Interview No. 98

Interview By: The-Great-One

[ PART 1 | PART 2 ]

Q: We now come to what I believe is your best work and that is The Ballad of CrippleKane. This truly is a beautiful movie from beginning to end, with amazing animation and a very fun western story to tie it altogether. What was the inspiration for this and the process you took in creating it? Also how did it feel to be nominated for the Newgrounds Tank Award?

A: Man, this project for me was a pillar in my life. I started it in... 2008. I had been going to an animation school in Emeryville near Pixar. I had left everything in Spain to move to California and pursue my dream of making movies. I signed up to this school that had a social program, for the first year you do all Liberal Arts classes to get them over with and for the rest of the years, its all just core animation classes. I was about to finish my first year of Bullshit classes when I was kicked out of the school out of no where (it's a long story). Basically I didn't sign one measly paper. So, while I went to animation school, I never studied animation. Maybe in the end that's good, because I never would see my self animating professionally.

Regardless, I was in a really low point in my life. I stopped making Kane I was mentally and emotionally lost. I also couldn't bring myself to animating Kane cause I had gotten to the part right before they board their horses. And I had no clue how to animate those fucking things. After about a year of not touching that animation. I finally got myself on my feet and decided to face this thing. Every friend who had seen what I had so far told me I needed to get it done. And they were right. With the help of ZekeySpaceyLizard in one shot. The one that reveals the cliff up ahead before Kane bravely jumps over it. I literally sat down. and said to myself "Hans, you're not getting up for anything out of this chair until this movie is finished." And for about 14-15 hours straight I was stuck in a trans. I literally didn't care about anything. I literally didn't even get up to shit or piss. NOTHING. I was animating shots left and right in no order on top of my animatic.

Until I got to a point where I was scrolling through the timeline looking for another shot to animate. And I kept going and going... and going until I reached the end... And I realized in disbelief "I'm done". I'm going to go ahead and admit this, but I cried. This was big for me. This brought back so much energy in me. I had been in an all time low in my life. I clicked submit on Newgrounds and walked out of the door. I was living in Berkeley at the the time. And I walked all the way to San Francisco. and then I walked some more into the night. I didn't sleep. I walked until it was morning, and I didn't sleep I kept walking and walking into the next night, and didn't sleep. Until the next morning I walked all the way back home read some reviews and crashed on my bed. I think I slept through the whole day and into the next morning.

Newgrounds has always meant so much to me. It was where I've met the best people in the world. The kind that restores your faith in humanity. The kind that settles the wonder of how or why we've survived so long as a species. And to be nominated by the site was a very big deal for me.

Q: Not Of This World! is a student film made by you. You stated that it was hard to execute, what gave you troubles when it came to making film? Could you tell us about its story? Also did you gather any inspiration from The Twilight Zone?

A: After Kane, I decided to go back to school and joined the Academy of Art University in San Francisco to study Film. There is where I shot "Not of This World". We were shooting on black and white super 8 film. And in that class every time we did the test shots that followed our final project I had done something different wrong every time. We'd sit there shoot our test footage for practice. Wait one week to get the results and everything came black for me. We;d do it again I'd learn my mistake it'd come back after a week AND AGAIN my footage was black! So the final project day came. And I was so nervous. But I really wanted to shoot a Sci Fi style thing.

I'd always loved the 'Twilight Zone' and this was my chance (maybe only chance) to genuinely make it look and feel like the show. My brother and I made a crazy costume. Mainly spraying a bunch of stuff silver. We had gone location scouting a week before we shot. When i'd flown in from San Francisco, I'd seen through the window of the airplane these GIANT marshes below. They looked pale white and full of squiggly rivers. We drove there to check out this place. There was a park right next to it, you weren't allowed to walk on that place cause it was a salt marsh. But we could trek along the edge. It was perfect.

We went to shoot the project there, I was already nervous that what we were going to shoot wasn't going to come out because of the test footage in class. I didn't tell my brother I needed him to be up for this, he was already wearing this dumb clunky costume and had to run around a lot and shit. But we get there and it is SUPER foggy. There was this absolute absence of light. And for these film cameras you need a LOT of light to get a picture AT ALL. We were literally waiting some times for the sun to peek out of the sky in occasional cloud holes and then immediately "GO GO GO SHOOT!" Another thing was, we had a 2 minute film, and only 2 minutes of film to shoot with. Every shot absolutely counted.

Sadly the twist wasn't captured well. Inside the mask is supposedly an Aliens face. I'd bought this super detailed rubber mask. The idea was the astronaut was an alien inspecting our planet. But whatever I guess it at least looked cool. Right?

I was just happy we got an IMAGE out of it. I'd apparently done everything wrong possible during the test footage moments, but learned from all those mistakes. I was so nervous that whole week after we shot the film. Cause with this old stuff, you don't know if what you're getting is good or not. You have to work with you gut.

Q: One collab I am quite interested in is entitled 'Contact'. It started out small at the Newgrounds Office, but how did it end up growing more and more from there? Also were you there for Pico Day this year and if so then will we be expecting another piece of work?

A: This is a very reoccurring thing at meet ups. So much talent there and somebody always wants to make something together. In this case I wanted to make something at tank awards. Me and Oney were dong a drawing battle on a note book. We came up with a theme both drew something then looked at each other's pictures. The theme I think was something like Perverted Alien Probe. He drew this alien with dicks for arms and vaginas and stuff and I drew two red necks but raping an alien while one filmed it. And I thought wouldn't it be funny, this epic sic fi thing where on a news real someone reveals human's first contact with aliens but unfortunately the aliens landed at some bumb-fuck backwards ass state and got raped? That'd leave a bad impress of us on the aliens.

This whole thing started to grow when some of the many talent at the Tank awards heard and wanted in. We eventually came up with the idea that the aliens are invited to a talk show to be interviewed, but they just went to warn humans of their plans to get revenge on them. meanwhile humanity is just preoccupied with asking them their stupid questions ignoring the aliens emotional state. We mainly came up with this so different people could have a role in this project. It was fun. But I never would have finished animating this thing without the help of PsychicPebbles and Oney.

Q: I'm gonna be blunt with this one. What is Africa Dudes?

A: Africa Dudes I think started off with Egoraptor and Stamper exchanging these dumb short of african style dudes talking. They eventually made a collar and asked to join in. Which was a mistake cause I couldn't think of anything really funny. And I feel like I just added a lot of dumb fluff to it's painfully long run time. But then again, a lot of people involved in africa dudes might feel the same way about their parts. My personal favorite was El Cid's part.

Q: The T 'Intro' certainly does get me excited to see this crime film/noire animation. Will we ever be seeing this as a series on Newgrounds?

A: The T was a project I was working on for a long time with my brother. We were writing a Detective series basically. With a twist to the idea. It originally came about when MTV was interested in animated stuff and asked me to come up with some ideas. That fell apart and I was left with this cool Intro. I love making intro's and credits and stuff. You can notice even my shortest shit has credits mainly cause I like making title sequences.

I had considered making the series on my own with shorter episodes. I even wrote the first episode, got the voices from Egoraptor Tomamoto and Stamper and made an animatic of the bigger part of the episode. But I was starting to put a pacing and visual flow of everything I realized a mystery works best with a longer run time. Cause you need to hang on certain bits long enough for the audience to sink their teeth into. Or at least torture them with the lack of information in the story that ends up building up to a satisfying conclusion. It almost felt like the first episode was just going through the motions of a mystery rather than providing a good mystery.

I still really like the idea for The T and am keeping it in the back of my mind for the opportune moment to develop it.

Q: You have one game with a history behind it's creation and progression and that is Ace Pilot. What all can you tell us about this game?

A: Man, Ace was going to be something completely different from the get go. My friend Justin Pruitt approached me about 5 years ago after I made "It's a Halo Thing" we started off geeing out about Halo 1 and how much we didn't like the direction Halo took in the future of it's sic fi. We'd have long Skype sessions talking about what we like/ dislike about games and movies.

One day he showed me this game he build on game maker. And told me of this idea called Ace Pilot. He and his friends wanted to make this game in flash, and put a little story to it. That where they asked me to come in. The credits in Ace story go to Me, Justin and a guy named Stephen Rouse. Stephen had written the first outline of Ace. Which involved an arrogant space hero out to stop Kim Jon Ill and his galactic conquest. The story and jokes had a lot of reference jokes. Some that even I didn't get. So I suggested what if we make it 100% original space adventure story.

After bouncing back ideas, talking about the characters, world and story. We narrowed it down pretty well and I saw an opportunity to suggest something I'd always wanted to see. James Bond in space, but funny. I always loved james bond movies. Especially the old ones. I liked that as smooth and slick as bond could be the movies were still pretty campy. people argue that that's just how the times were, but I disagree. The writers just had a sense of humor. And the wit in the dialog although smart, was also with a bit of a humorous nudge. I wanted to give it a go to bring some of that life in our own way.

Ace Pilot was the first character I had to redraw over 500 times before I got him how I wanted him to look. And all that came completely from me and Justin nailing who he was. We wanted him to be unique but familiar we needed to balance how gruff and how elegant he looks. And to be 100% honest, I am so happy with how he looks. I almost feel like I didn't design him. Like He's existed in the cartoon world for a while and I just sort of stumbled into him. All that thought and design work paid off.

As clunky and rough of a start it was for the game series with the first game. (Reasonably so) It was Josh Sole's first game he ever coded. We learned a lot with that first game.

Our idea is to have a game series where the gameplay from episode to episode will be context sensitive to the story. For instance. Episode one is more getting to know ace. More sketch comedy mission based space battle fun. Episode two, without giving spoilers, will be a point in the story where ace is super rage driven and pissed. So the gameplay will be more combo based, linear shooter. So Episode 1 is like a 'Asteroids' on crack. and episode 2 will be a 'Galaga' on crack. We're very excited about Episode 2. In one end, every game is a fresh start game design wise. But also, episode 2 is really the first turning point in the story from the over arching story standpoint. SHIT GETS REAL!

I'm excited to see how people react to that.

Q: When it comes to a good few pieces of your work, one person you tend to work with a lot is Chris O'Neill, better known on Newgrounds as Oney. What can you tell me about your history with him, how did you meet and what is your connection?

A: I met Chris when he made Disturbed Johnny. He had considered making a sequel and asked me about doing his voice. We kept in touch and so about that, until he dropped that project. Eventually he asked me to do the voice for his Grand Theft Awesome Egoraptor parody. I was totally up for doing a zany Russian voice. What was funny about that is, since I didn't own an Xbox 360 until 2009 he had to explain to me why all these jokes were made.

But really, after that we sorta drifted apart. No spite no nothing. I guess we've sorta followed our own paths. More passively helping each other out and such. he's just there for me when I ask him to be I guess... That's all about to change though. Hahaha! Chris is gonna be stuck with me basically. (inside joke)

Q: If there is one thing about your movies that I like is that despite the style being similar in some cases, the overall quality of each movie you bring out is different each time. Your article Audience Dominance is about the directors being not creators, but brands, and the audience not viewers, but followers. In this article you state...

"All in all, the minute an audience's opinion dominates the creative process. It's no longer a show, it's a church lecture. People just hearing what they want to hear and can almost word for word predict what that artist is going to present. Creative people then have to resort to cheap shock value or cheap tricks to create any sort of surprise or wonder in their work when this happens. Which has less value in its experience."

Upon reading it the question is then, where is the line that separates the viewer and the creator. If the viewer asks for something, then how should the creator respond?

A: The line that separates it is this. The creator always has to ask themselves "Is this what this story needs?". Whether it be Tim Burton adding curly trees. Whether it be Quentin Tarantino having every one of his characters talk so much. While these things are part of the charm and style to each creator, those things could be out of place sometimes. And if they are just forcefully applied, a movie quickly turns into the creator's jerk off material.

I'm never going to be the person who is exclusive enough to say "curly trees are bad" or "a lot of talking" is bad. But everything has it's place and time. What place and what time that is is too big of a question to get into. That's just contextually sensitive to the piece and it's up for the smart decisions of the creative person in charge to feel that out.

But they have to see themselves outside of their own project. See themselves as serving the story. giving it what it needs. when they start only give what they want, it spoils the piece to me. or at least that moment in the piece. It basically doesn't feel natural and takes you out of the movie.

The new strategy now is, get people to religiously follow you as a creator that way any time the story breaks like that and makes you think of it's creator they won't see it as a bad thing, they'll just be reminded of what they love to follow. But the truth is, the piece is the audience IS getting taken out of the story. thats the most fundamental law of narrative entertainment. To not be taken out of it. That's why they dim the lights. That's why they ask you to be loud in the theatre.

Q: As I read more articles from your blog, it shows that you have studied animation and film. Have you ever thought about making tutorials to teach others here on Newgrounds?

A: As mentioned before, I was kicked out of animation school before I could even start learning animation. If there's anything I know I have an eye for that I could teach in tutorial form it's not in animation. I'm not good at all. I think I'm okay at pre production stuff. Either writing, composing shots, pacing, basic design. I am doing that through my blogs. But I hope to start some video blogs soon. I think audiences today would rather hear me in the background as they are doing something else then sit down and read through my long ass borderline rants.

As proven in this interview, I take a long time to explain things some times. Hahaha! Hopefully, it's to fully inform people, but it could very easily just be exhausting.

Q: What can we expect from AlmightyHans in the future?

A: I am in the middle of moving to Philadelphia at the moment. I'm planning on creating lots of shorts with Stamper and Oney. I'm really excited to work with live action stuff, as well as animated shorts. Ace 2 is going in production in July. But what I'm most excited about, which I'm developing as we speak, is a full season of an animated Ace Pilot Series. 20 min episodes and an estimated 14 episodes. I'm not worrying so much on how I will go about getting this thing made. But I at least want to write the fully developed scripts for the first season.

AlmightyHans story is one I have not heard before. I have many stories since doing The Interviewer, but this is one that intrigued me a lot. I don't mean that to be an insult or to sully other interviews in the past, but the emotion that Hans has connected with Newgrounds and his works, while still being very humble. It truly does amaze me to see an animator of his stature respond in a calm collected manner as if his works are not on such a high par as others are. All I can really say is that I want to see more from AlmightyHans. To see where his steps in life will take him next and to support him on his path would truly be an honor for this interviewer.

[ PART 1 | PART 2 ]