Yeah. 00:22:21.32 Britt Anderson Yeah. 00:22:21.39 Katherine yes 00:22:22.27 Mandi Q. oh 00:22:22.73 Britt Anderson hundred percent 00:22:22.84 Katherine one hundred percent 00:22:24.09 Britt Anderson And it's it's always it's always such a big shock when it happens because because during a lot of times I found like during the process of working on something, to me, when I get those moments, it's usually right after I've solved a problem. 00:22:24.41 Mandi Q. Yeah. 00:22:27.61 LaurenWalshArt yeah Every time. 00:22:28.69 Katherine yeah 00:22:40.81 LaurenWalshArt Yes. 00:22:40.83 Hank Hmm. 00:22:41.08 Britt Anderson And it's not always a big problem. 00:22:41.54 LaurenWalshArt Yeah. 00:22:41.64 Katherine Yeah. 00:22:42.67 Britt Anderson Sometimes it's like, I just can't get this color to palette to work. 00:22:45.31 Hank Mm-hmm. 00:22:46.00 Britt Anderson Sometimes it's like that finger looks weird or it's some, sometimes it's scrapping a whole section of it and so starting from scratch. 00:22:46.11 Mandi Q. yeah 00:22:54.92 Britt Anderson But like, then I like when I'm finally done and I like step away from it and I look at it the next day, that's the biggest thing. 00:22:55.50 LaurenWalshArt Mm-hmm. 00:23:04.22 Britt Anderson When I, when I look at it after a sleep and I look at a piece that and I'm like, 00:23:04.70 Hank Mm-hmm. 00:23:04.79 LaurenWalshArt yeah 00:23:09.10 Katherine yeah 00:23:10.74 Britt Anderson whoa, I really locked in there. Huh? And then you just kind of when did this happen? 00:23:16.13 Katherine and like How? How did I do that? 00:23:17.54 Mandi Q. I was cooking. 00:23:19.00 Katherine Yeah, you're in the zone. 00:23:19.21 Hank True. 00:23:19.91 Britt Anderson What? 00:23:19.93 LaurenWalshArt yeah 00:23:20.26 Britt Anderson And it's, yeah. 00:23:20.57 Katherine Mm-hmm. 00:23:21.73 LaurenWalshArt Especially when you like level up, like when you have that moment, because there's something to where your taste. 00:23:24.39 Britt Anderson Yep. 00:23:26.04 Mandi Q. It clicks. 00:23:27.86 LaurenWalshArt And I would say that this is also a tip for yet younger artists too, that are just starting out or, or artists in general that are starting out is that very often your taste develops faster than your skill. 00:23:39.02 Mandi Q. Yeah. 00:23:39.37 LaurenWalshArt And there comes certain magical moment when your taste and your skill meet. 00:23:39.38 Katherine her 00:23:39.49 Britt Anderson ye 00:23:39.82 Hank true 00:23:45.18 LaurenWalshArt And then you're like, Whoa, whoa. 00:23:47.13 Katherine Mm-hmm. 00:23:47.38 LaurenWalshArt i'm doing the thing that i want to do and like and you have and there's also so much like frustration you have to overcome like every art piece and not just art i think writing cooking anything um is you have a moment where you finally again like you're saying like you solved that problem but you also have to have the mental fortitude to stay in the problem long enough to solve it 00:23:47.52 Britt Anderson Uh-huh. 00:24:00.61 Britt Anderson who 00:24:00.54 Katherine Mm-hmm. 00:24:10.25 Kurt Crenwelge Thank you. 00:24:13.53 Mandi Q. Mm-hmm. 00:24:13.56 LaurenWalshArt and it becomes a constant like a constant mental battle as well like you know every someone might draw white walk by me at starbucks or something like drawing and then they're like wow she looks like she's having a great time meanwhile i'm like listen here you son of a bitch it's the snows you're not going away from me brother like yeah 00:24:13.75 Britt Anderson yeah 00:24:26.32 Hank mm-hmm 00:24:26.73 Mandi Q. but 00:24:34.02 Britt Anderson Yeah. Oh man. 00:24:34.96 LaurenWalshArt yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah 00:24:35.31 Britt Anderson I feel that a little too much. 00:24:40.70 LaurenWalshArt I'm gonna make you in perspective, brother! 00:24:42.81 Mandi Q. just 00:24:44.56 LaurenWalshArt but 00:24:45.54 Britt Anderson you, have you, have you been in my computer in like the past six hours? 00:24:48.26 Mandi Q. yeah 00:24:48.55 LaurenWalshArt Yeah, I'm in your walls, actually. 00:24:49.58 Mandi Q. but 00:24:50.71 LaurenWalshArt Like, it's a subscription that I have. 00:24:51.53 Britt Anderson Because I've been fighting. 00:24:52.61 Katherine We're listening. 00:24:54.14 Britt Anderson i'm I'm in the middle of battling a doing exactly that right now with skills that I haven't used in like over 20 years to work on a work on a commission. 00:24:59.18 LaurenWalshArt Yeah. 00:25:02.56 Hank Oh no. 00:25:05.75 Britt Anderson And now I'm like, i can I can feel myself starting to lock in, but I'm like almost hate sketching it because I'm like, but I know at the end of it, I can feel the level up coming. 00:25:14.35 LaurenWalshArt huh And they say that you'll never work a day. You'll never work a day with doing something you love. yeah 00:25:21.46 Britt Anderson Yeah. 00:25:22.20 Katherine No, it takes work. 00:25:24.47 LaurenWalshArt Meanwhile, i'm beaten. 00:25:24.67 Mandi Q. Yeah. 00:25:24.75 Britt Anderson Takes a lot of work. 00:25:25.99 LaurenWalshArt yeah. 00:25:25.93 Katherine It does. 00:25:26.31 LaurenWalshArt yeah 00:25:27.80 Mandi Q. I guess... 00:25:28.22 Kurt Crenwelge um'm I'm having a blast just sitting back and letting all the experts 00:25:31.60 Britt Anderson i't 00:25:32.32 Mandi Q. but 00:25:32.83 Kurt Crenwelge yeah fear 00:25:33.55 LaurenWalshArt but 00:25:34.22 Kurt Crenwelge And i maybe just I work differently with like, you know, my spider web way of thinking of like where something someone says reminds me of like a quote or something, you know, going back ah maybe before we started rolling. But Britt talked about like, oh, my my friends and i we speak in like, you we're cinephiles. So we speak in like movie references and such. And remind remembering our episode, Britt. 00:25:56.81 Kurt Crenwelge And how we talked about Iron Giant. i And I had to look it up because I was like, what's the character's name? Because I'm just thinking of the junkyard scene with Dean McCoppen yelling at the Iron Giant. 00:26:05.48 Mandi Q. think 00:26:05.88 Britt Anderson yeah art 00:26:06.77 Kurt Crenwelge Like, this is art. And he's he fixes it and puts it down. 00:26:08.98 Hank I like that. 00:26:08.98 LaurenWalshArt Yeah. 00:26:09.48 Hank I'm going to that down. 00:26:11.73 Kurt Crenwelge And then he's kind of then he's like, oh, a so maybe the one the one case in which artificial intelligence maybe did do something good for art. 00:26:12.75 Katherine It's like... 00:26:14.15 Britt Anderson oh it's actually kind of good 00:26:21.45 Katherine My kids love that movie. 00:26:22.53 LaurenWalshArt Yeah, but he was Superman, though. 00:26:22.66 Mandi Q. i think 00:26:25.21 Mandi Q. one One of the most special things about art is that its purpose is for us to assign purpose to it. So the artist, the artist is solving problems. 00:26:32.69 Hank o i like that 00:26:34.23 Katherine Hmm. 00:26:35.02 Hank um to write that down 00:26:36.08 Mandi Q. Okay, you can have it. it's your 00:26:36.98 Britt Anderson Yeah. Yeah. 00:26:38.54 Mandi Q. The artist, you know, when I'm talking to people about art, well, because most of my content, I just draw. So I'm drawing for people in front of people. And I'm talking about what I'm doing, because a lot of people are just interested in art or they're artists themselves. 00:26:50.71 Mandi Q. And so while I'm drawing, I will explain that I'm answering questions. So sometimes you're consciously thinking of that question and you're really digging into it. And other times it's just sort of like, what color do I want to use here? 00:27:01.73 Mandi Q. And you try a couple of colors. You're like, cool, that color works. And it's a series of asking yourself, how am I going to do this thing? 00:27:04.76 LaurenWalshArt Hmm. 00:27:08.47 Mandi Q. Whether it's a conscious question to yourself or not. 00:27:08.74 Britt Anderson Mm-hmm. 00:27:11.26 Mandi Q. And 00:27:11.43 LaurenWalshArt Hmm. 00:27:12.69 Mandi Q. For a beginner, those questions are way bigger, have way more complicated answers, and are a lot more intimidating. For somebody who very you know very experienced, those questions are a bit more mundane. 00:27:25.21 Mandi Q. um And we really have to, um it really takes a lot for a question to stump us. Um, but overall, you know, to the person receiving the art, they assign their own purpose to it. So I could have drawn whatever I wanted, however I wanted it to be. 00:27:41.93 Mandi Q. And that's what I assigned my own purpose into. And someone else will take that and they'll say their own purpose. So to someone... so you know, a supporter of ah the the the narrative that um art doesn't add value to video games. Whoever said that it clearly doesn't know how the spaghetti is made. 00:28:00.39 Mandi Q. but um 00:28:01.15 Katherine Mm-hmm. 00:28:01.59 Britt Anderson Yep. 00:28:02.16 Mandi Q. But, you know, to somebody else sitting beside them, that game's purpose is huge. Someone else might look at that and say, you know what, this game's not for me. 00:28:08.15 Katherine ah 00:28:09.65 Mandi Q. It doesn't really hold a lot of weight in my heart. doesn't hold a lot of purpose in my mind. But I still acknowledge that it exists. But to the developers, its purpose might have been monetary. 00:28:16.27 LaurenWalshArt Mm-hmm. 00:28:19.27 Mandi Q. It might have been a passion project. So I think that's one of the the biggest things about art is that its purpose is truly to be given purpose by the people who receive it. um Whether that's information being transferred, whether it's just a pretty picture of your favorite Fullmetal Alchemist character. 00:28:36.48 Mandi Q. yeah So I do really love sharing 00:28:37.70 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 00:28:37.72 Britt Anderson Mm-hmm. 00:28:40.59 Mandi Q. my purpose and seeing what purposes people give to it. Cause when they share that purpose with you, then you're like, Oh, somebody just gave me something new about the art that I didn't give it. And that's kind of magic. 00:28:48.86 LaurenWalshArt ah 00:28:49.72 Mandi Q. That's magic in and of itself. 00:28:50.94 Hank Hell yeah. Yeah. There was somebody that I forgot who it was. I want to say it was Dave Grohl. I could be mistaken, but there's someone that said one of their favorite things about performing music in front of people is that, uh, you know, you wrote the song for one reason and you're singing it in front of 2000 people and they're all singing the exact same words for 2000 different reasons. 00:28:56.72 Mandi Q. Hmm. 00:29:11.12 Mandi Q. Mm-hmm. 00:29:11.53 Britt Anderson Oh, yeah. 00:29:11.74 LaurenWalshArt er 00:29:11.87 Katherine a 00:29:13.46 Britt Anderson That's a good one. 00:29:14.32 Katherine That's good. 00:29:16.80 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. Again, this is just fascinating. I just want to sit back and let everyone talk and and and only only jump in when it's necessary. 00:29:20.82 Hank Right. 00:29:21.97 Britt Anderson but 00:29:24.48 Kurt Crenwelge And I'm just trying to look at all the questions. and And I'm just looking at all the different artists that we have represented. So maybe kind of like a part B to the question as far as like, you know, but what is art? 00:29:37.50 Kurt Crenwelge Maybe... So making it more specific to each panelist, like what would you say is like your art or like your art style? So like when you say like when you're out there creating and you're putting it out there for people to to share, I mean, obviously people can go online and and kind of look at it on social media and such, your portfolios. 00:29:58.35 Kurt Crenwelge Uh, but just maybe like kind of briefly just to like give people context. So when they're listening to the audio of this, they can be like, Oh, okay. So, you know, this person does art this way and this style, and this person does their art this way. 00:30:10.63 Kurt Crenwelge So they can kind of like visualize it, uh, for themselves. 00:30:14.77 Britt Anderson Thank you. 00:30:15.89 Hank Nose goes, who wants to go first? 00:30:18.88 LaurenWalshArt like I can go. um For me, my style is very much like stylized realism. 00:30:25.01 Mandi Q. Mm-hmm. 00:30:25.26 LaurenWalshArt ah 00:30:25.73 Katherine Mm-hmm. 00:30:26.29 LaurenWalshArt Not necessarily hyper-realistic, but a little bit like um a little bit of like a riot kind of blizzard-y kind of vibe um of like cartoonish, but still based a little bit in reality. 00:30:43.70 LaurenWalshArt um and ah Yeah, which which both of those studios have heavily inspired my work over my entire lifetime, to be honest. um But I would say that. And then um I also have been kind of exploring a little bit of like a more graphic kind of... 00:31:04.86 LaurenWalshArt um I don't even how to phrase it. it's If people have seen my work online or like on socials, like I've been doing some like fan art of Baldur's Gate 3 and I did a Gale piece as of recent that like, thank you. 00:31:18.23 Britt Anderson Yeah. 00:31:19.03 Katherine Love that piece. 00:31:19.95 Britt Anderson I love that piece. 00:31:21.77 Katherine Oh, so much. 00:31:23.36 LaurenWalshArt And think ah thank you. 00:31:23.49 Britt Anderson It gives me so many emotions. Every time I look at it, it makes me, makes my heart happy. 00:31:27.39 LaurenWalshArt ah think Oh, thank you. 00:31:28.21 Katherine Everyone should go look at it 00:31:28.87 LaurenWalshArt Stop. 00:31:29.14 Britt Anderson Everyone's gonna look at it. 00:31:30.10 LaurenWalshArt Stop. 00:31:31.14 Kurt Crenwelge It's just going to be a little fess on this panel. 00:31:32.58 Britt Anderson No, listen, we are all artists. 00:31:33.40 Mandi Q. yeah 00:31:34.52 Britt Anderson We're all going to be gassing each other up during these sessions. 00:31:36.65 LaurenWalshArt yeah yeah yeah and each one of us is gonna reject it okay that's how this goes no but um but with things um but with that gale piece specifically i was kind of exploring i wasn't it was not a style i normally do if you've seen my work it's very much not me but it is me it's very much not what i normally do 00:31:36.98 Katherine yes 00:31:37.94 Britt Anderson Because we're all going to like, I don't know. 00:31:40.67 Hank Thank you. 00:31:41.81 Katherine and 00:31:43.44 Britt Anderson Yeah, that's, that's just a... 00:31:55.16 Katherine Mm-hmm. 00:31:59.11 LaurenWalshArt And with that piece, I was actually exploring Gale as a wizard being able to like manipulate reality and creation and the weave and like, you know, the threads of the goddess herself kind of thing. 00:32:12.23 LaurenWalshArt and like, um and it was like so much fun to kind of like try and like ah deconstruct reality for a little bit and do a style that was completely separate of my own. 00:32:25.45 LaurenWalshArt And like it's kind of opened up this whole new like graphic style. like like ah you know like By consuming work that I don't normally consume, it influences a new type of style that that then is created. And and people love it. and it's Experimentation is huge. But... 00:32:47.11 LaurenWalshArt to to re-anchor it back i stylized realism is what i would say like i'm most known for um as as as a style specifically thematically i would say uh pretty queer muscle ladies um and uh a lot of fantasy and uh yeah 00:33:01.27 Mandi Q. i 00:33:08.16 Mandi Q. I love that. 00:33:09.90 LaurenWalshArt big Oh, am i and my son. 00:33:10.51 Kurt Crenwelge Thank you. 00:33:11.52 LaurenWalshArt forgot my own son. and oh my god. And Woobl, my boy. 00:33:13.87 Britt Anderson Strike that, reverse it. 00:33:14.17 LaurenWalshArt My precious boy. 00:33:15.40 Hank Yeah. 00:33:15.70 LaurenWalshArt Anyway. 00:33:16.22 Katherine I'll fix it in post. 00:33:18.54 LaurenWalshArt The muscle lady to little boy type... but Okay, wait. Let me rephrase. Hold on. Let me rephrase that. let me re let Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Whoa, whoa, whoa. 00:33:26.11 Katherine anos 00:33:26.67 Mandi Q. Oh, man. 00:33:27.65 LaurenWalshArt Whoa, whoa, whoa. 00:33:28.54 Mandi Q. Cut, cut, cut, cut, cut it out. 00:33:28.92 LaurenWalshArt Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. 00:33:30.09 Britt Anderson try toqua reverse it 00:33:30.85 LaurenWalshArt The muscle lady to little guy pipeline is 00:33:33.88 Mandi Q. Oh, yes. Okay. 00:33:37.41 Kurt Crenwelge You just have two, so you have a slider with extremes, and that's what it is. 00:33:39.11 LaurenWalshArt here ah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah thank you so yes but anyway thank that's it 00:33:40.75 Mandi Q. I got two wolves inside me. 00:33:45.44 Britt Anderson Oh, that's too good. 00:33:45.50 Katherine Thank you. 00:33:49.11 Mandi Q. ah for For me, um I started VTubing two years ago. I was working on an animated television show from home for four years. And um i worked I worked on the show Archer. 00:34:02.70 Mandi Q. And um so a lot of... 00:34:05.64 Kurt Crenwelge Phrasing. 00:34:06.41 Mandi Q. Yeah, phrasing. 00:34:07.71 Katherine the 00:34:07.82 Mandi Q. i So I worked on four seasons um and um a lot of the work already, if you've ever worked in in television animation, is is you conforming to an existing style, to an existing set of rules, um especially for a show that's so established. 00:34:21.21 LaurenWalshArt Mm-hmm. 00:34:24.09 Mandi Q. um I was really just conforming to a very technical pipeline. um We created the character bodies ah in Adobe Illustrator, which is not typically a animation pipeline ah program. However, they animated it all in After Effects. So that thing was built on popsicle sticks in a dream. 00:34:41.78 Mandi Q. um 00:34:42.29 Kurt Crenwelge Thank you. 00:34:42.73 Mandi Q. And, and by the end of my tenure there, my job had morphed into one of guidance and note making rather than actually making assets very often. 00:34:43.69 Britt Anderson this 00:34:52.67 Mandi Q. So I was incredibly lonely and not stimulated creatively, you know, creatively. 00:34:53.39 Britt Anderson Mm-hmm. 00:34:57.73 Mandi Q. um So I'd seen that there's this community online of people that made digital avatars and they would stream to other people out there in the world and they would share their art and making the avatar itself was part of the expression. 00:35:11.61 Mandi Q. I could be my own art director, i could make my own world um and what better way to but put everything into it than to make a character that exemplified um everything that made me smile and everything I wanted to be as like a kid. 00:35:27.11 Mandi Q. So I'm a mall mannequin from like a Claire's basically, you know, what how cool would it have been to help get all the the hair clips and the the bows and the barrettes and things. 00:35:30.33 LaurenWalshArt Oh, cute. Oh, I can't. 00:35:31.25 Katherine Yeah. 00:35:32.63 Britt Anderson Adorable. 00:35:35.35 Katherine Uh-huh. 00:35:37.38 Mandi Q. And, you know, part of me wishes I was a mannequin at Hot Topic, but there's neither here nor there. um And so you guys probably would have seen my art from my human portfolio. 00:35:48.73 Mandi Q. um But in the past few years, I've actually been creating so much art just for my community. And so that optimism and that brightness, very Lisa Frank, very heavy. 00:35:59.69 Kurt Crenwelge Yes. 00:36:00.66 LaurenWalshArt ah 00:36:00.84 Kurt Crenwelge Yes. 00:36:01.19 Mandi Q. I'm very heavy handed. 00:36:01.72 Britt Anderson Yeah. 00:36:02.45 Mandi Q. I'm Sometimes I call it ham fisted where my line art's really thick um and I go way too saturated sometimes, ah way too much contrast, but then I have to like dial it back. 00:36:15.51 Mandi Q. And I think that's really exemplary of my personality. I go way too hard and then I readjust and I eat up the feedback of somebody saying, hey, that's cool, but you also talked my ear off for 45 straight minutes about Naruto and that's awesome energy you brought to the function, but I didn't need 45 minutes of Naruto. 00:36:34.46 Mandi Q. I'm like, no, you're right. 00:36:34.54 LaurenWalshArt but 00:36:35.71 Mandi Q. You're right. you're That's true. So... 00:36:37.73 Britt Anderson ah but 00:36:37.80 Kurt Crenwelge And I have to compliment the original ah art that got me to follow you on the old days of Twitter, which is you did um some D&D versions of Dolly Parton as like different character classes. 00:36:48.96 Mandi Q. I did. 00:36:50.33 Britt Anderson Yes. 00:36:50.65 LaurenWalshArt That's awesome. 00:36:51.31 Katherine Mm-hmm. 00:36:51.59 Mandi Q. Yeah, I really love Dolly Parton. 00:36:51.56 Katherine Mm-hmm. 00:36:54.38 Mandi Q. um i think. 00:36:55.46 Kurt Crenwelge Well, who doesn't? She's she's America's sweetheart. 00:36:58.43 Britt Anderson an icon. 00:36:58.57 Mandi Q. Yeah, I so you know, 00:36:59.80 Britt Anderson We love her. 00:37:01.59 Mandi Q. ah my, my art style is, um, I'd say illustrative, uh, which is not very specific illustrations, pretty much anything, but there's a lot of Lisa Frank, a lot of two thousands, um, cartoons and media, a lot of toy branding and stuff like that as well, just because that's, that's when my brain was absolutely soaking it up. 00:37:18.53 LaurenWalshArt Hmm. 00:37:21.57 Mandi Q. Um, 00:37:22.11 Britt Anderson Amen. 00:37:22.36 Mandi Q. So i tend to I tend to use a lot of color. I tend to use a lot of lines. And and even though it cramps my hand up, i do I do love me some line art. Not everybody likes it, but I love it. ah and and And so, yeah, i my current work is in games. 00:37:32.91 Katherine or 00:37:38.62 Kurt Crenwelge Thank you. 00:37:38.65 Mandi Q. i I mostly do... um stylized realism for games. Very ah polished, clean, crisp. um A lot of items and UI elements. um A lot of gold. 00:37:51.40 Mandi Q. Tons of gold. ah Tons of metal in general. And that's really like just... pushed me to, uh, to, to draw more, uh, material and try to get a different, you know, sense of material in my artwork. 00:38:05.55 Mandi Q. Um, and that's what the Alphonse piece on, on the gallery I sent that Alphonse piece was like me being like, I want to draw metal really bad. 00:38:05.79 LaurenWalshArt Mm-hmm. 00:38:09.26 Katherine and 00:38:14.11 Mandi Q. So, so yeah, that's, uh, that's me. 00:38:22.16 Britt Anderson I could go next. I think... um 00:38:27.74 Kurt Crenwelge Thank 00:38:27.88 Britt Anderson So, kind of similar to what Lauren said. Excuse me, my voice. ah eileen i lean hard into something that I call magical realism, which is... 00:38:44.91 Britt Anderson Fairly kind of similar to some of the work that Lauren that you do. But when I was growing up, I grew up an only child in a town of less than 500 people with no other kids that lived on my street. 00:39:02.67 Britt Anderson And My family was very poor and could not afford to send me to any of the extracurriculars that any of the other kids went to. But a ream of paper and colored pencils were cheap from the Dollar Tree. 00:39:11.33 Kurt Crenwelge you 00:39:15.76 Britt Anderson So, and we had VCR that... that And VHS movies were a relatively cheap thing to entertain me. 00:39:28.14 Britt Anderson So I think I watched all of the Disney and DreamWorks animated movies so many times to the point where I could mute the TV and just... 00:39:28.89 Katherine Thank you. 00:39:44.55 Britt Anderson recite the entire film from beginning to finish including like sound effects and everything so disney was a huge impact in my life and then when i got older i was leaning more into dreamworks with your ah prince of egypt's road to el dorado's but the real kicker that like punched me in the teeth when i got to high school was when i discovered miyazaki for the first time and uh 00:39:59.95 LaurenWalshArt or 00:40:00.86 Katherine Mmm. 00:40:08.33 Kurt Crenwelge Thank you. 00:40:08.75 Katherine Mmm, yes. 00:40:09.17 Mandi Q. Mm-hmm. h 00:40:12.61 Britt Anderson the whole concept of like, oh, you know, like Disney has this like, oh, there's fairy godmothers and all the witches are evil. And then when I discovered as a teenager that like, oh, there's... 00:40:27.26 Britt Anderson a certain fascination with whichness kind of started creeping into my life with like Howl's Moving Castle and Kiki's Delivery Service to the point where I would hide the fact that I was renting these movies from my parents and going through into college the the DreamWorks Disney Miyazaki blend of doing a lot of cell shading and flat graphic character designs was very much my thing for a very long time and going to school for animation to specifically be a character designer that worked in animation that's what I was kind of training myself for so I empathize with the whole you know here's an established style you have to work in and you have to follow that rule book 00:41:11.36 LaurenWalshArt Yeah. 00:41:21.62 Britt Anderson But once I got out of working in animation and I really started being like, well, could add some texture and some flair to things. And ah my style kind of morphed into what I call the magical realism where for the most part, with the exception of a few pieces, everything is mostly realistic. 00:41:30.73 Kurt Crenwelge Thank you. 00:41:46.45 Britt Anderson but the colors are so are much more vibrant. I love playing with textures and i found a love for messy line art that was trained out of me in college. 00:41:57.63 LaurenWalshArt ah 00:41:58.42 Katherine Mm-hmm. 00:42:00.74 Britt Anderson Cause to be a character designer for 2D animation, your lines had to be clean and they had to be on point. And I was a master at that. But once I gave myself permission to be messy about it after i was no longer working in animation, it unlocked this whole love of... 00:42:20.67 Britt Anderson calligraphic line where it's extreme thick to thins and lines overlapping each other and not always meeting up correctly to the point now where it's like, yeah, I could go back to doing super clean line art, but why would I want to? Because I got this delicious, like something messy over here that I get to experiment and play with. 00:42:41.07 Britt Anderson So that's messy. 00:42:41.32 Kurt Crenwelge Interesting. So it sounds like, you know, I was trained on classical music, and then I discovered jazz, and then I just went hard into jazz. 00:42:42.95 Britt Anderson Oh, how long? 00:42:48.11 Mandi Q. and 00:42:50.45 Britt Anderson Then I went hard into jazz and then I threw in some like reggae in there too, just for kicks and giggles and it changes every week. 00:42:50.70 Kurt Crenwelge That's what it sounds like. 00:42:57.21 Kurt Crenwelge Killer. I love 00:42:59.83 Britt Anderson It changes every week. ah Yeah. 00:43:04.87 Britt Anderson Messy magical realism. 00:43:06.82 Mandi Q. I love it. I love that. Yeah. 00:43:08.42 Britt Anderson A la Disney and DreamWorks and Miyazaki. 00:43:09.17 Katherine and love it. 00:43:10.74 Britt Anderson That's the best way to describe it. 00:43:11.69 Kurt Crenwelge you 00:43:12.15 Katherine Ugh. 00:43:13.66 LaurenWalshArt i can definitely I can definitely see those influences in your work. Absolutely. 00:43:18.71 Mandi Q. Oh yeah. 00:43:20.89 Britt Anderson Peace. 00:43:21.21 LaurenWalshArt I love it. 00:43:22.64 Katherine Yeah, Brett, I think i I'm resonating so much because a lot of the influences you said are exactly what but we have some parallels with our origins. So I'll say of this group, I'm probably the most like, I hate to use terms like amateur in the sense of like, I don't do illustration or artwork for a living. 00:43:47.81 Katherine I'm a graphic designer, but I've been, as I'm sure almost all of us or all of us have been drawing since we could pick up a crayon, you know, that, that type of person. um And I've been able to incorporate it into some professional work here and there, but no, I grew up in small town. 00:43:57.19 Britt Anderson Mm-hmm. 00:44:05.60 Katherine um We didn't have, you know, cable TV or whatnot. We had a lot of, you know, VHSs and played lots of video games and, um Yeah, between Disney and DreamWorks and some of the, you know, like Legend of Zelda and some other awesome video games and movies. 00:44:25.05 Kurt Crenwelge you 00:44:25.05 Katherine That's where I would get a lot of my inspiration from and it just, you know, books. And I think, yeah, when when I discovered Miyazaki, that was like a huge, that was like a quantum shift in just like knowing what, because again, we we were raised on Disney, right? 00:44:42.73 Katherine But then there's just this different, like, well, it's called the Disney of Japan. Sometimes we're like, no, it's it's different. It was awesome. It just kind of blew my mind and shifted things. And then it wasn't really until Gosh, even, i mean, and going up to college, I did much more like a classical kind of education and building skill, you know, like studying the masters and doing figure drawing and and focusing on both my design education, which but is is, continues to be fascinating with, you know, color theory and and form and line and psychology. 00:45:18.39 Katherine um But, you know, also leaning into a classical foundation in art, which is I think is important for almost anyone going into the craft. But yeah, I didn't find a lot of, um 00:45:37.89 Katherine like I didn't really discover almost like game art, if if you will, and like the concept of concept art, and then kind of leading into this, you know, TTRPG world of how how art drives a lot of it. And a lot of the artists I follow now, illustrators, concept artists, 00:45:59.58 Katherine some of which did also work in animation, that also opened up a new facet. So I have a lot of styles and I've kind of bounced around a bunch. I think I've always aspired on one end to shoot for realism, but my favorite artists have always been those who incorporate imaginative realism is kind of the bubble, the the umbrella term I use for it. 00:46:22.33 Katherine um 00:46:22.83 LaurenWalshArt Mhm. Yeah. 00:46:23.75 Katherine And i mean, Lauren, your work, ah ah bret you Everyone here on this call, essentially you guys are among my influences. 00:46:29.81 LaurenWalshArt yeah 00:46:31.79 Katherine um But yeah, it's it's something I strive for is I love drawing like by hand, either on pencil and paper or, you know, I have an iPad now. So I love drawing on the screen itself. 00:46:43.62 Katherine I had one of those old Intuos Wacom tablets where like you have to draw down here, but you're looking at the screen and oh my gosh, 00:46:49.22 LaurenWalshArt Oh my god, yes. 00:46:50.97 Britt Anderson Yep. 00:46:52.08 LaurenWalshArt Yep. Yep. Yep. yeah but 00:46:56.18 Katherine it was great It was great for what it was, but man, let's see you can draw on a screen. That's so much better. 00:47:02.27 Britt Anderson I can't wait until they can get screening. 00:47:02.70 Katherine long story short, yeah, I mean, i it's it's harder harder now with my time with working full time as a designer. I also have two young kids. So I try to practice when I can with ah nap time and after they're in bed. But um yeah, I'm working on like reworking on skill. 00:47:20.89 Katherine I resonate a lot with what we were talking about with looking back on artwork that you made and you're like, how did I do that? 00:47:21.38 LaurenWalshArt Hmm. Hmm. 00:47:27.74 Katherine Like, that was me. That's amazing. What did I do? that Yeah, I have a lot of that. So I'm i'm kind of in a stage now if I've spent time away from it. I'm building back up, like exercising those muscles that I i know I have. 00:47:37.76 Kurt Crenwelge Thank you. 00:47:40.04 Katherine They're under there somewhere. Um, but I do, i'm I'm kind of experimenting at this point, like finding, okay, I'm not the same person I was back when I was a teenager, back in college, back, you know, even five years ago before I had kids. 00:47:54.75 Katherine Um, and so kind of just, yeah, just, just teasing that out. But I do aspire to ah kind of an imaginative realism, like proportion, anatomy, all that's got to be there. 00:48:04.93 Katherine But like injecting that magic that, you know, stretching reality a little bit. 00:48:08.17 Kurt Crenwelge you 00:48:09.34 Katherine And I'm most comfortable with line art and, and I'm a color still, even and as a designer, like I can do color all the day long and like page layouts and book covers and stuff. 00:48:21.36 Katherine When it comes to paint, I got, I think I have to paid for real more. But yeah, I'm kind of in this interesting stage of like rediscovering what my style is and sharpening those skills again. 00:48:35.69 LaurenWalshArt oh 00:48:36.01 Katherine so yeah, that's where I'm at. 00:48:37.80 Hank Hell yeah. Well, I guess it's my turn. um If it makes you feel any better, Catherine, I have also ah never until now really been a professional artist. 00:48:51.80 Hank Up until a year ago, i was still driving a forklift. And ah I've done like sort of blue collar or service jobs my whole life. 00:48:58.20 Katherine Mm-hmm. 00:48:59.53 Hank and ah But I also have been drawing my entire life, much like I'm sure all of you have. 00:49:01.97 Kurt Crenwelge Thank you. 00:49:05.84 Hank Basically, ah since as soon as I can remember, I've been pretty passionate about it. And that's sort of where my... ah the ah cartoonists are born in middle school math classes. 00:49:20.12 Hank I like to, that's sort of the tagline for my MIT cartoons, which is like the sort of umbrella. 00:49:20.51 Britt Anderson then. 00:49:26.07 Hank If I ever get an LLC, it's going be MIT cartoons. And then Dean Doodles is under that umbrella. Anyway, um the reason I say that is because ah a lot of my sort of artistic journey is I really appreciate um limitations and ah guidelines and sort of rule sets when it comes to art, not ah laws and not things that, you know, this is right, this is wrong. 00:49:55.41 Hank I refuse to listen to anybody that says you drew that wrong. And anybody listening, if people are telling you that, then they are wrong. Unless you're working for a production and you have to maintain a 00:50:08.33 LaurenWalshArt Unless your art director says so. 00:50:10.38 Hank Yeah. 00:50:10.53 Mandi Q. Yeah. 00:50:10.62 Britt Anderson yeah 00:50:10.72 LaurenWalshArt but yeah 00:50:10.82 Hank I'm also just kind of look at, sort you know, whatever, whatever. 00:50:12.98 Kurt Crenwelge you 00:50:12.97 Katherine Gotta follow the spec sheet. 00:50:13.12 Hank But if you're just, yeah, yeah, I get all that. 00:50:13.51 Mandi Q. Yeah. 00:50:13.99 Britt Anderson if 00:50:14.74 LaurenWalshArt yeah 00:50:15.76 Mandi Q. ah Agreed. 00:50:16.06 Hank But if you're just, if you're just drawing something, dude, there's no such thing as, as right and wrong. Um, but anyway, I like limitations and I like, uh, line work. 00:50:26.96 Hank So most of my, artistic journey was computer paper and Sharpies. used to draw, uh, I, you know, if you can do quite a bit with just black and white. 00:50:33.73 Britt Anderson Mm-hmm. 00:50:39.10 Hank You know, I'm, uh, You can do a lot of different texture. you can you know With a certain cross-hatching, you can make something look like a rock or piece of chain mail or a rusty sword. 00:50:45.41 Katherine Thank you. 00:50:50.76 Hank ah And it could be the exact same lines, but within different contexts. It could be a completely different thing. um I also love storytelling when it comes to art. I like when you can look at something and... ah you know, sort of see all the pieces and imagine where, that how those pieces fall together. 00:51:12.16 Hank So if I think that's why I like character design so much so you can, uh, you know, tell people's stories based on what they, uh, have or don't have, you know, um, 00:51:16.55 Britt Anderson Yeah. 00:51:16.58 LaurenWalshArt Mm-hmm. 00:51:25.65 Hank some of my early inspirations. I'm not going to sit here and give you an entire list because we we'd be here for a while, but some notable ones, uh, are Gary Larson from the far side, ah Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes. 00:51:40.56 Katherine Yes. 00:51:42.58 Hank Um, shout out to whoever drew the specifically the rocks and mountain scapes in the Bionicle comics. 00:51:43.12 Britt Anderson yeah 00:51:52.00 Hank Cause I've, 00:51:52.83 Katherine Wow, that's a deep cut. 00:51:53.32 Britt Anderson but 00:51:53.65 LaurenWalshArt That's so specific. yeah 00:51:55.70 Hank I stole, like, look up the Bionicle comic first issue. 00:51:55.79 LaurenWalshArt Alright, 00:51:55.97 Britt Anderson That's real specific, but I understand. 00:51:58.70 Katherine I appreciate it. 00:52:00.54 LaurenWalshArt I'm looking up. 00:52:03.46 Hank And, like, where it's got Kopaka standing there. Look at how he draws the mountains in the back. I was like, that's how i'm going to draw rocks for the rest of my life. 00:52:13.88 LaurenWalshArt Ugh. 00:52:19.66 Hank Also my background is also in animation. Nothing super professional or... 00:52:27.47 Hank ah like that. But, um you know, I grew up making Post-it Note flip books. ah I still have, I think, every single one that I made. And one day, if I have enough money, I would love to pay somebody to take them apart and digitize them because there's no way I'm doing it. 00:52:44.10 Hank But it would cool to see all my old life. 00:52:44.81 Katherine haha 00:52:46.49 Hank I loved watching, ah you know, Newgrounds ah videos, stick figures fighting each other. And ah eventually I discovered anime. 00:52:53.70 Britt Anderson yep 00:52:53.80 Katherine haha haha 00:52:56.77 Hank um i was that kid in middle school who had Naruto headband. I didn't wear it, but I did have one. Let me get that out there. 00:53:05.01 Mandi Q. Same. 00:53:06.42 LaurenWalshArt Yeah, i I mean, I did too. That's fine. 00:53:09.01 Katherine session 00:53:09.63 Hank ah Yeah, so I loved Naruto. Eventually, Cowboy Bebop, Akira, stuff like that. 00:53:15.90 Katherine Uh-huh. 00:53:17.50 Hank I sort of fell out of anime for a while because I started... i think I i viewed... i was i was I wasn't getting the right ah lessons from trying to imitate the style. 00:53:33.27 Hank So when I was learning, because I'm i'm mostly self-taught, I've been drawing ah my whole life. And then I went to community college. And then eventually i wanted to ah get an associate's and then transfer to SCAD. 00:53:45.89 Hank And then decided I didn't want to ah pay for school anymore and also be in school anymore. So didn't. 00:53:53.30 Mandi Q. there. 00:53:54.05 Hank didn't 00:53:54.49 Katherine Uh-huh. 00:53:54.80 Hank um But what was I saying? I just lost my train of thought. ah 00:54:06.75 LaurenWalshArt it 00:54:07.15 Hank I just totally space. Okay, how about how about I'll tie it into limitations and color. So I like lines and black and white a lot. 00:54:18.44 Hank And I didn't really do anything with color until college. And then I was like, there are too many colors. I'm just going to get red, yellow, and blue, and I'll mix them if I need anything else. 00:54:31.72 Hank So anytime I get a new medium, if it's art or if it's a paint or if it's ah markers, I'll just get primary colors. And ah that that that quells the choice paralysis that is the entirety of the color spectrum. 00:54:51.70 Katherine the 00:54:52.45 Britt Anderson Oh boy. Yeah, I know that. 00:54:55.01 Hank yeah 00:54:55.08 LaurenWalshArt I mean, in a way, that's kind of um what Mandy was talking about with answering questions. Because, like, your the limitations allows... Because I've often found, like, if I get... If I sit down I'm like, Lauren, you must make art today. I'm like, no, I'm going play video games instead. 00:55:12.42 LaurenWalshArt But if someone commissions me or an art director says, hey, Lauren, you need do this. You're like, got it. I'm going to research everything on that specific subject until I'm a complete and utter expert. 00:55:21.28 Britt Anderson yeah 00:55:23.04 LaurenWalshArt And then I'm going to give you that. And sometimes having a limitation or like someone being like, hey, take all of your creativity and focus it here is like, cool, got it, no worries. 00:55:34.12 LaurenWalshArt And and it's similar, i think, to what you're saying with the limitations where you don't have to ask as many questions. You don't have to answer as many questions. And like, yeah, I can see why while you lean there. 00:55:46.34 LaurenWalshArt You know what I mean? 00:55:46.71 Hank Yeah. 00:55:47.02 LaurenWalshArt that's successfully but 00:55:47.32 Mandi Q. Mm-hmm. 00:55:48.04 LaurenWalshArt That's really it. 00:55:48.05 Hank And also, it it it tends to lend itself to more ah like creative problem solving. you know um 00:55:54.17 LaurenWalshArt Mm-hmm. 00:55:54.70 Britt Anderson Yep. 00:55:54.74 Katherine Absolutely. 00:55:57.23 Hank If anybody is familiar with ah Isaac Asimov and the iRobot series, not the Will Smith movie, but ah there was there were recurring characters in all the short stories. 00:56:05.68 LaurenWalshArt Bye. 00:56:09.70 Hank ah were these two they're like robot detectives and their goal was and also this is my pitch to make this a like dry british sitcom so you get the two detectives and basically they have to figure out what is wrong with this robot within the confines of the the three laws of robotics if you're familiar the you know the first law is 00:56:26.15 Katherine Thank you. 00:56:35.44 Hank ah You cannot harm a human or through an action allow a human to come to harm. step two is ah Rule 2 is ah you have to do what a human says unless it conflicts with Step 1. 00:56:47.42 Hank And rule three is you must preserve yourself unless it conflicts with rules one and two. ah So one of examples I remember was there's a robot that is running in circles around this like radioactive ore on Mars that he's trying to harvest. 00:57:04.94 Hank And he's singing show tunes. And he he's like, why the hell? What what what is what is this guy doing? And ah eventually they find out that He was sent to go pick up this material and it started to like interfere with his brain. 00:57:21.23 Hank And ah basically he was super confused because he knew that if he brought it back to the human, it would harm them because it's radioactive, but the human told him to to take it to him. So he has to what the human says, but if he takes it to him, then it's, it's going to harm the human. 00:57:35.75 Hank But if I don't take it. And so he ends up just like running in circles and, uh, That is a long way to say i like simple constraints with ah ah vast creative ramifications. 00:57:53.61 LaurenWalshArt who 00:57:54.86 Katherine the 00:57:55.97 Britt Anderson Can I also venture in here to say that that explanation of what you like about the the constraints, but being creative and finding solutions, I think that blends perfectly into why we've all found ourselves into a TTRPG space or D&D related space. 00:58:13.48 Hank Yeah. Mm-hmm. 00:58:14.01 LaurenWalshArt Oh, yeah. 00:58:14.12 Katherine Yep. Yeah. 00:58:16.07 Hank yeah 00:58:17.11 Britt Anderson Because how many times it's like your character is in a dungeon, there's no lights, 00:58:17.23 Katherine yeah 00:58:25.34 Britt Anderson You gotta get out. What do you do? And it's like, okay, you are you are in a situation and find creative solutions to get out of said situation into another one. 00:58:37.24 Britt Anderson And 00:58:37.37 LaurenWalshArt Mm-hmm. 00:58:38.42 Katherine yeah 00:58:39.85 Britt Anderson how how many different ways can you make the DM facepalm in one time and make them panic while they think of another name that they were not expecting to have to think of? 00:58:45.67 LaurenWalshArt Oh my God. 00:58:48.12 Kurt Crenwelge Yep. 00:58:53.77 Hank Could we spend three hours shopping for a new magic sword? 00:58:57.34 Mandi Q. guys that's just my party you're talking about my party we uh yeah wait if it's your party it's my party then who's flying a plane we i've been um 00:58:57.41 LaurenWalshArt but 00:59:01.08 LaurenWalshArt but 00:59:03.25 Britt Anderson Wait, I thought that was my party. 00:59:08.23 LaurenWalshArt oh my god 00:59:10.73 Britt Anderson Plot twist. It's demons. i 00:59:12.92 Mandi Q. I've been in a Waterdeep campaign for almost three years. We did um Dragon Horde and then we are into Tomb of the Mad Mage. So we've been in Undermountain for like like a year and a half of real lifetime, like a real human time. 00:59:23.13 Katherine And 00:59:29.82 Mandi Q. And um I am a tabaxi paladin ah oath of um oh god redemption. So he's a pacifist and he's a nerd. He like grew up in a library, basically. 00:59:41.16 Kurt Crenwelge Thank you. 00:59:41.38 Mandi Q. And so I'm making a ah ah detailed map. of Undermountain. ah We're on like floor seven or something stupid. And so my my poor paladin's just trying to keep our group together. Meanwhile, ah they're all all of them are scattered around trying to figure out what kinds of things they can put in their mouth. And it's i can I'm not a parent myself, but Catherine, you can correct me if I'm wrong. 01:00:02.19 Mandi Q. You say, what did you put in your mouth? Get that out. 01:00:03.84 Katherine oh Oh, I've lost track of how many times I ask that every day. 01:00:04.98 Mandi Q. Don't touch that. And that's my paladin. 01:00:06.31 Britt Anderson Yep. 01:00:07.12 Hank Drop it. Drop it. Drop it. 01:00:09.53 Katherine Like, what's that? 01:00:09.70 Mandi Q. Drop it. 01:00:10.49 Katherine What's that? Why is it sticky? 01:00:11.93 Britt Anderson Drop it. 01:00:12.27 Katherine What's in your mouth? 01:00:12.59 Mandi Q. Why are your hands orange? 01:00:12.79 Katherine Put that down. 01:00:13.26 LaurenWalshArt Yeah, yeah, yeah. 01:00:14.19 Mandi Q. Did you touch an ooze? 01:00:14.66 LaurenWalshArt yeah 01:00:14.82 Britt Anderson It's too quiet. Why is it too quiet? 01:00:17.02 Katherine D&D is just a bunch of toddlers running around. 01:00:17.57 LaurenWalshArt Are your lips blue? 01:00:18.25 Britt Anderson The party's up to something if it's too quiet. 01:00:18.71 LaurenWalshArt Yeah. 01:00:19.22 Katherine Nice. 01:00:20.90 Hank It's too quiet. 01:00:21.05 Kurt Crenwelge Right. 01:00:21.83 LaurenWalshArt yeah 01:00:21.92 Mandi Q. Absolutely. But hey, I get bonus XP for making the map, so it's not all bad. 01:00:22.87 Britt Anderson It's too quiet. 01:00:23.09 Katherine oh 01:00:25.94 Hank Hell yeah. 01:00:27.69 Katherine nice 01:00:30.54 Kurt Crenwelge Well, I think that ah that should probably segue here into, you know, maybe some more questions related to the creativity in the D&D, but still including the art, maybe trying to synthesize some of this rambling that I've proposed here for all of us to discuss. 01:00:44.51 Mandi Q. Mm-hmm. 01:00:45.62 Kurt Crenwelge And, you know, I love this conversation and where it's been going and meandering, but ah maybe to kind of bring it around a little bit. So maybe just kind of interested in everyone's take or perspective on how, like, you know, 01:00:59.48 Kurt Crenwelge you you came to TTRPGs and d and d and you know whatever edition it was, you saw the art. you know How did that art like speak to you and how you approached the game? 01:01:07.27 LaurenWalshArt none 01:01:11.88 Kurt Crenwelge And then as you were, as your creative individuals and your people and you're playing the game and you're imagining the game and your lens and focus and how you like to do the art, how have you seen that like inspire your TTRPG characters and campaigns ah that you're in? 01:01:28.87 Britt Anderson Oh. 01:01:29.04 LaurenWalshArt ah 01:01:30.02 Hank um 01:01:30.15 Katherine Thank you. 01:01:30.88 Hank um want so i I'll answer first because I think I remembered also what i half of what i wanted to say before. because i I interrupted myself and rambled in a different direction. 01:01:41.87 Hank But ah I love cartoons, and I love ah less representational art. All of you said you do you like magical realism, and I think that's beautiful. And i obviously, I'm a big fan of ah like Miyazaki and... ah anime and that type of art style but i also love stuff that is ah completely out of the bounds of reality you know caricatures and uh over-the-top expressions and uh lines that don't make sense and the reason that i think it lends very well to ttrpgs is 01:02:22.03 Hank is ah because you have to do, you as the audience to the art have to do more effort, I suppose, in deciphering the art in your head versus ah just looking at an image of something that is directly representational. And that's sort of what D&D is. you know it's like we we it's It's community storytelling. 01:02:47.77 Hank I think at it at its best, it is first and foremost, an excuse to hang out with people and have fun. 01:02:51.02 Kurt Crenwelge Thank you. 01:02:53.82 Hank um But it's it's storytelling with math. 01:02:53.96 Britt Anderson yeah 01:02:56.92 Hank you know it's like you you you You have your slight rule sets and your deviations from the rule sets. But really, you're just trying to you're trying to craft a narrative and you're all trying to sort of imagine something together. 01:03:10.56 Hank So ah everyone's going to imagine something slightly differently in their head. So when you have something that is representational in the real world, that is a lot more vague or a lot more open to interpretation, obviously it's going to lend itself more easily to being interpreted in different ways. 01:03:30.65 Hank And then, you know, ah Like if if I draw a stick figure, the stick figure is going to look completely different to everybody who looks at it. You know, someone's going to say, oh, that's a ninja. Someone's going to say, oh, that's a cowboy. Oh, that's ah that's a whatever. 01:03:44.12 Hank um And I think that that's ah having that in a game that is so intrinsically tied to imagination is a really cool thing. 01:03:58.22 Kurt Crenwelge Thank 01:04:03.22 LaurenWalshArt um Do you mind us stating the question for me one more time? Sorry. It was. 01:04:07.52 Kurt Crenwelge Sure. No, that's okay. I think the way I was kind of proposing it is like, you know, you first came to TTRPG, you know, with whatever edition it was, you've you've grown up and you've seen fantasy art like in your head, like when someone says D&D, like, you might see the first edition art or maybe you see, for me, it's like fourth edition, because I came in in fourth edition. 01:04:09.10 LaurenWalshArt Yeah. 01:04:20.44 LaurenWalshArt Oh, yeah, yeah. 01:04:27.94 Kurt Crenwelge So I'm used to like, Wayne Reynolds being like my introduction to like D&D art and stuff like that. 01:04:28.79 LaurenWalshArt Mm-hmm. 01:04:33.36 Kurt Crenwelge But ah Maybe, but basically it's like you saw that as your starting point. 01:04:34.57 Katherine I know. 01:04:38.33 Kurt Crenwelge So how is that creatively, you know, impacted, um you know, your TTRPG characters and your campaigns and how you've seen like the influence of fantasy art and stuff like that. 01:04:50.48 Kurt Crenwelge Like where, you know, you got your start, but then you taking it and putting in it through your own creative lens and filter and such, you know, how, how has it influenced your games and your campaigns and such? 01:04:51.60 LaurenWalshArt Mm-hmm. 01:04:52.27 Katherine no 01:04:58.09 LaurenWalshArt and 01:05:02.58 LaurenWalshArt um well I mean with I would say for me personally my first I don't know which edition it was it was probably 3.5 right three it was 3.5 right around that era and like I had seen like drow art for the first time and I was like oh my god 01:05:10.04 Kurt Crenwelge Thank you. 01:05:26.53 LaurenWalshArt That's amazing. They have white hair. They're so cool. And I was like, I will want to play one. And then, of course, I was... um i You know, I didn't know anyone to play with. And at that time, going to a comic book shop and being, like, you know, feminine presenting was like... 01:05:44.82 LaurenWalshArt and it was just not did not go well um so um so i i kind of never really got to play dnd when i had first seen the art um but what happened was was that around that time was when i got sucked into the vortex of my entire life into world of warcraft and then i saw night elves and then i went they're purple they kind of look like drow 01:05:44.98 Mandi Q. Yeah. 01:05:46.14 Katherine Mm-hmm. 01:06:07.35 Kurt Crenwelge o 01:06:08.42 Britt Anderson Thank you. 01:06:14.77 LaurenWalshArt oh my god and then kind of went into that direction and then which is why like i think um blizzard's art style is was very influential to me growing up um just like especially at that time too into what because it transformed between like warcraft into into vanilla and into modern wow the the art style has changed multiple multiple different times but like that kind of like um uh the the textures and like how different things sat and i've had to unlearn some like 01:06:56.49 LaurenWalshArt you know listen i've had notes where they're like lauren your pauldrons are way too big and i'm like listen i'm sorry i grew up playing world of warcraft it's not my fault i'm sorry yeah yeah like listen if the pauldrons aren't big it's not fantasy i don't know i'm kidding but or am i 01:07:05.89 Hank The Emperor disapproves. 01:07:07.63 Mandi Q. There's no such thing as pauldrons that are too big. 01:07:08.20 Hank The Paladrons need to be bigger. 01:07:10.28 Mandi Q. Yeah. 01:07:14.88 Mandi Q. It's like if they said you were making the ears too long, that's impossible. 01:07:15.14 Kurt Crenwelge you 01:07:15.36 Britt Anderson yeah yeah 01:07:18.56 LaurenWalshArt but Have you seen the ears on my night elves that I draw as of late? They are like... 01:07:22.30 Mandi Q. I love them. 01:07:22.52 LaurenWalshArt that They're out there, dude. 01:07:23.53 Britt Anderson very long. 01:07:24.65 LaurenWalshArt I'm like, bigger. 01:07:24.84 Mandi Q. They gotta be. How else are they gonna hear things? 01:07:26.02 LaurenWalshArt They gotta be bigger. 01:07:26.25 Britt Anderson And the eyebrows too, get those eye eyebrows out there. 01:07:27.23 Mandi Q. Hello? 01:07:27.97 LaurenWalshArt Yeah, yeah, yeah. The eyebrows... 01:07:29.23 Katherine Thank you. 01:07:29.41 LaurenWalshArt Okay, to the credit of... Okay, listen. Those eyebrows are hard to draw in perspective. 01:07:31.75 Hank I love Mr. Mybrows. 01:07:34.14 LaurenWalshArt Let me tell you what. 01:07:35.22 Britt Anderson Yep. 01:07:35.60 LaurenWalshArt I don't know who was on what when they were like, yeah, give them those eyebrows. 01:07:36.19 Mandi Q. uh 01:07:39.44 LaurenWalshArt Like, okay, i want to talk to Chris Metzen and be like, what were you doing? Anyway, side note. But my point is, is like, that kind of influenced... A lot of my own RP in D&D of like kind of jokey but also serious at the same time and like having that kind of flavor. 01:07:57.82 LaurenWalshArt i think artistically in my own characters, I think... It wasn't necessarily that Warcraft influenced how my D&D characters are now, but how I think I have to artistically, I have to like I do with any character that I have. 01:08:17.60 LaurenWalshArt I don't really know who they are until I draw them. 01:08:20.89 Mandi Q. Mm-hmm. 01:08:20.91 LaurenWalshArt I don't know who they are until I design them. 01:08:21.60 Katherine Yeah. 01:08:21.84 Britt Anderson Thank you. 01:08:23.39 LaurenWalshArt I don't know who they, I, cause like, uh, again, to the whole, like, you were saying before, um Mandy with like the, um, the, the questions that are answered, like very often, like you don't, I don't process that character until I'm actually drawing them. 01:08:24.56 Katherine ye 01:08:30.65 Kurt Crenwelge you 01:08:37.74 LaurenWalshArt And I'm having those questions and I'm like, what kind of belt do you wear? And why do you wear it the way that you do? And do you have pouches? Are you the type of person who has a bunch of different trinkets on them all the time or different tools on them all the time? 01:08:51.24 LaurenWalshArt And then like, I almost process the character through drawing. um But it's not necessarily based on styles that ah have influenced me, but like based off of those questions that I'm trying to process. 01:09:03.37 LaurenWalshArt um And like, and honestly, that's also influenced in a way, whenever I'm doing stuff for like wizards or, um or like even like Lorcanos stuff or like really any client work, I'm in a way drawing my own character. 01:09:19.14 LaurenWalshArt um and asking questions of the character while i'm drawing them and like similar to like um the work that i did for the new player handbook like uh the draconic sorcerer um like i was received notes that it was supposed to be like a silver dragon draconic sorcerer And they I had received some like, you know, like different information about like design language that they wanted. 01:09:44.62 LaurenWalshArt And like, I basically was like, okay, well, like processing that character through artwork for the book and being like, well, would they be proud of their heritage of silver like of being you know ah from the line of like silver dragons and how would they display that and how would they you know would they be like um would it be subtle or would it be like small things that you wouldn't know unless you were part of people who also had that heritage and um or lineage and um it's just like little things like that i i i process through painting and drawing the character 01:09:51.97 Kurt Crenwelge Thank you. 01:10:23.35 LaurenWalshArt um but i do think that like you know um that is fantasy characters though too is like we're all kind of like um we're all kind of like so again storytelling like you were saying but like there's so much storytelling in fantasy art like on the scale of like you know those like massive paintings and like the moma or like in the met of like huge battles and everyone's got like crazy stuff going on it's like that's also a story and like 01:10:48.10 Britt Anderson Oh yeah. 01:10:48.32 Katherine Hmm. 01:10:53.84 LaurenWalshArt it's, Like trying to find the little bits and bobs that are storytelling within the character visually. um And that's fantasy art itself too. It's like all of these little like story moments of, yeah, they've got their rapier out and they're about to stab the beholder. But like, there's like, you know, maybe there's a pendant or a broken compass on the ground. Why is it there? Like, what's the story behind the compass? Like, it's just like little, little bits and bobs in fantasy art in general that I think just, um, 01:11:25.18 LaurenWalshArt like lent lends itself so much to storytelling in general um but yeah sorry i kind of ranted there for a second but uh but yeah so 01:11:30.12 Hank Hell yeah. 01:11:31.32 Mandi Q. Mm-hmm. 01:11:32.24 Katherine Hehehe. 01:11:34.56 Hank Hell yeah. 01:11:36.93 Mandi Q. Yeah. I mean, for me, I started in 2016. um I played some stuff with in college, but it was really informal or informal rather. And it was, um I don't know, ah somebody that was really passionate and and said, why don't we all sit down and do a Star Wars thing? And i'm like, I don't know nothing about none of this, ah but it was fun. 01:11:57.43 Mandi Q. And so, you know, and around 2016, I ended up um doing a salt marsh campaign with some friends and um in a discord server that I was introduced through my wife's like college friend group. 01:12:10.06 Mandi Q. um And I am somebody who loves to laugh. I, a lot of my art is imbued with my humor. So like a biblically accurate Garfield with a giant fork and, um and also a Furby fortune teller affectionately called the Furp-tun teller. 01:12:31.10 Mandi Q. like, ah who has a worm on a string inside her glitter filled, you know, crystal ball. 01:12:31.14 Katherine Yeah. 01:12:37.64 Mandi Q. Like, I love um adding bits of my own humor into things, and just because it's silly, and it makes me smile. And when people say, oh, that's actually hilarious, it it touches a a deep part of myself. 01:12:52.81 Mandi Q. And so of course for my first campaign, and I am very much a rule follower, no matter how giggly and silly, I don't like to, um I don't like to play a character to be a joke. 01:13:05.39 Mandi Q. I like to make jokes, but I don't like to be a frustrating person to play with. if There's a fine line. 01:13:11.76 Katherine Mm-hmm. 01:13:12.10 Hank For sure. 01:13:12.34 Mandi Q. So my first character hit me right in the neurodivergent spot in my brain. 01:13:12.38 LaurenWalshArt Mm-hmm. 01:13:12.98 Britt Anderson Mm-hmm. 01:13:12.91 Katherine Yeah. 01:13:17.80 Mandi Q. And it said, Hey, There is a race called a Kenku. That sounds cool. Oh, me, ah Chatty Cathy can only speak through mimicry. That's not going to be hard at all. 01:13:28.59 Mandi Q. And so I made an Excel spreadsheet and wrote down phrases that I remembered from my party and from NPCs. And I wrote down like who said them. If, ah you know, if they, what their, what their, their tone of speaking was, what kind of inflection there was. 01:13:44.14 Mandi Q. And so that I had as much of an accurate representation to bring it back at any moment in time, especially for comedic effect. um 01:13:51.43 Britt Anderson Thank you. 01:13:52.43 Mandi Q. And, um or, or because they, they can hear sound, you know, they can repeat sound effects sometimes, you know, when the, when the room got quiet for a moment and I wanted to laugh, I would have her make 01:13:53.63 Katherine Okay. 01:14:03.97 Mandi Q. a a sound effect that was especially poignant. And that kind of thing, using that character's limitation, as Hank had said, limitations can breed creativity and being a character that could not speak fluent sentences and had to rely on what they've heard, you know, realistically in their scenario. 01:14:21.23 Mandi Q. was fascinating. And so i I didn't actually get exposure to much of D&D's art because for a long time, I actually didn't have any of the resources. I had what was being given to me through my DM. 01:14:35.85 Mandi Q. um And I had done enough research to like thoroughly understand the character I would be playing and what her um technical function had to be because it was very overwhelming being a beginner. 01:14:43.36 Kurt Crenwelge you 01:14:47.80 Mandi Q. But I had a lot of really patient people ah that guided me through it in a really kind and and and special way where we ended up growing together you know through through being a little band of pirates in Saltmarsh and with a silly little bird that would make a fart in noise every once in a while just to get the gang laughing. 01:15:05.81 Kurt Crenwelge yeah 01:15:07.41 LaurenWalshArt perfect 01:15:08.77 Mandi Q. um But for me, like but even before that, I think Aragon was a ah big deal to me. The Aragon books, when I was in middle school, that slapped. 01:15:16.43 Katherine Oh yes. 01:15:18.32 Hank Yeah, too bad they never made any movies. 01:15:18.48 Mandi Q. I... 01:15:18.92 Katherine Yes. 01:15:20.66 Hank It would have been cool if there was a movie. 01:15:21.06 Britt Anderson Yeah. 01:15:21.94 Hank Too bad that never happened. 01:15:22.28 Britt Anderson Dang. 01:15:22.93 Mandi Q. Too bad they didn't make any movies at all ever that were... 01:15:23.40 Katherine ah 01:15:25.00 Hank Damn. 01:15:25.39 Katherine what 01:15:25.91 Britt Anderson Yeah. yeah 01:15:26.25 Hank I guess it's too bad. 01:15:28.00 Katherine oh oh what a tragedy. 01:15:28.57 Britt Anderson Oh, man. 01:15:28.97 Mandi Q. So, you know, I love to read. 01:15:30.51 Britt Anderson Darn it. 01:15:32.31 Mandi Q. I'd gotten really into like into manga and rest in peace Borders, but I would go to Borders if anyone remembers that. 01:15:37.63 Katherine Oh, yeah. 01:15:37.84 Britt Anderson oh oh 01:15:38.89 Mandi Q. Yeah. 01:15:39.02 Katherine Mm-hmm. 01:15:39.80 Mandi Q. And I would read the manga and my mom is like, Mandy, what is this? What is this Japanese stuff that you're looking at? I'm like, Mom, it's Oran High School Host Club. You wouldn't understand. um 01:15:49.76 LaurenWalshArt laughter 01:15:50.82 Britt Anderson but i was hoping i was like wait is it gonna be fruits basket or on my school 01:15:52.91 Mandi Q. laughter 01:15:56.65 Mandi Q. Listen, mom, they all think she's a boy. She broke a vase and she owes them millions of yen. And my mom's like, what are you talking about? 01:16:02.19 Hank What? 01:16:03.35 Mandi Q. So, so I, I, my, my interpretation of fantasy, like I didn't grow up with Tolkien. I didn't grow up with, um, family that had a lot of influence from like eighties, uh, rock fantasy. 01:16:17.77 Mandi Q. Um, I, I didn't have a very many masculine presence in my life either. so um I come from ah the glitter unicorn and rainbows side of things. And I think I like to shove that into D&D, which is very gritty and raw sometimes. 01:16:34.95 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 01:16:35.10 Mandi Q. um And so every character that I make gets a little bit less glitter and rainbow, but gets a little bit more like knowledgeable about D&D and... d and um, and about what it means to be in this world. 01:16:48.77 Mandi Q. Um, so from going from a Kenku, that's just a silly little guy to being, um, a, a cat, a large hairless cat man. That is really just the good boy, uh, of the party who has to keep them all in line. 01:17:04.98 Mandi Q. Um, who's slowly being jaded by Undermountain. 01:17:06.36 Britt Anderson Nice. 01:17:07.60 Mandi Q. And, uh, And now I'm playing in a Ladrin in another campaign that is a homebrew based off of um a university run by dragons. 01:17:11.50 Katherine Oh. 01:17:16.81 Mandi Q. um And he is in a Ladrin with like war trauma. 01:17:18.46 Katherine oh 01:17:19.56 Mandi Q. And so his colors manifest in like splotches instead of one season at a time. um And it's an association with his head trauma. 01:17:24.80 LaurenWalshArt Hmm. Hmm. 01:17:27.27 Mandi Q. So your, your seasons are out of balance, you know, and, and me doing a lot of research on how, veterans have have worked through, you know, mobility issues and and mental cloudiness and like hidden disability and and learning um how that impacts even your fine motor skills, and really trying to put myself into someone else's feet instead of just making myself into this fantasy realm. 01:17:48.57 LaurenWalshArt o 01:17:55.10 Mandi Q. It's been such a huge opportunity for me to learn more about other people, not even the the people that I'm playing with, but people that I've never met before simply because, you know, they're a big part of the the character that I'm playing. And through that character, I heal parts of myself. 01:18:09.97 Mandi Q. So I think the art from D&D that really most influences me is the art that my friends are making um and the and the characters that they're bringing to the table, not even the official art. 01:18:16.04 LaurenWalshArt Mm-hmm. 01:18:16.90 Katherine Yeah. 01:18:19.80 Mandi Q. ah Because if you were to ask me an illustrator from any of the D&D books, I could not i couldt tell you a single one. ah And every time I make a tiefling, I ignore that they say that they're not read And I make them red and pink anyway. 01:18:29.52 Britt Anderson yep Yep. 01:18:31.14 Katherine ah sir 01:18:32.22 Mandi Q. I make them red anyway. 01:18:34.83 Britt Anderson There were like guidelines and rules anyway. 01:18:34.89 Mandi Q. Anyway, that's not about me. Yeah. 01:18:37.68 Hank yeah exactly 01:18:38.09 Katherine yeah 01:18:39.06 Mandi Q. They're like, they're actually gray. And i'm like, no, they're not. They're every color ever. And you can't tell me otherwise. 01:18:47.33 Katherine I guess I'll jump in ah yeah i kind of came I didn't start playing D&D until 5th edition. think it was also in 2016. I guess like kind of two parts. so it's interesting how looking back like, okay, I actually had seen work by artists who I now know contributed art to the rule books or they expanded, you know, materials or whatnot, from wizards of the coast and and the various publishers. 01:19:21.89 Katherine um And ah through either they were, book illustrators or they were concept artists for movies or TV or I took a couple of ah you know, online mentorships or classes, mainly just for like art or illustrat illustration, we'll just say. 01:19:42.27 Katherine And it turns out that looking at the work, like, huh, that's cool fantasy art. I wonder what that's from. Oh, Dunstan Dragon. Okay, move on. You know, and I wasn't playing at the time, but it's it's interesting now to see like the yellow brick road of art that kind of eventually led to um this aha moment. 01:19:55.96 LaurenWalshArt yeah 01:20:00.55 Katherine I'm like, wow, all a lot of my favorite artists, they've all contributed in some way. How cool. um But my yeah, the way I found Dungeons and Dragons particularly, I haven't played a lot of other TCRPG systems, but was through Critical Role, as a lot of people have, a lot of people here you love it. 01:20:06.22 Kurt Crenwelge you 01:20:17.34 Mandi Q. Thank you. 01:20:17.73 LaurenWalshArt Mm-hmm. 01:20:21.46 Katherine um but A very good friend of mine, she turned me on to it. And as a result, I mean, the art community is just incredible. um from the get-go, from, you know, when it first started, you know, live streaming and up till now where they now have their own TV shows and all sorts of other things. 01:20:28.81 Britt Anderson Mm-hmm. 01:20:39.55 Katherine um So that was very inspiring to kind of see not just professional artists, but amateur artists, ah you know, up-and-comers who are now very well-established and some of them are on this call here. 01:20:52.48 Katherine um And then as I played the game, saw the source books, saw... you know, the whole, whole shebang of, of, uh, art that it is just so like, wow, this is everything. 01:21:06.17 Katherine i think growing up seeing kind of the more traditional stuff associated with like Lord of the Rings and Chronicles of Narnia and like Aragon and and all these other books and shows or whatnot, it's kind of like that all grew up. 01:21:22.53 Katherine And this is, this is like the, the, what's the word I'm looking for? It's just how it all came together for me. Like all my influences, are all artists I love. um And what I love too is that, well, I forget who said it. 01:21:36.96 Katherine A lot of Dungeons and Dragons is very gritty and you know can can be dark at times, but especially watching live play the Critical Role and now actually having played, how also unserious it is, how fun and playful it can be. 01:21:42.81 Britt Anderson Yeah. 01:21:48.88 Hank Mm-hmm. 01:21:49.40 Britt Anderson yeah 01:21:49.81 LaurenWalshArt Mm-hmm. 01:21:53.96 Katherine And also, You know, there could be horrible battles raging and whatnot, but like still finding humor and and and points of light in it, it's delightful. 01:22:04.81 Katherine And so as far as how it's influenced my characters, I mean, I love world building. love designing. Anytime I come up with a story in my head from when I was a kid till now, it always starts with a character, always starts with the people who inhabit this world. 01:22:18.77 Hank Mm-hmm. 01:22:19.06 Katherine And so I love to kind of dive into like, okay, how does this character fit into the setting I'm in, okay, need to have them grounded somehow. I'm also a person who doesn't like really play a joke character. 01:22:31.27 Katherine Maybe someday I'll i'll be brave enough to, um, I'm still learning, but so I'll, yeah, I'll try to establish them into the the world that they're in And then from there, you know, ah try something different. 01:22:34.52 LaurenWalshArt You 01:22:34.77 Britt Anderson Thank you. 01:22:47.54 Katherine Like, okay, this, this, i had a character who was, uh, you know, she's, wizard, she grew up in a library, but she's an evoker. She's very fire-based, like, uh-oh, like she' that's she has to leave and go on this adventure. And um it was interesting to see the things I was reading or watching influence what she looked like. And now I'm also taking inspiration from real-world stuff. 01:23:10.17 Katherine in my own life. And I've found that it's injected not only into sort of the looks, but definitely the personality and the personality, as we all know, of a character can heavily influence how they dress, how they pose, how they, you know, um embody that. 01:23:22.84 Britt Anderson At least. 01:23:25.94 Katherine um So while I have some great, more recent characters who might be a bit more either physically imposing or very like charismatic and loose, they do have an element of care and softness and compassion. 01:23:44.89 Katherine So finding ways to kind of juxtapose this, like how they present themselves, but also this other side to them. 01:23:45.80 LaurenWalshArt Mm-hmm. 01:23:53.29 Katherine So yeah, it's interesting. 01:23:58.16 Britt Anderson I think 01:24:02.02 Britt Anderson I actively avoided TTRPGs for a very, very long time. My first ever exposure to it was in 2009. My then fiance got his buddies together and their girlfriends and wanted to do a post-apocalyptic like zombie apocalypse campaign. 01:24:22.78 Britt Anderson and it wasn't D&D, but it was another one that was geared more towards that where they all had these different, all these cool abilities and blah, blah, blah. And when I was brought in it, my fiance sat me down next to him. He's like, okay, and you're going to play our battlefield medic, which was like their version of the cleric. 01:24:42.98 Britt Anderson And he went through and picked out all the stuff for me. And he, and did not let me, like I had very little agency. 01:24:46.85 Hank Eww. 01:24:51.67 Britt Anderson I didn't like the experience. None of the women at the table liked it at all. 01:24:57.31 Hank Shocker. 01:24:57.33 Britt Anderson So like we, yeah, we stepped away after a single session. We're like, we don't want to do this. So by the time, like almost, almost to the date, about 10 years later, or thereabouts, ah one of the girls that was at that table with me was my best friend. 01:25:12.11 Kurt Crenwelge Thank 01:25:16.09 Britt Anderson And she was like, I'm going to run a D&D game. It's my own world that I made up. you should come over, make a character and we'll have a night of it. And I was like, absolutely not. And they just like, well, you know, just try it for me. Just see. And the game lasted for a year. we made it to like level 10. 01:25:36.42 Britt Anderson Plot twist. We didn't know we were working for the bad guy until we released like a betrayer God from his binds. 01:25:44.59 Mandi Q. um 01:25:45.27 LaurenWalshArt Mm-hmm. 01:25:45.98 Mandi Q. That'll do it. 01:25:46.06 Katherine As you do. As you do. 01:25:47.68 Britt Anderson And then the the second half of it was supposed to be the redemption arc where we go and we bring down that God by finding like vestiges and, you know, doing the thing. 01:25:58.97 Britt Anderson And I loved it. It was, it was so fun, but I still hadn't seen any of the art from any of it. So it, this is going to slightly fangirl. It was not until I moved in to this current apartment right before the pandemic hit with a friend of mine from college. 01:26:15.54 Britt Anderson And I would come home from temping at night at my temp job. but And on Thursdays, my friend was on the couch at 7 PM to watch something called Critical Role. 01:26:21.38 Kurt Crenwelge Thank you. 01:26:26.67 Britt Anderson And they were like, oh, it's C&D. 01:26:27.26 Katherine Yay! 01:26:27.83 Britt Anderson And I was like, oh, and I wasn't really super interested in it, but they're like, no, no, no, sit down. Like just, just here, sit down and watch. It's actually pretty fun. I sat down and one of the first things I remember was I got there in time for the art scroll to be going because this was 2019. 01:26:43.15 Katherine Yes! 01:26:44.16 LaurenWalshArt Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. 01:26:44.64 Katherine Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 01:26:47.55 Britt Anderson So this was back when they still did the live live feed. 01:26:51.35 Katherine Yeah. 01:26:52.12 Britt Anderson And I got to see all of this fan art that was made for this show. And it was really cool to see like, oh, wait, I follow that artist. I follow that artist. 01:27:00.88 Katherine Mm-hmm. 01:27:01.05 Britt Anderson What's that? So seeing other people's fan art of the show was what initially got me into it. Then I watched the live play. Then I was like, oh, okay. And around the same time, I started playing in a D&D game here for a bit. 01:27:17.48 Britt Anderson And then... once the pandemic hit and we we all kept watching i was seeing like lauren i saw some of your stuff on there and i saw this other thing then i started looking into official dnd art and i didn't know any of those people i didn't know any of those artists but i was still a little hesitant because i'm like well i i can't Not that I can't do art like that. I can if I really wanted to. 01:27:46.49 Britt Anderson The painterly, that painterly fantastic style is just not something that i normally do. But I desperately wanted to make art that was in a D&D realm. 01:27:58.82 Britt Anderson So it started with me making fan art of my own characters and then fan art of the show. 01:27:59.34 LaurenWalshArt Mm-hmm. 01:28:03.57 Britt Anderson Then I discovered Dimension 20 when a friend of mine was like, you should watch Fantasy High. 01:28:07.89 Mandi Q. Mm-hmm. and 01:28:12.04 Britt Anderson uh and all of their characters were much more along the lines of creatively how i worked was flat colors cell shading line art like and the episodes were shorter they were more kind of kooky and funny and edited down so i found the two of those and i was like oh they can coexist you can have this big epic art style 01:28:21.07 Katherine Mm-hmm. 01:28:32.75 LaurenWalshArt Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 01:28:35.82 Britt Anderson that is fantasy with texture and painterly motions, but you can also have this quirky, funny side. And it's been interesting watching actually the two of those be so far apart, starting to blend further and further towards each other into this happy medium where I kind of exist now. 01:28:52.13 LaurenWalshArt er 01:28:52.36 Katherine Thank you. 01:28:56.60 Britt Anderson where it's like I'm halfway between the two very much enjoying this space. um So the the original like big fantastical vistas of traditional D&D art was not something I had experience with. 01:29:11.57 Britt Anderson All my, most of it came from Critical Role, then Dimension 20, seeing everybody's fan art, and then me wanting to get a little piece of the action of wanting to do that stuff. 01:29:24.19 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 01:29:24.44 Katherine yeah 01:29:26.36 Britt Anderson And what really got me hooked was the first time I submitted the very first piece of fan art that I ever made for Critical Role. I submitted because my friend told me that I should to the pre art scroll. 01:29:39.21 Britt Anderson And that week when we tuned in, I saw my art of not saying I have a list and there's a giant scroll that runs off and, ah 01:29:50.03 Katherine but 01:29:50.80 Britt Anderson Frumpkin is laying on the end of the scroll like how cats do. 01:29:53.20 Katherine yeah 01:29:54.24 Britt Anderson They just get on your stuff. ah And I was i was so so shell-shocked to be like, oh my god, D&D people actually like this? 01:30:05.67 Britt Anderson Wait, okay, can I do more? and then I went even more unhinged and when I discovered Worlds Beyond Number, then I'm like, oh my god, this isn't even a visual medium and I want to make fan art of it. 01:30:21.26 Britt Anderson I just want to do this all the time. Can I just do this all the time? 01:30:23.21 LaurenWalshArt I don't know. 01:30:24.63 Britt Anderson And all, all of those more modern influences of art in D and D specifically the fan art community was what really got me into it. 01:30:38.95 Britt Anderson and kind of cherry picking little things that I saw other D&D people doing like, hey, that tiefling's blue, that tiefling's purple, that one's got antlers instead of horns for some reason, they have cloaked feet, what's this? 01:30:53.11 Britt Anderson Like being real weird with selections and so it's it's kind of weird to say it wasn't D&D that got me into it the original art, it was the fan art that got me into the other art. 01:30:53.82 Katherine heh heh 01:31:10.03 LaurenWalshArt Mm-hmm. 01:31:10.38 Britt Anderson And that's where I exist. And that's my happy place is all of those, that art that was created during that time and continues to be created. 01:31:12.10 Mandi Q. Mm-hmm. 01:31:19.67 Britt Anderson I love seeing how fans interpret stuff that they see slash hear. And then sometimes seeing how that actually makes it into the final cut of the official stuff. 01:31:33.67 Britt Anderson It seems like this big give and take balance between the fans of something and the creators of something and seeing them inform each other is really unique and fun for me. 01:31:50.63 Kurt Crenwelge Well, if I have any dog in this fight, ah as someone who's not a doodler or a scribbler, i mean, I've done you know my fair share growing up, but um like I said, I started in 4th edition. 01:32:03.05 Kurt Crenwelge Halloween night, 2010. This is my very first game of D&D in San Angelo, Texas, in ah in a two-bedroom apartment with my fraternity brother and his fiancée and a couple of our other friends getting together, and 01:32:05.49 Britt Anderson hu 01:32:16.54 Kurt Crenwelge I was a human wizard named Otto von Krieg and ah a wall of a tavern exploded and a bunch of goblins poured in and you know all of us sprung into action and the Winter Contendency Trading Company lived on in history and we switched DMs and all that stuff. 01:32:19.37 Hank Okay. 01:32:24.49 LaurenWalshArt jesus 01:32:33.41 Kurt Crenwelge stories I've told time and time again on the podcast. But yeah, like I said, Wayne Reynolds, ah for sure, it was kind of like my first foray into seeing D&D art presented in the fourth edition books. 01:32:44.66 Kurt Crenwelge But even before that, you know, being a video gamer, um you know, being someone, you know, who liked Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit and just fantasy in general and being a huge, you know, cartoon watcher and movie watcher. 01:32:45.14 Britt Anderson Ah. 01:32:59.56 Kurt Crenwelge certainly that is all fed into me ah whenever I play a character. and certainly as a dungeon master, and you know goes without saying, you know one of the panelists, you know I am the dungeon master for ah solo ah campaign, which has certainly been a very unique experience of like, okay, like I have one person's undivided attention, and it's literally like this whole wealth of... 01:33:21.70 Kurt Crenwelge um 01:33:22.28 Britt Anderson you 01:33:22.48 Kurt Crenwelge of influence and certainly seeing Catherine's, you know, depictions of characters, uh, and scenes or whatnot from, from the campaign. Just, you know, fill me with joy because it's like, I want to imagine how Bellamy copper pot, the shield bear fighter gif, uh, guy, uh, looks. 01:33:41.14 Katherine Yeah. 01:33:41.47 Kurt Crenwelge And then she's like, she gets, she finds the hippo and she draws Bellamy. And I'm like, that that's, that's Bellamy. Now I know what Bellamy looks like when I didn't before. Or she draws a red-skinned tiefling, Zerus, her PC character's husband. 01:33:50.41 LaurenWalshArt ah for 01:33:57.40 Kurt Crenwelge ah you know So you know there's all sorts of cool characters getting to meet from that. And then just getting to find pieces of media to it stick in the campaign. And ah like Catherine said with world building, um how the two of us meld and ah the homebrew world I have just like continues to grow more and more interesting and bigger and better. 01:34:18.08 Kurt Crenwelge um Whether it's, you know, specifically lifting ah robert Robin Williams and Nathan Lane's birdcage characters to be a pair of satyrs that run a ah risque clothing store called Threadbare All, or if it's, ah you know... 01:34:28.10 Mandi Q. Thank you. 01:34:36.91 Katherine I love them, Your Honor. 01:34:38.77 Mandi Q. ah 01:34:39.66 Kurt Crenwelge Or any number of interesting characters that we've ah we've made. 01:34:39.61 Katherine are so great. 01:34:44.03 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. So whether they're from obscure reference or I'm just like, I just need an idea and I just roll some random dice and I'm like, ah sure, Goliath is here running this bakery. Yeah. And then I just kind of come up with some character notes and then, ah you know, it makes the world interesting. 01:34:59.95 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. So yeah, I'm just, you know, looking at our time and we've been having such a great conversation. I certainly don't want to keep anyone at the pub too late. Uh, and, and I think we've alluded to it in the beginning. 01:35:13.35 Kurt Crenwelge Um, kind of, maybe it's the albatross hanging over art and creativity. um 01:35:20.10 Mandi Q. Hmm. 01:35:20.17 Kurt Crenwelge Technology, you know, technology has been great. 01:35:21.28 Hank Mm-hmm. 01:35:23.09 Kurt Crenwelge You know, we started with caves and watercolors and charcoal pencils and paper and pen and digital tablets. And now we've entered a new realm, opened a new Pandora's box as far as AI is concerned, you know? 01:35:37.41 Britt Anderson Mm-hmm. 01:35:37.71 Kurt Crenwelge So there's, you know, I guess, ah you know, if that's to be where we end this tonight, again, in the interest of not keeping everyone too late, whether their, their carriage turns into a pumpkin, um, 01:35:49.52 Katherine Thank you. 01:35:50.12 Kurt Crenwelge but I don't know. I'm just kind of kind curious of everyone's thoughts on AI. Are there are there boundaries? you know We're talking about limits and boundaries. like 01:35:59.58 Hank Mm-hmm. 01:35:59.89 Kurt Crenwelge Obviously, we don't want to be using it for commercial gain because you know if you're training ai on other people's portfolios because like, oh, i I can't do it. But if I could learn how to do, you know, if I could have a machine spit out like a bad replica copy of something that I could be like, yeah, that's good enough. 01:36:18.10 Kurt Crenwelge I can slap it on something and sell it like we don't want that. 01:36:18.94 Hank Mm-hmm. 01:36:21.53 Kurt Crenwelge But at the same time, it's like, You know, maybe for your private use with your friends, is that okay? As long as you don't commercialize it or I don't know. I'm just kind of curious what everyone's, um you you know, sage wisdom and advice has to, has to be on this subject. 01:36:36.43 Kurt Crenwelge Yeah. 01:36:37.52 Hank um If y'all don't mind, I have some... ah i could I mean, I have a lot of opinions on this, so I'm not going to... i made some notes, don't worry. 01:36:47.15 Mandi Q. Yeah. 01:36:47.49 Hank i i have I have two sort of takes that I would like to share, because I think there are a lot of people talking about it that have a lot of... 01:36:47.78 Britt Anderson ah 01:36:51.26 LaurenWalshArt Thank you. 01:36:55.41 Katherine Bye-bye. 01:36:55.65 Britt Anderson Mm-hmm. 01:36:57.90 Hank interesting things to say about it. But, um, I think first and foremost, I have never really particularly felt threatened by it because, uh, uh, it's dumb and lame and it's not the same as real art. 01:37:15.17 Hank That's my like super baseline bottom line takeaway. Uh, one thing that I don't really see a lot of people talking about, um, which again, I think sort of ties into my, I guess, professional background working ah mostly in what you would consider just the labor force, you know service, I worked in warehouses and ah bartending, barista, that type of stuff. um The biggest thing, you know not not to get too political, but I think the biggest thing that is really 01:37:51.33 Hank affecting the world and the economy and people at large is uh, technology replacing jobs and driving down wages, making people at the top richer, making every single person under them less. 01:38:06.40 Hank So, uh, uh, and that has been going on for years. You know, uh, there are entire towns that used to be completely funded by like, you know, the one factory and everybody worked there and then automation comes and all those jobs are gone. 01:38:23.35 Hank And, uh, you know that's kind of just what's going to happen. 01:38:25.98 Kurt Crenwelge you 01:38:29.28 Hank you know At a certain point, you can't complain about every lost job. i don't see people complaining about ah elevator operators not existing anymore. 01:38:35.72 LaurenWalshArt Thank you. 01:38:38.65 Hank you know So like this there's going to be a degree of of that. So part of me, and again, this is the hot take, part of me is like, okay, so now with ai image generation, 01:38:52.79 Hank ah for the first time in history, creative jobs are at risk of being automated away. So for the first time, all these people are are are feeling threatened by technology and automation. 01:39:01.26 Britt Anderson Mm-hmm. 01:39:07.59 Hank And part of me wants to say, okay, welcome to the club. You know, everyone's been concerned about that. ah But also it is a very real thing. And it is an a, a, 01:39:19.39 Hank a threatening thing. you know People are are losing jobs and that's not something to be ah scoffed at. um I would like more of the conversation to be about that because I think I hear a lot of people saying, you know oh, well, there it's it's stealing you know it's stealing from people's portfolios. 01:39:40.11 Hank And ah obviously that is true. And it is a much more direct thieving relationship than the rest of art because all art is theft. 01:39:50.97 Hank Good artists borrow and great artists steal. ah That's an original quote by me, by the way. 01:39:57.85 LaurenWalshArt Mm-hmm. 01:39:58.62 Katherine Bye. 01:39:59.26 Britt Anderson Thank you. 01:39:59.40 Hank that's That's a joke about about theft. 01:40:01.80 Mandi Q. Thank you. 01:40:01.97 Hank um Yeah, so I've always felt like the, oh it's it's stealing was never enough of an argument for why AI images feel gross. 01:40:15.58 Hank and And I think the, 01:40:19.44 Hank My second point, again, because i'm i'm I feel myself rambling, so I'll get to my second point, which is i hear a lot of people who argue for ai image generation, and I'm being very ah specific to say image generation and not art. 01:40:39.28 Hank ah 01:40:40.02 Britt Anderson Mm-hmm. 01:40:40.50 Hank But people think that AI makes art accessible. It's like, oh, it's an accessibility thing. There's people who ah have never been able to, ah you know, they don't have access to a tablet or they don't have. ah And again, I don't, this is not a conversation about like economic privileges or ah whether or not you can make money off of art. 01:41:02.40 Hank If we just want to talk about the act of creating art. 01:41:05.62 Kurt Crenwelge Thank you. 01:41:06.56 Hank right If you take away all of the ramifications or societal context of that, if you're just making art, does AI make that accessible? 01:41:10.69 Britt Anderson you 01:41:17.56 Hank I think it is a big fat no. And anybody who thinks so ah is 01:41:21.49 Katherine Thank you. 01:41:23.54 Hank it's it's It's like, okay, so have you never seen ah someone with no arms paint a picture? Have you ever listened to a blind compos or a deaf composer or a blind composer? It's like, you're going to say... it's it's it's it's it's Frankly, it's disrespectful and it's stupid to to think that ah um it's like an accessibility or disability thing because the only... 01:41:51.85 Hank ah impediment, if that's a word, to creating art is the desire to do so. 01:41:59.81 Mandi Q. Thank you. 01:42:00.13 Hank So if you think, if if the thing that for you is inaccessible, if the thing is making art, then you're just admitting to me that you're lazy and you want ah ah a an easy way out or you want someone else to do it for you. 01:42:00.54 Britt Anderson Yep. 01:42:19.33 Hank And ah that's not art. I don't know about, I don't play enough D&D to know how people feel about, like, oh, I just made this this AI thing of my characters, like or, oh, I just, I wanted to have a a tavern background for this specific scene. 01:42:38.51 Hank You know, I think that there are arguments for and against it. um Bottom line, also, I think it's it's just way too new, and it is growing so fast, and ah that freaks people out, and there's 01:42:49.19 Britt Anderson Yeah. 01:42:49.75 Katherine Mm-hmm. 01:42:52.54 Hank we We haven't really had any time to process it. You know, I still remember when, like, the best AI video was ah the biblically accurate Will Smith eating spaghetti. 01:43:06.04 Hank and And now people are are literally, like, you know, ah being gaslit by by Facebook to believe in the craziest things. Because, like, oh, I saw a video of it. 01:43:19.71 Hank It's like, dude, that's AI. but he it's it's just It's gotten so good. 01:43:21.96 Katherine Thank you. 01:43:23.74 Hank I don't know. A lot of it's spooky. A lot of it is ah threatening. 01:43:29.57 Britt Anderson Yeah. 01:43:29.91 Hank but Also, i don't think people I think people are turning into the fact that that it's cheap and soulless and and you don't feel anything when you look at it. You know you can look at one picture that was made by 01:43:37.95 Britt Anderson Yeah. 01:43:40.94 Hank ah people actually at Studio Ghibli, and then you can look at something that may look exactly the same that was ah generated by ChatGPT. And it's just... 01:43:51.77 Hank You can't tell me that... 01:43:54.53 Britt Anderson That people can't tell when they look 01:43:55.64 Hank that people Yeah, that people can't tell or that people can't feel anything. 01:43:55.89 Mandi Q. right 01:43:56.19 Katherine Mm-hmm. 01:43:59.41 Britt Anderson Yeah. 01:44:00.05 Hank It's like, I don't... I don't get it. 01:44:01.95 Katherine Yeah. 01:44:02.08 Hank So I don't really feel... as As an artist, as someone who loves drawing things, I don't feel particularly threatened by it because... It's not the same thing. 01:44:12.69 Mandi Q. Well, to the point of accessibility, It has never been so accessible for someone to create something. 01:44:22.08 LaurenWalshArt Mm-hmm. 01:44:22.13 Hank Fats. 01:44:22.23 Mandi Q. for For the example of, oh, I just wanted to make a character real quick, but I don't know how to draw. 01:44:22.44 Britt Anderson yeah 01:44:27.52 Mandi Q. I don't have somebody that can draw it for me. Picru exists. Artists have made Picru. And for those you that don't know, it is quite literally thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of artists creating a character creator where you just pick the eyes, you pick the hair, you pick the clothing you pick, and they make D and d inspired ones specifically where you have different classes and races and armor and they have, it's free. 01:44:47.22 Kurt Crenwelge you 01:44:48.66 Britt Anderson Mm-hmm. 01:44:51.57 Britt Anderson and it's free. 01:44:53.22 Mandi Q. It's a hundred percent free. It's all people that are super passionate. If you wanted to, my, one of my favorite quotes is if you wanted to, you would, if you wanted to make it, you would. 01:45:00.03 LaurenWalshArt Yep. Yep. 01:45:00.33 Britt Anderson Mm-hmm. 01:45:00.53 Katherine Mm-hmm. 01:45:01.43 LaurenWalshArt ye 01:45:01.57 Hank Hell yeah. 01:45:01.56 Mandi Q. So, so personally, 01:45:01.83 Hank Nope. 01:45:02.40 Katherine Mm-hmm. 01:45:03.89 Mandi Q. It is just an awful excuse because we're we're all guilty of it. of With social media and the and and how much information we're all processing, humans were never meant to read so much. we were never meant to look at things so much, so much, all the time. 01:45:19.60 Mandi Q. we you know One of the things that plays very well into my Y2K-themed VTuber is that back when I was... 01:45:20.04 Britt Anderson Yep. 01:45:28.01 Mandi Q. you know, starting on the internet, the online was a place that you went to and like did things in little places and then logged off and left. 01:45:31.30 Kurt Crenwelge Agreed. 01:45:37.58 Hank Yep. 01:45:37.61 Mandi Q. But now the internet, the internet, you know, for, for, for those of us that rely on art or even, you know, you don't rely on art at all for your income, for your livelihood, you need to apply to things online. 01:45:37.80 Hank Yep. 01:45:37.94 Britt Anderson ye 01:45:38.13 Katherine Mm-hmm. 01:45:39.13 Kurt Crenwelge agreed 01:45:40.23 Katherine Mm-hmm. 01:45:49.77 Mandi Q. You need to do your banking online. You need to look up where you need to go. You got to pay your bills. You cannot go anywhere without having um online presence. 01:45:54.78 Katherine Mm-hmm. 01:45:58.30 Mandi Q. it's it's It's viciously necessary. And this has conditioned everyone to have a expectation of immediate results. And it's now finally translated to art. 01:46:08.13 Britt Anderson Mm-hmm. 01:46:08.27 Hank Hmm. 01:46:10.14 Mandi Q. The technology has caught up where someone can say, I'm going to type in that I want a bear eating an apple. And wow, this machine can give me a photorealistic image of a bear eating an apple like a person. 01:46:22.64 Mandi Q. Why did I want this? I don't know, but I can have it and it's here right now. And if I can do that with this, something that I don't care about, what if I actually wanted art? What if I actually wanted something? And well, okay, well, instead of spending money that I don't have for somebody who needs to take time that I don't want to spend, or I don't want to learn a skill that took someone else 25 years to create and and and is for their whole lifetime. 01:46:44.74 Britt Anderson Yep. 01:46:47.06 Mandi Q. I don't want to wait. I want it now. And I'm going to use disability, whether or not I have any of my own, it's not pertinent. 01:46:50.28 Britt Anderson yeah 01:46:51.08 Katherine Uh-huh. Uh-huh. 01:46:56.60 Mandi Q. I'm going to use disability as an excuse to justify using this. Oh, it's in more accessible now. Just think of how many people have more accessibility to art. No, no. There are people out there making art. You can find dungeon maps. 01:47:10.72 Mandi Q. For free. You can find dungeon maps, you can find movable assets, tokens, character creators, name generators, all of which people have physically and creatively contributed to. 01:47:12.04 LaurenWalshArt Mm hmm. Yep. huh ye 01:47:14.82 Britt Anderson Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 01:47:21.22 Mandi Q. So no, that is simply simply just an excuse. and And this is the personal side, but the professional side. um As somebody who is has is um all I have... 01:47:33.01 Mandi Q. is illustration. it's It's my degree. It's my livelihood. It's my friends. It's my personal life. I have quite literally nothing else. 01:47:45.81 Mandi Q. My whole job is to be told by my employer or my art director what they want, and then I make it real. That's my purpose. And so when You know, when it said, oh, I'm not really I'm not really threatened too much by it. 01:48:03.44 Mandi Q. Well, I am because when I go on major job searching platforms like LinkedIn or Indeed, a lot of those entry level positions that were an opportunity for people to be trained up and and and for for a company to invest 01:48:15.57 LaurenWalshArt Yup. Yup. 01:48:16.38 Katherine Yeah. 01:48:16.84 LaurenWalshArt yup 01:48:16.78 Katherine Yeah. 01:48:17.32 Hank For sure. 01:48:17.72 Britt Anderson They don't exist anymore. 01:48:18.98 Mandi Q. the Yes, there's no, and it's for any job, art or otherwise, there is no longer a culture in North American business to invest in an employee's growth. 01:48:28.11 Kurt Crenwelge Thank 01:48:31.43 Mandi Q. They need to, it's again, it's that, right. 01:48:32.61 LaurenWalshArt Or a generation's growth, actually. An entire Gen Z is literally like... 01:48:34.66 Katherine yeah 01:48:34.88 Britt Anderson yeah 01:48:34.89 Mandi Q. It's, 01:48:35.75 Katherine to 01:48:38.15 LaurenWalshArt Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off. 01:48:39.14 Mandi Q. oh no, no, you're good. 01:48:39.15 LaurenWalshArt but like But like literally there's an issue right now with like senior game devs not being able to train juniors game devs to replace the senior game devs in the next 5 to 10 years. 01:48:51.00 Hank Yeah. 01:48:51.56 Britt Anderson Yeah. 01:48:53.15 Mandi Q. Yeah. 01:48:53.17 Hank Mm-hmm. 01:48:53.24 LaurenWalshArt It's literally like... 01:48:53.38 Mandi Q. Yeah. 01:48:53.61 Hank Yep. 01:48:54.92 LaurenWalshArt It's a short... i will I want to get you let you continue to speak. But it's a short-term positive net gain for companies that will kill their industry within the next five to ten years. 01:49:05.85 Mandi Q. yeah 01:49:06.42 Katherine Mm-hmm. 01:49:08.80 LaurenWalshArt It's crazy. Sorry. Please continue. 01:49:10.89 Hank ah 01:49:11.19 Britt Anderson yep 01:49:11.43 Mandi Q. Oh, no yeah, no, playing playing playing off of that. 01:49:11.53 LaurenWalshArt Sorry. 01:49:13.12 Britt Anderson Yeah. 01:49:15.18 Mandi Q. the The conversation in a workplace about AI and its potential is so, so scary because you and I, whether we oversee people, whether we're in management, I have been in management, I'm not currently But I can see it when I get a request that's asinine and in nonsens and ah nonsensical, that tells me that that manager that has total power over what it is that I'm making has no idea what I'm talking about. 01:49:47.28 Hank Mm-hmm. 01:49:47.77 Mandi Q. And so if that person who is looking me in the eye and watching me make this stuff doesn't know how to phrase a question, what to ask, how to direct me, then the people that are above them and the people above them and the people above them that have never, they don't they don't even know I exist. 01:49:47.78 Katherine And 01:49:47.98 LaurenWalshArt o 01:49:48.44 Britt Anderson Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 01:50:03.01 Katherine and 01:50:05.59 Mandi Q. I am a name in Microsoft Teams and barely that. They'll probably never even see it. And so if you have a top-down view of your company and someone says, hey, 01:50:18.06 Mandi Q. This Mandy person sure is spending a lot of time making 75 mock-ups for a for a game. She sure is doing storyboards and all that stupid nonsense. You know, what's she doing and all that for? 01:50:30.56 Mandi Q. Oh, color color compositions and swatches? What are those? but Why don't we just integrate AI into our pipeline? It's going to cut off all of that stuff that Mandy's been taken forever doing. 01:50:38.44 Britt Anderson i 01:50:40.85 Mandi Q. But what they're not seeing is that Mandy's management, her Mandy-ment, That doesn't really work. Anyway, 01:50:46.29 LaurenWalshArt No, no, I love it. 01:50:46.98 Britt Anderson love it i love it let's keep it 01:50:47.25 Kurt Crenwelge Mm-hmm. 01:50:47.27 Mandi Q. no 01:50:47.30 Katherine Randy Mintz. 01:50:47.45 LaurenWalshArt I love it. Work. Work. 01:50:49.81 Mandi Q. mandy's Mandy's managers don't know what to ask her. 01:50:50.03 Katherine and 01:50:52.06 Hank I'm so mad. 01:50:54.84 Mandi Q. They are giving her open-ended questions. They are giving her non-solution solutions. They are asking for new versions of things. They are changing their minds. 01:51:07.27 Mandi Q. And so from the top down, I was as fast and efficient as you could reasonably expect expect a human being to be with, withs you know, a decade of experience working for corporate art. 01:51:07.36 Hank Right. 01:51:18.35 Mandi Q. And 01:51:18.38 Kurt Crenwelge you 01:51:19.94 Mandi Q. But what they see is, wow, she sure is wasting a lot of time because her name is what's attached to this art. And so it's the moment, the moment that they want to bring AI into your work point workplace, it becomes, why don't you just do a couple mock-ups? 01:51:27.09 Britt Anderson Thank you. 01:51:36.38 Mandi Q. Why don't you let that storyboard get handled by a search prompt? And then you clean it up and you work it, whatever, whatever. 01:51:40.64 Hank Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 01:51:43.89 Mandi Q. And how much of my job needs to be replaced for them to start asking, well, why are we paying her so much when on paper, this machine is actually doing a lot of these things that she usually did because we asked. 01:51:58.60 Mandi Q. How much of that becomes, okay, 01:51:58.95 LaurenWalshArt Mm-hmm. 01:52:01.43 Mandi Q. Well, maybe we don't give her as much a financial incentive next year. Maybe she doesn't get the same about bonuses or the same raises. Maybe she doesn't get to work on as many projects. Then that language turns into, do we even need this many illustrators? 01:52:15.22 Mandi Q. Why don't we just cut down how many illustrators we have? And so it's not that the jobs are being immediately threatened. 01:52:19.87 Katherine Mm-hmm. 01:52:21.38 Mandi Q. It is a slow and and ignorant process, yeah, of erasing the need to have human touch. 01:52:21.44 Hank Right. 01:52:23.94 Britt Anderson It's a slow creep. 01:52:31.18 Mandi Q. and And human perspective. 01:52:31.46 Katherine Mm-hmm. 01:52:31.95 LaurenWalshArt Mm-hmm. 01:52:33.52 Mandi Q. And the only reason this is so fresh in my mind is, and you know, I mentioned I work in games. 01:52:34.11 Britt Anderson So 01:52:34.33 LaurenWalshArt Mm-hmm. 01:52:39.06 Mandi Q. um I work in the gambling industry specifically. And so the people above me are in Las Vegas sitting really comfy and they are golfing. They're chatting about sports and they... 01:52:50.31 Hank Must be nice. 01:52:51.10 Mandi Q. And and i am I am a small queer artist with a wife that's been unemployed for the past two years. I'm making the only money of my household. i have a mortgage. i have a car. i have cats. 01:53:02.51 Mandi Q. And I'm just trying to make sure that I can figure out how to feed myself because I don't want to cook. 01:53:07.07 Kurt Crenwelge you 01:53:07.81 Mandi Q. And... and My separation from these people in an industry that's really vicious, and I'm just here because it's the first thing that's paid me well in my whole entire art career, which is very sad. 01:53:20.64 Mandi Q. My existence to these people isn't anything. And it's not that it's intentional. there're They're not intending to to do that. But this technology is so enticing. 01:53:27.72 Hank Mm-hmm. 01:53:30.14 Mandi Q. it's so it's It's the apple in the Garden of Eden for someone who's looking at money and not people. 01:53:30.33 LaurenWalshArt Mm-hmm. 01:53:30.41 Hank Yeah. 01:53:31.11 Katherine Oh. 01:53:33.64 Hank Mm-hmm. 01:53:36.05 Mandi Q. And that's where it starts eating away at at jobs slowly, methodically. 01:53:36.58 Britt Anderson Yep. 01:53:40.86 Kurt Crenwelge you 01:53:42.30 Mandi Q. and And then it becomes, all right, well, we have that one senior. That senior's doing a great job. Jim, love Jim. Jim's our senior game dev, and he's he's just doing such a great job that we just need him. 01:53:54.93 Mandi Q. We don't need anybody else. We have somebody that can push a prompt, and and they can clean it up, and he'll guide us. Jim will guide us. and And like Lauren, yeah, until he has to retire and he didn't have anyone underneath him, another person to train to to replace him. 01:54:01.91 Britt Anderson Until he retires or until he leaves. 01:54:04.80 LaurenWalshArt Yep. 01:54:08.56 Mandi Q. So like you said, it's going to, a lot of ah lot of companies that really bit that apple are going to choke on it. 01:54:10.75 Britt Anderson Yeah. 01:54:14.97 Hank Yeah. 01:54:15.93 Mandi Q. And it's, we're going to be here sitting, making art of D&D and art for our friends and being a silly ah digital character online while they're absolutely gagging on the apple that they ate. 01:54:16.29 Britt Anderson Yeah. 01:54:16.37 LaurenWalshArt Mm 01:54:16.81 Katherine Yeah. 01:54:27.84 Hank Yeah. 01:54:27.93 Mandi Q. um 01:54:28.12 LaurenWalshArt hmm. 01:54:28.38 Britt Anderson Yeah. 01:54:29.05 Mandi Q. And that's, you know, 01:54:29.17 Britt Anderson That's it's I 01:54:29.42 LaurenWalshArt Which. Sorry. 01:54:31.47 Mandi Q. That's it? No, that's it. I got real passionate about it. 01:54:33.42 LaurenWalshArt Well, ah no, i mean, I think all of us 01:54:35.04 Hank For sure. 01:54:35.05 Britt Anderson No, you you got you you got passionate and I wanted to jump in there because everything you described about what happens in the workplace is exactly what completely ruined my dream job. 01:54:37.46 LaurenWalshArt do 01:54:49.94 Kurt Crenwelge you 01:54:50.90 Britt Anderson i was I was working at TikTok. I worked there for four years. And the first two and a half, almost three years were fantastic because, you know, you're you're making illustrations, you're making animations, you're making sticker packs. I was a lead character designer on TikTok avatars. 01:55:10.23 Britt Anderson I was one of the lead designers on making like mobile games for TikTok, like a mobile game studio. Like it was a huge thing. There was an explosion of creativity in this massive, I think our team at largest was like 47 years. 01:55:25.72 Britt Anderson between 42 to 47 people ah with senior artists, training up junior artists. And it was a very positive, healthy, great place to work in the creative department, at least. 01:55:33.50 Kurt Crenwelge Thank you. 01:55:40.26 Britt Anderson And there was a person that was hired. ah There was a decision that was made in the higher ups, like several higher ups above us over in China. 01:55:51.97 Britt Anderson There was a person that was hired to oversee the entire creative department of the whole company of all of TikTok. And when he came in, was, 01:56:05.85 Britt Anderson He had never had, as far as I'm aware, um he he came in and he he had never really had a job where he managed a creative department before that I'm aware of. 01:56:17.62 Britt Anderson It could be wrong. he came in and I'm remaining nameless for reasons. He, he came in and he was, it was right around the time when, you know, like AI really started cropping up online of like, well, look, look at these cool, like, oh, I scan my face and it gives me a generator of like me in like a space suit or whatever. 01:56:41.78 LaurenWalshArt Oh, on TikTok specifically, you mean? 01:56:41.85 Britt Anderson um On TikTok specifically, there was one one or two filters that were made over in China that got massive numbers because AI was really big. 01:56:44.25 LaurenWalshArt work Yeah, I remember that, yeah. 01:56:54.93 Britt Anderson And this manager came in and he said, our monthly thing was we we would get together and we would pitch ideas across you know the whole company, pitching ideas of what would be made. 01:57:02.29 Kurt Crenwelge Thank you. 01:57:06.69 Britt Anderson And he started pushing for more AI stuff to be made. And... 01:57:15.48 Britt Anderson And just to the decision to do that, we started noticing that more and more of the work was turning into just generate a bunch of ai stuff and then fix any of the major problems in it. Like, oh, the hand doesn't look right or whatever. 01:57:34.83 Britt Anderson And within about seven months, eight months, my job went from I'm actively creating multiple assets of art all day and coming up with all these creative ideas to when I left the company to work in games, my entire job was taking already existing assets, whether they were AI or not, 01:58:04.13 Britt Anderson and formatting them into TikTok's TikTok Studio, where you can just open an app and they have all of the assets there already, so you can make your own filters and stuff. 01:58:16.42 Britt Anderson um Like Snapchat has a similar thing. That's, you know, and, but it was also just, I went from being a creative where I created things to a, hey, we need to take these 400 assets this month and convert them into this file type, upload them here, and then double check their thumbnails to make sure all the thumbnails are the same size and accurate. 01:58:37.65 Kurt Crenwelge Thank you. 01:58:46.12 Britt Anderson And once in a blue moon, I got to illustrate a sticker pack for something and There was also the added stress of like, oh, Trump's looking to get rid of the the platform. 01:59:00.09 Britt Anderson So there was also this kind of sort of Damocles hanging hanging over our heads wondering like, are we even gonna have a job tomorrow? The straw that broke the camel's back was we came in one day, none of the managers were there and a number of us got the dreaded pink slip email that as effective immediately, you are no longer, 01:59:24.47 Britt Anderson working and it wasn't a huge amount of people, but when it happened, we all kind of had this like sudden drop of like, uh, and we all kind of knew when AI started creeping into the creative process that this is where we would end up. 01:59:42.45 Britt Anderson We just didn't know when it would happen. 01:59:42.51 LaurenWalshArt Mm-hmm. 01:59:45.66 Britt Anderson And I chose to leave the company before it got to that point. 01:59:53.40 Britt Anderson and the creative team continued to dwindle. I'm not sure how many people still work there. I'm not sure the, you know, and I even kind of has, thinking back now, I probably shouldn't have said some of this stuff, but um it it would had a very real tangible thing where a lot of people's livelihoods that I knew that I was very good friends with kind of got ruined and many of them had been with the company for like but from for years before it was even tick tock back when it was flippogram or musically even so their entire creative careers just kind of went up in smoke and 02:00:31.50 LaurenWalshArt Hmm. 02:00:35.82 Katherine Bye. 02:00:39.44 Britt Anderson They find themselves in a similar situation like me where we're looking for work and so much of the work is like, oh, here, we'll we pay you to come in for two to three months, make a bunch of assets for us, and then we'll just take the assets you make and train AI off of it, then your tenure where we don't need you anymore. 02:00:54.97 Hank Nice. 02:00:58.15 Britt Anderson I cannot tell you the number of times I've had job interviews since I was laid off in the gaming industry this year, where that has been brought up in the interview process where i'll ask what's the scope of the job the scope of the project blah blah blah because they wouldn't be very forthcoming about it and then it comes out oh well this is a temporary position for a couple weeks or a couple months we do this we collect the data and then it's a temporary position 02:01:30.82 LaurenWalshArt hu 02:01:31.26 Britt Anderson So they'll pay you long enough to come in, do the work and then you out. 02:01:33.62 Hank Mm-hmm. 02:01:34.83 Katherine Yeah. 02:01:35.86 Britt Anderson So where there's some people who will say like, Oh, AI is harmless. And it's not really, you know, it's not really hurting anything. And it's like, well, it, it, you know, there's there's parts of it that absolutely are. 02:01:48.71 Britt Anderson And for me, I ah kind of look like going back to the very beginning of our conversation, ah there's a definite... 02:01:50.13 Kurt Crenwelge you 02:01:59.02 Britt Anderson It was... definite aye was Hank, I think it was you who mentioned something about like, oh, when we're we're all kids and we're kind of creative and there's a want to create and do things. 02:02:13.89 Britt Anderson To me, there's a big difference between saying someone is talented and saying someone is skilled. 02:02:19.20 Mandi Q. Mm-hmm. 02:02:19.32 Hank For sure. 02:02:19.48 Britt Anderson Everyone. 02:02:19.81 Katherine Yeah. 02:02:20.99 Britt Anderson Everyone is talented and is talented at multiple things. 02:02:26.88 Hank Mm-hmm. 02:02:28.68 Britt Anderson talent turns to skill when there's intention put behind it, when there's intention and drive and the want to do something. And for me, where AI image generation comes in is someone is talented and has a want for something And because of the world that we have right now, instant gratification is the thing. 02:02:52.57 Britt Anderson They don't want to take the time, the effort, or even just a couple seconds to Google to see if there's a pit crew or something like that out there to assist them. 02:02:59.13 Katherine Yeah. 02:03:01.62 Hank hey 02:03:02.03 LaurenWalshArt Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 02:03:02.52 Mandi Q. Right. 02:03:03.99 Britt Anderson So instead they'll just, oh, well, I'll just do this so I can skip the messy part of getting good at something and just get something that's good enough. 02:03:13.68 Hank yeah 02:03:14.07 LaurenWalshArt but her 02:03:14.28 Britt Anderson and then take credit for it. 02:03:14.54 Katherine yeah 02:03:15.62 Hank the 02:03:15.95 Britt Anderson And it's like, Ooh, that, yeah. 02:03:19.23 Hank right I think if I can share something what I'm picking up is again what we were talking at the very beginning about ah art and about how the importance of things that are hard to quantify, you know, something like, uh, how much, yeah how much sleep you get, you know, everybody knows that getting a good night's sleep is vital to your health, physical health, mental health, all that stuff. 02:03:35.71 Britt Anderson Mm-hmm. 02:03:50.70 Britt Anderson Mm-hmm. 02:03:52.04 Hank Um, and like taking breaks throughout the day, especially for people who do creative or, uh, very think heavy things. Um, Those things are very important, but they're hard to quantify. 02:04:05.33 Hank You know you can't say, oh ah two hours of sleep directly equates to 15% increased productivity on the floor. 02:04:12.87 Katherine Thank you. 02:04:14.33 Hank Or you know if I get seven hours of sleep, then it's that's going to be, ah I'll have XYZ amount of ah productivity and I can look at the numbers and I can tangibly see how this thing is directly influencing this other thing. 02:04:30.88 Hank And it's hard to do that for things like ah creative process or ah how good a picture is or how effective a piece of of ah UX is. 02:04:46.05 Hank And I'm getting the impression that people think that because this AI stuff is so ah quick and it's so ah instant gratification. 02:04:58.40 Hank It feels like a quantification of those things or at least a workaround. It's like, okay, well, like I don't know that I can't tangibly or empirically say that the three hours that I spent on my walk 02:05:08.44 Katherine Mm-hmm. 02:05:18.63 Hank at the park helped me feel more creative and it and it inspired this idea. you know like i saw a bird in a tree and it suddenly connected the dots for this storyline that I've been trying to tinker away with for years. you know like Inspiration strikes you and then you and then you then you figure out that story. 02:05:36.69 Hank ah But there's no way to to to quantify that or to ah turn that into a data set. 02:05:38.11 Katherine but 02:05:41.32 Britt Anderson Mm-hmm. 02:05:45.30 Hank But you can turn into a data set hey, I made this picture for this flyer or for this ah email and I sent it out and it took me, I saved you know three hours of time instead of outsourcing it to a a graphic designer and paying them $200 for three hours of time, you know quantifiable numbered things. 02:06:11.94 Hank Now it's just, oh, I typed it in, and i got 20 minutes 02:06:12.20 Britt Anderson Mm-hmm. 02:06:16.96 Hank of of rendering time, and now it looks just as serviceable as it would have done. So it's like, oh, well, there's there's the numbers. ah So ah let's just let's just go with that, because the immediate results are ah in my favor. 02:06:32.74 Hank And obviously, we're we're seeing that those, ah someone said something about, and and the the apple is, is in their mouths now, you know, so I think that they're going to, going to figure out how, how, uh, flimsy a lot of this stuff is or how, uh, unaffected if it actually is because people are losing jobs and no one's going to give a shit about watching ah movie that was made by AI if they, uh, can't put food on the table. 02:06:45.50 LaurenWalshArt Mm-hmm. 02:06:55.04 Britt Anderson Yeah. Yeah. 02:07:04.88 Hank So, 02:07:05.37 Britt Anderson yeah 02:07:05.35 Katherine Yeah, I think too... 02:07:06.50 LaurenWalshArt well you're not gonna get oh god well i i was was gonna say you're not gonna get a k-pop you're not gonna get a k-pop demon hunters out of ai you're not going to get a and that's the thing when i was saying earlier the the short-term game of what you're talking about um is not going to outweigh the catac the cataclysmic 02:07:07.61 Katherine Oh sorry, go ahead. 02:07:14.27 Mandi Q. Yeah. 02:07:14.74 Hank For sure. 02:07:15.02 Katherine Yeah. 02:07:17.24 Kurt Crenwelge you 02:07:27.99 Hank I don't think so. 02:07:31.43 LaurenWalshArt destruction to the industry and i and i mean i literally do mean cataclysmic i and i'm not and i'm not again we're talking about like generational time here where these companies are talking about oh we saved 200 in those three hours great cool if you eat mcdonald's every day for your life you're probably going to have high blood pressure you're probably going gonna have all these other issues just because you saved 02:07:31.61 Britt Anderson him 02:07:34.14 Hank Yeah. 02:07:34.56 Britt Anderson Yeah. 02:07:43.61 Hank Mm-hmm. 02:07:54.95 Hank Okay, we're not talking about me. 02:07:55.40 Britt Anderson Mm-hmm. 02:07:56.31 Hank We're talking about AI. 02:07:56.64 LaurenWalshArt but well no no no yeah yeah yeah no but i mean like oh i saved 30 minutes and i saved x amount by going to mcdonald's and getting that every single day and then you get into like you know your like later years and they're like hey man your body's wrecked and you're like oh no if only someone had told me like like like that kind of thing right but like on like a corporate level and like what you were saying earlier like i personally don't fear ai 02:07:57.29 Hank Just kidding. 02:07:58.03 Mandi Q. Right. 02:08:05.97 Britt Anderson yep 02:08:09.26 Katherine like 02:08:09.58 Hank Right. 02:08:15.71 Hank Mm-hmm. Yeah. 02:08:16.18 Mandi Q. right 02:08:16.17 Katherine ah 02:08:19.58 Hank Yeah. 02:08:25.72 LaurenWalshArt I know that people love my artwork. I know that as an independent artist who does rely on like shop sales and stuff like that, I know that people will come to me to buy my work or to support me or to i get a commission by me. And I know that I am okay. 02:08:44.29 LaurenWalshArt However, I also know what jobs I got when I started and that those jobs are now gone. 02:08:51.97 Hank Mm-hmm. 02:08:52.10 LaurenWalshArt I know that the commission scene, like we're talking about, like with the question earlier at the beginning. 02:08:52.05 Katherine And 02:08:57.83 LaurenWalshArt Yes, you could you could generate an image of the character from your D&D campaign. Or you could pay a starting artist and show them the experience that I can make money and probably totally undersold themselves and probably only sold that for $75. I'm looking at you, Lauren, from um but like ah but but the thing is is like you have those experiences when you're a young artist and i remember the first commission i ever got and i got that 75 after working for 40 hours and i went oh my god i can make money doing this and now like you know i'm getting emotional but like now i'm doing these things i never thought i'd do and 02:09:41.97 Mandi Q. Yeah. 02:09:46.51 Katherine thing Okay, okay. 02:09:46.89 Hank yeah. 02:09:47.27 LaurenWalshArt And it started with that underpaid $75 for that commission. 02:09:48.30 Britt Anderson um yeah 02:09:50.87 Hank Right. 02:09:51.45 Britt Anderson yeah know 02:09:53.42 Hank so 02:09:53.84 LaurenWalshArt and and I would say like, I would say to the person who wants to generate work for their, for their, for their campaign that, that Yeah, you could do it. 02:10:05.77 LaurenWalshArt Sure. But there are... and no one's gonna stop you. no one can No one's gonna be there like Twitter police. Like, I can't believe you did this. 02:10:14.55 Mandi Q. yeah. 02:10:14.59 Hank right 02:10:14.64 LaurenWalshArt Downvote, I'm gonna quote retweet you. Like, you know what I mean? like but But, like, yeah you're not... 02:10:19.01 Katherine Yeah. 02:10:22.38 LaurenWalshArt You're not supporting the next artist who will eventually do something in the player handbook of the game that you're playing. 02:10:30.56 Hank yeah 02:10:31.31 Mandi Q. yeah 02:10:31.40 LaurenWalshArt You're not supporting somebody who in 15 years time will be the next person of that generation. 02:10:31.93 Britt Anderson Yeah. Mm-hmm. 02:10:39.78 LaurenWalshArt You're not actively feeding the artists that are out there and and who also give so much to this industry, who take jobs that don't pay well because they want to, because they're passionate about it. 02:10:53.82 LaurenWalshArt And you could be a part of that ecosystem of this community and support someone and give them... Again, 75 bucks. 02:11:06.80 LaurenWalshArt It's not enough. Raise your rates. I beg you. But, but like, ah it's, you could be a part of that. 02:11:10.03 Britt Anderson Yeah. 02:11:14.03 LaurenWalshArt And, and again, like I said, i do not fear AI. i fear AI in the hands of corporations. 02:11:21.89 Mandi Q. Yeah. 02:11:21.98 Hank Yeah. 02:11:22.09 LaurenWalshArt I fear ai in the hands of people who do not see humans in their companies. 02:11:22.15 Katherine Yes. 02:11:22.58 Britt Anderson yeah 02:11:28.50 LaurenWalshArt I fear AI in the hands of people who will, poison the environment around them to use data centers and burn through water. 02:11:40.76 LaurenWalshArt And absolutely like, i mean, again, like please look into the environmental impact of AI. 02:11:43.88 Katherine Yeah. 02:11:47.58 Hank yeah 02:11:47.71 Katherine It's huge. 02:11:48.39 Hank Yeah, we haven't even talked about any of that, which is like an entire other thing. 02:11:48.67 LaurenWalshArt Please. 02:11:49.90 Katherine Yeah. 02:11:50.39 LaurenWalshArt No, please, please look into the rising costs of electricity that is currently happening in New Jersey and in New York. 02:11:50.73 Britt Anderson Mm-hmm. 02:11:50.81 Mandi Q. yeah 02:11:50.87 Britt Anderson Mm-hmm. 02:11:51.21 Katherine It's... 02:12:01.69 LaurenWalshArt um because of the deals that they're making to get data centers into the area. You may sit here and think, I am not a part of this conversation and I'm going to speak to you directly. You are a part of this conversation. 02:12:14.62 LaurenWalshArt The cost of energy is going to rise. as they continue to use this to like, it's not a ah data energy is not free. 02:12:23.18 Hank you 02:12:24.67 LaurenWalshArt It is still a cost. It is being, and it is a cost in other facets, right? The AI conversation is not just about theft. 02:12:31.48 Britt Anderson Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 02:12:31.59 Katherine Mm-hmm. 02:12:33.87 LaurenWalshArt The AI conversation is not just about copyright. The AI conversation is not just about the loss of jobs or the fact that we are absolutely wrecking the generations that will come before us by closing doors entirely. 02:12:47.07 LaurenWalshArt that will i can't even look at an artist right now who is in college because i I've spoken to them and i every single time I look at them, I go... 02:12:48.32 Kurt Crenwelge you 02:12:57.52 LaurenWalshArt Every door that I took to get where I am, as mediocre as it is financially compared to like these fucking billionaires or whatever, have closed. 02:13:07.39 Mandi Q. Yeah. 02:13:07.76 LaurenWalshArt They are closing. 02:13:07.78 Hank Yeah. 02:13:09.76 LaurenWalshArt And I don't know what to tell you. Every it is, and and that's what I'm saying, cataclysmic. 02:13:13.17 Britt Anderson Yeah. 02:13:16.37 LaurenWalshArt And it's not, unless you're in the industry, I think people see the reaction of artists to AI and they're like, they're Luddites. They don't even know what they're talking about. 02:13:26.65 LaurenWalshArt like they Like, they're just complaining about nothing. Like, adapt or die. you know, like, all but bill you mean the shit the the stuff I see. 02:13:32.25 Hank Yeah. 02:13:33.24 Katherine Mm-hmm. 02:13:35.85 LaurenWalshArt um But, like, it's not just... it's it's and not only is it about those things but it's also about you as a human you aren't even you're you're you're stealing from yourself the ability to learn a new skill you're stealing from yourself the ability to learn something new you're stealing the ability from yourself to explore who you are 02:13:46.46 Hank Hmm. 02:14:00.55 Britt Anderson Amen. 02:14:04.52 LaurenWalshArt in that moment, when you can't draw a nose in perspective, when you are about to break your pencil because you're so frustrated, you're you're so you're stealing that from yourself. 02:14:16.64 LaurenWalshArt And you're not allowing yourself the space to grow if you're only using generative AI to make a thing for the dwarf that's in the tavern for you. 02:14:29.50 LaurenWalshArt but Go draw a a shitty little picture. 02:14:32.62 Mandi Q. Yeah. 02:14:32.67 LaurenWalshArt We've all drawn shitty little pictures. 02:14:34.17 Hank Cartoons. 02:14:34.97 Mandi Q. Yeah. 02:14:35.07 LaurenWalshArt I'm not going to call cartoons shitty. 02:14:35.17 Katherine Yes. 02:14:35.28 Britt Anderson And ah honestly, at the table, those are super memorable. 02:14:35.35 Katherine That was- yeah. 02:14:35.98 Hank Cartoons, dude. 02:14:37.35 LaurenWalshArt Hold on. Hold on. Don't put words in my mouth. 02:14:38.64 Hank Well, hell yeah. 02:14:39.27 LaurenWalshArt like 02:14:39.36 Hank I guarantee your 02:14:40.67 LaurenWalshArt But I mean, legitimately, like go draw a little funny thing and be like, yeah, this is this is Bebop the dwarf and he's my guy at the tavern. You know what mean? like 02:14:48.91 Hank party... 02:14:49.46 LaurenWalshArt Go draw that guy. 02:14:50.99 Hank i guarantee your party 02:14:51.10 Kurt Crenwelge His buddy Rocksteady is next to him. 02:14:53.67 LaurenWalshArt Yeah, yeah, yeah. yeah 02:14:55.19 Britt Anderson Yeah. 02:14:56.33 LaurenWalshArt But anyway, that's my pulpit moment with that. 02:14:56.43 Hank I guarantee the party is going to remember the shitty dwarf doodle a lot more than they are going to remember the same computer generated. 02:15:00.69 LaurenWalshArt yeah 02:15:00.80 Britt Anderson Yes. 02:15:01.12 LaurenWalshArt They will... 02:15:01.61 Katherine yes 02:15:01.76 LaurenWalshArt Oh my god. 02:15:02.68 Britt Anderson Oh my God. 02:15:02.76 LaurenWalshArt Absolutely. 02:15:03.07 Katherine that 02:15:03.62 Britt Anderson Every time. 02:15:03.96 Katherine yeah 02:15:04.20 LaurenWalshArt Absolutely. 02:15:05.62 Hank Yeah. 02:15:05.68 LaurenWalshArt And then my my last thing is that um I know that people ah you can get into the weeds about copyright and I know that that's, listen, I have a lizard brain. 02:15:13.09 Mandi Q. Right. 02:15:14.33 LaurenWalshArt i love writing copyright like contracts. It's my favorite thing to do. 02:15:16.96 Hank Power to you. 02:15:18.63 LaurenWalshArt ah It's weird. But like, thank you. 02:15:21.06 Hank power to you 02:15:21.98 Mandi Q. Mm-hmm. 02:15:23.17 LaurenWalshArt um But like, I i think that I ah 02:15:31.19 LaurenWalshArt what was the i i lost it oh no um it was about it was about copyright it was about theft theft oh then yes um art does have some quote-unquote theft yes you do get inspired by people oh yeah 02:15:44.77 Kurt Crenwelge Mid-journey Disney lawsuit happening. 02:15:48.13 LaurenWalshArt Oh, beautiful. 02:15:48.91 Hank Mm-hmm. 02:15:48.97 LaurenWalshArt I can't wait. ah Let them fight. um 02:15:51.63 Katherine Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 02:15:53.71 LaurenWalshArt um But one thing with the theft concept is that, yes, you do get inspired by other people's things. And yeah, like you do kind of see a thing and you're like, wow, that's cool. 02:16:04.91 LaurenWalshArt The difference between that and plagiarism and theft is that you take a hand that you see and you're like, that's a cool hand. But then what you do as an artist is you process it through your own self, your own experience, and then you make something that is inspired by, but different. 02:16:23.41 LaurenWalshArt And AI does not do that. 02:16:24.07 Britt Anderson Mm-hmm. 02:16:26.48 LaurenWalshArt It does not transform what it's doing. It's not adding... 02:16:30.53 Hank Yeah. 02:16:31.59 LaurenWalshArt and It's not adding to the process. It is simply regurgitating data set that it has learned and is doing it on a scale that is inhuman And one person like looking at a hand and being inspired by it is not the same as in a machine taking every hand ever drawn and, and then making a hand. 02:16:59.83 Hank yeah 02:17:00.61 Katherine his 02:17:02.40 LaurenWalshArt There's a very, very different um ah thing there. But anyway, I, yeah, well, you know what? 02:17:06.13 Katherine And still it manages to get the number of fingers wrong. 02:17:06.62 Hank Yeah. 02:17:09.09 Mandi Q. yeah 02:17:09.85 Britt Anderson I 02:17:09.93 Hank All 02:17:10.76 LaurenWalshArt Listen, me too. Okay. no 02:17:12.88 Katherine know, it's like it's hard enough. 02:17:13.08 Mandi Q. Yeah. 02:17:13.29 Hank right. 02:17:13.80 LaurenWalshArt not give me 02:17:16.62 Mandi Q. Honestly, to to bring it into D&D specifically, 02:17:16.92 LaurenWalshArt Listen, 02:17:21.66 Mandi Q. ah the whole point of Dungeons & Dragons or any TTRPG is the... collaboration amongst strangers at a table and you're gonna have so many moments of organic ah interaction and growth like you know somebody's slip of the tongue is gonna be a story beat somebody sneezing in the middle of a moment of tension is going to be something funny that we talk about later 02:17:32.07 LaurenWalshArt Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 02:17:53.07 Hank Mm-hmm. 02:17:53.30 Mandi Q. That garbage picture of a little guy, a little scrungly fella at a tavern because you had a sticky note and an idea on your lunch break. They're going to remember that silly guy because it was so full of personality. 02:18:07.38 Mandi Q. It was something that people immediately resonated with because it was ah it was a crummy little guy that everybody's like, oh yeah, I've drawn me another ah silly little guy like that before. 02:18:16.19 LaurenWalshArt and Yeah. 02:18:16.36 Mandi Q. and And so the whole point of of us being around this panel at all is what did D&D do for you in your artistic journey? 02:18:28.58 Mandi Q. How are you using your art to return into that creative space, whether it's D&D or something else? And and what how has that enriched your life? 02:18:39.95 Mandi Q. And i I can guarantee that not a single person is going to look at AI Slop and be like, this really enriched my life. Something about this really felt so special to me. No one's going to get grandma's scrapbook full of AI generated, you know, apple pies. 02:18:49.69 LaurenWalshArt Yeah, yeah. 02:18:49.75 Hank Mm-hmm. 02:18:50.52 Katherine Yeah. 02:18:53.16 Katherine Oh man. Yeah. 02:18:55.48 Mandi Q. Yeah, no one's going to get Meemaw's book of AI generated Pinterest board pictures. 02:18:55.56 Britt Anderson Oh, man. 02:18:58.53 LaurenWalshArt Yeah, 02:19:00.38 Mandi Q. And they're going to be like, man, Meemaw sure did know how to generate a code. 02:19:01.86 Katherine man 02:19:03.22 Mandi Q. You know what I mean? 02:19:04.09 LaurenWalshArt yeah, yeah. 02:19:04.46 Katherine yeah 02:19:04.65 LaurenWalshArt Now come around, children. 02:19:04.66 Mandi Q. and And there, exactly. 02:19:05.85 LaurenWalshArt Look at my pictures from the Generative Era of 2025. 02:19:08.39 Katherine oh 02:19:08.73 Hank no 02:19:09.00 Mandi Q. There's nothing special about it there. And I think that's why a lot of artists are so disheartened by it because we bring something special to the table. We even, you know there are multiple illustrators over here. There's graphic designers. 02:19:25.49 Mandi Q. There are authors here in this space. Yeah. 02:19:28.36 LaurenWalshArt Mm-hmm. 02:19:28.58 Mandi Q. even just amongst us, you know, the six of us. And we could have had the same education in the same place, in the same course, in the same time, and we would have all done something different with it. 02:19:41.20 Mandi Q. And so when we sit around the same table 02:19:41.25 Hank Mm-hmm. 02:19:43.91 Mandi Q. And you have people that work blue collar jobs, like my DM and another one of my players, you know, the, the, another player he's in his, his fifties and he's been playing since the very first edition with his dad and his friends around the table. 02:19:57.56 Hank past 02:19:59.64 Mandi Q. We have him and my DM and both of them work blue collar jobs. And they are bringing with with them their experiences on the floor of a warehouse. 02:20:08.03 Kurt Crenwelge Thank you. 02:20:11.19 Mandi Q. And I don't have that. I have other friends that work in marketing or they work in retail and they bring that part to the table too. 02:20:13.29 LaurenWalshArt Mm-hmm. 02:20:19.41 Mandi Q. It manifests in something they say to shopkeep because they say, oh, This person came into my job when i was when we were closing and it was so annoying. 02:20:28.67 Hank Mm-hmm. 02:20:29.05 Mandi Q. And I'm going to put this experience into us going into this tavern as it's about to close. You're getting moments of life and reality in a fictional play space. 02:20:40.03 Mandi Q. And our art is just us bringing that imagination space into a ah perceivable, whether it's audible, whether it's you know visual, whether it's written. 02:20:52.55 Mandi Q. we We as artists and writers and musicians are just taking that really fun bit of reality in the fantasy world and making something to show people those moments that are special to us. 02:21:05.45 Mandi Q. And so if someone's just coming at it like, oh, I have a D&D character, I can't draw, I'm going to generate a picture of this guy. They're not going to get anything from that image. What they are going to get is when one of their party members draws their character for the first time and it's going to feel so much more special. 02:21:22.32 Mandi Q. It's going to feel so much more real and tangible. 02:21:22.33 LaurenWalshArt Mm-hmm. 02:21:22.31 Katherine Yeah. 02:21:25.58 Mandi Q. And that will immediately invalidate the slop they started with. 02:21:30.01 Kurt Crenwelge you 02:21:30.92 Hank Mm-hmm. 02:21:31.19 LaurenWalshArt hu 02:21:31.34 Mandi Q. And it's, you know, it was mentioned that like, I don't, you know, we don't know our character till we draw them or we interpret them somehow. 02:21:31.54 Katherine yeah 02:21:31.63 Britt Anderson Thank you. 02:21:38.89 Mandi Q. It's the same thing. Like your character never actually really existed until someone drew it for you properly or, or wrote out um a song for them or a a little, a short story or role play or a blog, whatever it is that makes you happy. Like, 02:21:54.45 Mandi Q. AI can never be special to you. AI can never give you warmth and joy because it didn't come from a place of love. It came from a place of commerce and consumerism and, and like just, to yeah. 02:22:05.35 Hank Mm-hmm. 02:22:06.07 Katherine Mm-hmm. Yeah. 02:22:07.62 Hank Instant gratification. 02:22:09.09 Mandi Q. And ignorance. 02:22:09.12 Katherine yeah 02:22:10.17 Mandi Q. It's, it's coming from a place of ignorance and bigotry and, and just commodity. 02:22:10.28 Britt Anderson Thank you. 02:22:15.32 Mandi Q. Um, And so when I'm, you know, when I do my art critiques and I have people from the the spans of the internet coming to a digital mall to see a mannequin girl talk about their art in front of them for a half hour, I tell artists that, you know, that see the state of the world and I'm like, guys... 02:22:36.45 Mandi Q. Your art is special and valuable simply because you made it. It doesn't have to be worth money. 02:22:40.64 LaurenWalshArt Mm-hmm. 02:22:41.18 Mandi Q. You don't have to sell it. It is simply important because it's yours. And no matter what level of skill you have, no matter how long you've drawing, it could be you started yesterday or maybe you've been doing it for 20 years, 100 years. 02:22:54.95 Mandi Q. It's special because you made it. And that won't ever change. that That's not something that AI can take from you. And that's something that can never be taken away from D&D and collaborative role play games. 02:23:04.99 Kurt Crenwelge you 02:23:06.07 Mandi Q. Like that there's no one else can come in and steal that from you because you're making that moment with the group that you're with. 02:23:12.99 LaurenWalshArt Mm-hmm. 02:23:14.17 Hank Well said. 02:23:20.12 Katherine I feel like you guys have absolutely nailed it on the head, like covered such a span of topics. 02:23:27.56 Mandi Q. I'm a yapper. 02:23:29.21 Katherine I and don't want to take up too much more time, I guess real quick. i'll I've got two, perhaps two things that I can contribute to the conversation. 02:23:36.83 Mandi Q. Mm-hmm. 02:23:38.47 Katherine One being as a graphic designer, I have seen ah bit of, not necessarily the other side, but like another facet of what's going on because in my line of work, one, my line of work is also being affected by even being pushed upon by like the very software that we use day to day. 02:24:04.91 Katherine and I'm very fortunate to work um for organization that actually takes a stance against using generative AI for design and art. 02:24:13.97 Hank Tell ya. 02:24:16.96 Katherine um But in our work, like we're using stock imagery, or we have to commission something, or we use a lot of artwork, and we do and it's becoming 02:24:23.04 LaurenWalshArt Oh yeah. 02:24:25.17 Britt Anderson Mm-hmm. 02:24:27.07 Katherine oh gosh, like you should see whenever we get on an AI diatribe in our Slack conversations, we're just like, oh gosh, it's like literally wading through the slot, through the slot. 02:24:31.43 Mandi Q. Yeah. 02:24:36.71 Katherine Like it's becoming a skill to discern AI, not AI. 02:24:44.79 Hank yeah 02:24:44.86 Katherine And and we we have like jokes about how, gosh, we should start adding to our marketing that this was created by a real organic living human being. 02:24:55.54 Katherine And that is it like, 02:24:55.64 Mandi Q. and here 02:24:57.41 Katherine That's an up thing, you know? 02:24:58.91 LaurenWalshArt organic 02:24:59.10 Mandi Q. yeah 02:24:59.42 Katherine ah Yes. 02:25:00.80 Mandi Q. Yeah. ah Non-GMO humans. 02:25:03.11 Katherine No, seriously. Yeah. And so, yeah, it's, it's gosh, it's, it's a hot mess out there. And at the same time, 02:25:15.32 Katherine ah from everything I learned, you know, again, going back to like, okay, college foundations, like I, I do, i am concerned for the next generation of graphic designers, illustrators, whatever about just the loss of skill and loss of, 02:25:33.05 Britt Anderson Mm-hmm. 02:25:33.05 LaurenWalshArt Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 02:25:34.03 Katherine this tradition of learning ah your craft from like, I don't care, like we're all going become prompt generators. 02:25:34.92 Kurt Crenwelge you 02:25:41.74 Katherine That's all we're going you're not a designer, not an artist, like you're a prompt generator and you won't learn, you know, for myself, you won't learn about typography. 02:25:42.45 Hank Yeah. 02:25:50.68 Katherine You won't learn about, you know, why is white space important? yeah 02:25:56.20 Hank yeah 02:25:56.33 Katherine Why, like how to compose a layout? Why, you know, all of that stuff. Um, So it's, yeah, I'm both, I deep concerns in some areas and other areas. 02:26:09.32 Katherine I'm like, I think eventually we'll be okay. We'll make it through this. like creative industries in general, it's not going to look the same as before, but there's going be a lot of collateral damage and we don't exactly know to what extent, what kind. 02:26:24.06 LaurenWalshArt Mm-hmm. 02:26:26.32 Katherine And it's hard to say right now exactly what it's going to look like. The other thing I wanted to touch on and hopefully has a, if I can land the plane, a more hopeful ending. um So I have a very bright, super creative five and a half year old boy. 02:26:46.42 Katherine who loves to draw. Like i we will love, both my husband and I are very creative people. 02:26:49.56 Britt Anderson Mm-hmm. 02:26:52.38 Katherine We've been drawing our whole lives. He's got that that gene in him or whatever, but he's also, I've also started introducing, sprinkling in a little D&D into his life through like bedtime stories or like just coming up with stories together and introducing this idea of collaborative storytelling and some of the mechanics are in there. 02:27:11.67 Katherine But as parents, we also, 02:27:13.19 Hank dude 02:27:16.11 Katherine are like, oh my goodness, what is education going to be like in his lifetime? 02:27:20.90 LaurenWalshArt Mm-hmm. 02:27:21.12 Hank yeah 02:27:22.41 LaurenWalshArt ah her 02:27:22.38 Katherine How, ah like, the among all the other things you have to do as a parent to just keep this little person alive and turn them into a good functional citizen and human being, 02:27:34.38 Katherine like we have we're now going to have to foster and encourage just like even just the concept of taste and discernment of what is and essential real versus not real, human versus you know computer generated. 02:27:49.82 Hank Mm-hmm. 02:27:51.14 Katherine That's going to become a skill that i don't know they're goingnna teach it in schools, but learning how to figure this out. And yeah, as parents, it's like, I'm both worried and hopeful that you know, I hope that we will be able to, now that we're aware of it, this is important to us, granted we're creative. So it affects our lives directly affects a lot of our friends. 02:28:16.17 Katherine Yeah. It's a challenge be like, how can we instill wonder and magic and just and all the beautiful things that things like art and 02:28:22.25 Kurt Crenwelge you 02:28:27.84 Katherine games and so collaborative storytelling have brought to our lives. How can we instill that in the next generation who are going to, from the moment they were born, this has been the reality that AI is here. 02:28:38.46 LaurenWalshArt Hmm. 02:28:39.87 Katherine i think it's probably here to stay in some capacity. um 02:28:43.61 Hank Yeah. 02:28:44.25 Katherine So yeah. And I hope trying to wrap this around in a more hopeful way. I hope that introducing something like D&D, collaborative storytelling, whatever your RPG game, you know, hobby of choice is that involves, you know, connection with our human beings, empathy, you know, broadening your mind, learning from other sources, learning from other people, like the emotional intelligence it takes to have a really wonderful experience at a table understanding 02:29:20.92 Katherine online if you have, you know, long distance friends. Like that, I hope introducing that early like will help. I don't There's certainly I can't really define it yet because, i you know, 02:29:34.56 Katherine in my kid's life, he's he's still growing, developing, but I hope introducing that sort of thing, the element of like, what does it mean to be human? 02:29:41.43 Kurt Crenwelge you 02:29:41.92 Katherine And how do we put that out back into the world? How do we react to the world? And how do we keep that going? um I do think things like games and art and narrative art is frankly the antidote 02:29:49.47 LaurenWalshArt Mm-hmm. 02:29:59.53 Katherine shield, whatever you want to you know call it, to things like AI and the attitude that people, some people, take you know take with it. um Yeah, I think in in many generations throughout all of history, things like art and storytelling are universal and they've somehow managed to last until now. And i hope and pray that it will continue to outlast any technology, and whether it was handprints on ah cave walls to, you know, printing press and the internet and and beyond. I hope and pray that, you know, that, that will far outlast any technology that threatens, threatens us just, it it remains to be seen. 02:30:44.57 LaurenWalshArt ah 02:30:44.70 Hank I'd sure like to think so. 02:30:46.08 Katherine Yeah. 02:30:46.51 LaurenWalshArt and may our children live in precedent times 02:30:49.61 Mandi Q. must 02:30:49.63 Katherine Oh my goodness. 02:30:49.76 Britt Anderson Yes, please. Yeah. 02:30:51.18 Katherine Please. I want, yes. 02:30:51.93 Britt Anderson yes please 02:30:53.98 Katherine I've, I'm so tired of unprecedented. I want precedent. 02:30:56.29 LaurenWalshArt yeah it's getting to a point that the unprecedented precedent at this point so like yeah every 02:30:57.18 Mandi Q. so 02:30:57.51 Katherine Yeah, 02:30:59.60 Mandi Q. yeah 02:31:00.71 Katherine yeah it's exhausting. 02:31:02.45 Mandi Q. I would love to not live through a historical event, please. Thank you. 02:31:05.31 Katherine but On a daily basis. 02:31:05.49 Hank Right? 02:31:05.96 Britt Anderson yeah 02:31:06.81 Hank At least, like, give me a week. Give me a week off. 02:31:08.25 Mandi Q. ah 02:31:08.59 Katherine Yeah, yeah. 02:31:10.56 Mandi Q. ah 02:31:11.18 Katherine There's one funny quote, it's it's made the rounds over. 02:31:12.20 Hank Jesus Christ. 02:31:15.11 Katherine It's like, yeah, I don't i want AI and computers to, ah can they do my laundry and wash my dishes and change my my tires? 02:31:21.78 Mandi Q. Right. 02:31:25.05 Katherine Instead of making like I want to make art. 02:31:25.18 Kurt Crenwelge Well, 02:31:27.41 Katherine So can those things take care of the things like it's all backwards now. 02:31:29.25 Hank Yeah, yeah. 02:31:31.49 Katherine And it's oh, gosh, yeah. and Between that and it's interesting times, guys. 02:31:33.96 LaurenWalshArt yeah 02:31:37.55 Katherine Interesting times we live in. 02:31:37.93 Mandi Q. Yeah. 02:31:40.76 Mandi Q. Well. 02:31:41.19 Kurt Crenwelge but ah 02:31:41.33 Hank Good luck, everybody. 02:31:42.71 Katherine yes 02:31:44.67 Kurt Crenwelge I think this has been a ah very fruitful conversation, and I feel like this could go longer, but I know our panelists, believe it or not, through the power of the internet, they span both coasts, not just one, but both coasts of are are our country. 02:31:49.80 Mandi Q. yeah 02:31:55.66 Britt Anderson Okay. 02:31:57.01 Mandi Q. Oh, man. 02:32:01.46 Kurt Crenwelge and And in fairness to those ah that are on the east, ah you know, the west, you know, the 02:32:07.56 Hank We'll saw East Coast represent... 02:32:08.76 Mandi Q. East side represent. Yeah. 02:32:10.19 Katherine East Coast. 02:32:10.55 Mandi Q. Mm-hmm. 02:32:10.87 LaurenWalshArt Yeah, yeah, yeah. 02:32:11.95 Hank We'll saw... 02:32:12.26 LaurenWalshArt Go birds. Go birds. 02:32:13.59 Kurt Crenwelge and Some of us are just here in the middle in the South, you know, I just, I think, you know, i think that may be a good hopeful note, uh, know, to, to end it on. 02:32:14.82 Katherine Go Bills. 02:32:16.38 Mandi Q. yeah 02:32:22.54 Britt Anderson Yeah. Yeah. 02:32:23.70 Kurt Crenwelge So I certainly want to thank everyone for taking time, out of their days, their evenings, their, you know, their themselves and their schedules to, uh, to come to the panel and have this cool time together. 02:32:36.71 Kurt Crenwelge And, hopefully we can keep these conversations going between all of us offline and on, on our social media spaces, which I think is a perfect segue, ah you know, in thanking everyone to have everyone go down the line, you know, ah tell us where we can find your amazing, amazing, a hundred percent organic human made arts we and patronage you and find you and commission you and support you and just give you all the love that you deserve for this world. 02:32:47.02 Britt Anderson yeah 02:32:58.53 Hank you 02:32:58.75 LaurenWalshArt yeah 02:32:58.91 Mandi Q. Mm-hmm. 02:33:01.09 Hank neville 02:33:13.11 LaurenWalshArt I don't know who wants to go first. 02:33:13.12 Katherine I guess I'll start since I was the last one to kind of chat. 02:33:14.98 Britt Anderson yeah this We love you. 02:33:15.51 Mandi Q. yeah 02:33:16.88 Katherine I'm kind of the newest to the scene. um So yeah, you can find me. I have a ah growing presence. So please don't judge the the lack of number of things right now. 02:33:28.01 Katherine It will grow. Encourage me. ah Keep me accountable. 02:33:31.09 Mandi Q. You got this. 02:33:31.53 Katherine um 02:33:32.07 Kurt Crenwelge I do. I tell her every day, I'm like, art, art. 02:33:33.50 Katherine You do. You do. Thank you. I need i need it. i need the reminder because... goodness. um Yeah, so you can find, um i recently kind of separated my personal, you know, life stuff to trying to make a more dedicated art presence, um especially for a lot of like the fantasy nerdy, like just just all the things I love that don't necessarily fit into some the other work that I do. 02:33:40.82 Hank Thank you. 02:33:44.56 LaurenWalshArt Thank you. 02:33:59.67 Katherine But want to see D&D stuff, fantasy stuff, cool characters and creatures, um you can find me on Instagram, see, bluesky, Kara, and threads. I'm working on a website, working out the kinks of that. 02:34:16.21 Katherine um But Sombriza Art, that's S-O-M-B-R-I-S-A-A-R-T. ah Yeah, come check me out. Come say hi and keep making art. 02:34:29.89 LaurenWalshArt Hell yeah. 02:34:31.35 Britt Anderson Yeah. For me, for Brit, you can find me on pretty much every social media under the handle BritaJJ26. So B-R-I-T-T-A-J-J-2-6. 02:34:43.91 Britt Anderson That's also my website is just BritaJJ26.com. That's my portfolio. um And across all of those social medias, I also have a link tree that's always linked on them. So in case you forget where you can find me, it's all there. I also just in the past two months opened an Etsy store. So I'm looking to sell some prints there. 02:35:07.86 Britt Anderson And I do take, I do, as of recording this in late ah September, I do have commissions open. 02:35:07.88 Kurt Crenwelge you 02:35:16.63 Britt Anderson It's a relatively new thing for me, but I've been enjoying it for the past couple months and I want to keep doing it. So there is a ah page that I have with information about commissions and yeah, that's where you can find me. 02:35:33.11 Hank Hell yeah. I guess I'll go. um You can find my full portfolio website at mccartoons.com. 02:35:43.95 Hank MC Cartoons. But I have been on Instagram and TikTok and YouTube. posting every single day under dndoodles. 02:35:55.45 Hank So dnd.oodles. I've been doing a series I'm calling Roll for Dude, where I have all these different lists of different races, classes, armor, weapon. 02:36:02.59 Britt Anderson Thank you. 02:36:06.33 Hank And I just make a random character every single day. uh, it's kept me busy and, uh, with, gives me a sense of regularity and professionalism while being self-employed and horribly disorganized. 02:36:21.59 Mandi Q. Thank you. 02:36:22.78 Hank Um, I, commissions are also open as of time of recording and will probably, hopefully still be open, uh, 02:36:22.94 LaurenWalshArt Oh, man. 02:36:31.85 Hank By time of release, I'm working on prints and other merch and stuff. But for now, I'm just doing the ah daily drawings and character commissions. 02:36:46.28 LaurenWalshArt Uh, you can, uh, for, for, for myself, um, you can pretty much find me anywhere, um and socials, um, at Lauren Walsh art. Um, I also have, uh, all of my socials, including like links to like a discord channel that I have, um, on my website at Lauren Walsh art.com slash links. 02:37:06.91 LaurenWalshArt Um, and, uh, as of the launch of this, I probably will have some new merch coming out. 02:37:14.27 Mandi Q. Ooh. 02:37:14.32 LaurenWalshArt So there might be some stuff there and, um, a, I will also be at mag fest in January. So if you're going to mag fest, come on over and say hi. 02:37:23.31 Katherine Mm-hmm. 02:37:24.10 Britt Anderson Ooh. 02:37:24.83 Hank Nice. 02:37:26.65 LaurenWalshArt Um, and I'll be tabling there. 02:37:27.75 Hank Hell yeah. Alexandria? 02:37:29.55 LaurenWalshArt So yeah. 02:37:32.72 Hank I haven't been since like maybe 2013 2014. It's been while. Good time. nice. Okay. 02:37:36.43 LaurenWalshArt Oh, ah isn't, yeah, I think it's not, well, this is my first time. 02:37:37.50 Hank and a while 02:37:41.31 Hank time 02:37:41.38 LaurenWalshArt I'm i'm kind of excited. 02:37:42.20 Hank oh nice 02:37:42.30 LaurenWalshArt i i'm I'm scared about it being a 24-hour show. um 02:37:46.52 Mandi Q. but 02:37:47.52 LaurenWalshArt Like, we'll see how it goes. I'll need to hire some help to help me out, I think. 02:37:54.28 Mandi Q. ah 02:37:54.41 Hank Oh, hell yeah. 02:37:55.45 Mandi Q. ah for me ah you can find me as malldummy on most things m-a-l-l-d-u-m-m-y ah or mandyquin mallmannequin I stream on twitch multiple times a week most of which is art um it's very silly but So if you if you like my chat making fart sound effects, ah much to my chagrin, ah and you're interested in hearing me talk about my process while I draw, almost everything I do in my personal life, I do it online with you guys. 02:38:15.98 Kurt Crenwelge you 02:38:22.84 LaurenWalshArt you 02:38:29.86 Mandi Q. um I have a blue sky. I have Kofi or a coffee with full gallery. And I also offer commissions sporadically on a website called VGen.com. um And, ah yeah, I like to um to to use art in a very highly art-relied space, such as VTubing. 02:38:52.86 Mandi Q. um And I like to educate people on on how... they can make their own human made art. um So, so yeah, it's a good time. And I have been so incredibly enriched by getting to to talk to you all today. So I really appreciate you all having me. 02:39:13.44 Hank Hell yeah. 02:39:14.09 LaurenWalshArt Yeah. 02:39:14.12 Katherine same fulfilling validating well yeah yeah yeah 02:39:15.39 LaurenWalshArt It's been very, uh, been very, um, uh, not stimulating. Um, yeah, yeah, yeah. 02:39:21.68 Hank I feel very 02:39:22.20 Kurt Crenwelge Hello. Hello. 02:39:22.94 Mandi Q. oh but 02:39:24.45 LaurenWalshArt Fulfilling. 02:39:24.74 Mandi Q. and 02:39:24.77 LaurenWalshArt It's been fulfilling. 02:39:24.80 Britt Anderson Oh, come on now. 02:39:25.76 LaurenWalshArt i don't know. Yeah. Validating. Yeah. Yeah. 02:39:28.58 Kurt Crenwelge i hit 02:39:28.78 Britt Anderson Yeah, validating. 02:39:29.45 Kurt Crenwelge so 02:39:30.02 Britt Anderson There we go. 02:39:30.62 Mandi Q. Titillating. 02:39:31.55 Hank yeah I was going to say, which which is worse, titillating or stimulating? 02:39:32.95 Katherine ah 02:39:35.24 Hank ah let's I'll let you be the judge. 02:39:35.64 LaurenWalshArt Well, I, uh, it's, 02:39:38.98 Britt Anderson they're both equally perfect. 02:39:43.45 Kurt Crenwelge all right everyone well again thank you so much for participating in the fourth uh parlays at the platter and we talked art and creativity in dnd and uh yeah i can't wait to see what sort of uh discussions uh are had now in the community from this And again, thank you so much. 02:40:03.93 Kurt Crenwelge Have a great one. And if you're listening to this on the regular RSS feed, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year. Hope is built on rebellions and we're going to carry forward with the holiday cheer and good tidings to all men of goodwill and all that jazz. 02:40:15.05 Katherine Bye. 02:40:18.45 Britt Anderson yeah that's yeah bye 02:40:18.88 Kurt Crenwelge So positivity, ah not toxically, but just genuine positivity because we believe in humans. 02:40:23.76 Katherine Go home. 02:40:26.35 LaurenWalshArt but but 02:40:26.38 Kurt Crenwelge So take care and see everyone later. Bye bye. 02:40:30.55 LaurenWalshArt Bye. 02:40:34.12 Mandi Q. Bye-bye. 02:40:36.26 Hank Bye-bye. 02:40:37.00 LaurenWalshArt Yeah, everyone get your bias. 02:40:38.27 Hank Goodbye. Have a beautiful time. 02:40:39.61 Mandi Q. It works too late. 02:40:41.11 Britt Anderson goodbye 02:40:41.23 Kurt Crenwelge What are you doing here? The movie's over. get out of here. 02:40:43.87 Katherine go so 02:40:44.66 LaurenWalshArt Bye. 02:40:44.70 Kurt Crenwelge Come on. 02:40:46.88 Britt Anderson the 02:40:47.83 Hank I'm here for the Spider-Man post-credit scene. 02:40:50.41 Mandi Q. Yeah. 02:40:51.09 Kurt Crenwelge Sorry. Sorry, don't have that one.