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Episode 17: Drawing Nic Giacondino
92 Plays1 year ago
Host Alan Bahr is joined by rpg and comic-book artist Nicolas Giacondino to discuss the creative process, the ups and downs, what making art is like, and more!
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Transcript
Introduction to Radio Free RPG
00:00:10
Speaker
I'm Alan Barr and this is Radio Free RPG. Hello, I'm Alan Barr and welcome to Radio Free RPG.
00:00:32
Speaker
Today I'm joined by a guest I am very excited about, one of my most frequent collaborators, Nicholas Giacondino. Nick, how are you? Right. Great. Now that you put on your sexy voice, I can, you know, you can ask me anything. I prefer to think of it as my NPR voice. Oh yeah. I love it. It's great. It gets, you know, it gets you right in the mood for some questions. Well, good. Maybe I'll go into some audio books.
00:01:03
Speaker
Oh, that would be amazing. That'll be the next thing I do. Yeah. Amongst others.
Nicholas Giacondino's Experience and Influences
00:01:12
Speaker
So Nick, you are an artist by trade and notably you and I have collaborated on must be dozens of projects at this point. Yeah. And you know what? I didn't realize that or maybe
00:01:27
Speaker
You know, I realize we've worked a lot together, but it's when you are at a con and you take some pictures of the booth, of the Galen Night Games booth, then I see all of those illustrations, all of those covers, and I'm like, oh, yeah, right. I did a lot of stuff. You have done dozens of books. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a lot. It's a lot. And sometimes in the
00:01:55
Speaker
the rush of deadlines and trying to get to everything, you kind of miss the quantity of the work you've been doing or we've been doing because... Well, and not just me, you've been work for other RPGs as well, so you are... Yes.
00:02:14
Speaker
Prolific as an artist maybe is the word we'd use here Yeah, yeah, I'm very prolific as an artist although I usually get the the the complaint because you can't escape certain Right things in the business. I was I was watching a documentary about Osamu Tezuka the the Japanese god of manga and I was relieved
00:02:42
Speaker
that he was also hounded by his editors, telling him that he was late and that
00:02:49
Speaker
you know, they were not going to be able to publish some story. And the guy did like, you know, 30 pages in a day. So yeah, if some of the Suka got in trouble with his editors, I can cut some slack to
Impact of Deadlines on Creativity
00:03:05
Speaker
myself. But yeah, absolutely. Yeah. The ever present deadline is a creative issue, I think for all of us. Yeah. Yeah. Because
00:03:15
Speaker
Yeah, it's more of a publishing thing. But if you give an artist a lot of time, they'll take a lot of time, too. So it's a balance that you have to strike because I suffer it myself. Sometimes I want to do something. And if I have no deadline, if I don't set myself any boundaries, I just can go on forever. And then at some point, I'm going to go like, oh, I had to do that really cool project that
00:03:46
Speaker
I never did. I'll do it tomorrow and tomorrow never runs. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, totally. Yeah. And so there's always a lot of ideas flowing. So there's always another idea that's, you know, coming in and another thing and you saw a movie and you read a book and it's like, yeah, you have to be pretty strict.
Attraction to RPG Illustration vs. Comics
00:04:10
Speaker
Absolutely. So you were about to say,
00:04:13
Speaker
In it, you were about to say a moment ago before we continued on with deadlines being the bane of our lives. You've done a bunch of work for Galatine Games, but you've done a bunch of work for other games as well and other mediums. What have you done that people might know?
00:04:27
Speaker
Well, one of the first things that I think I did professionally that people recognized, and it was one of the most known published books I put out, was Free Mars, which was a webcomic at first, and then we collected it into a couple of tomes. The first one was self-published,
00:04:54
Speaker
And then we got picked up by a publishing company there in the States and they put out another
00:05:03
Speaker
you know, collected edition with some additional materials and so forth. I had done a previous published work, which was called Utopia. That one came first, but you know, it was a really independent effort, so didn't get much traction. Then I started working with Outland Entertainment over there in the States more often. And through them, I got to
00:05:33
Speaker
Galang 9 games and Alhambar, specifically. And he was the one that opened... I mean, I'm making you personally responsible for this. You opened the floodgates for the whole RPG...
00:05:50
Speaker
madness of work i mean to right now but i gotta say i love it i mean i grew up i grew up with with comics and and my my dream was to be a comic book artist but then it was like yeah it's a lot of work and you know the the comic book business is pretty punishing i mean this there's a famous kirby phrase that uh comics will break your heart and they do
00:06:21
Speaker
But we do them because we love them. But like I said, I attended an art school here for a year to sort of get the basics and so forth. And I was going to study illustration specifically.
00:06:43
Speaker
What attracted me from RPG illustrating was that I was going to be able to just, you know, tell a story with a single image, which is, it can be a lot of work, but for me, it's a really, I don't want to say it's easy for me, but it's comfortable for me. I really like to use, I'm very detail oriented.
00:07:12
Speaker
I always used to add a lot of detail to my images, which in comics can become a problem really fast, because a comic page has to come and go fast. It's going to be read fast, so you gotta get the key points across the page of what's going on.
00:07:32
Speaker
You can't delay yourself illustrating this beautiful forests and city landscapes and whatnot. You have to be concise and precise. In illustration, on the other hand, you can go a little crazy in details and maybe those details
Avoiding Artistic Pigeonholing
00:07:52
Speaker
add to the story that you're telling with one image. So I was really sort of leaning into the illustration field
00:08:01
Speaker
a little more and you came along and that sort of, you know, clicked together perfectly because I get to do, like it's, it's also sort of faster for me because I have a lot of ideas and I have a lot of genres and, and, um, characters that I want to tackle. And so RPGs provide that sort of fast paced, uh, jumping from one title to another.
00:08:30
Speaker
which you don't get with comics because, well, nowadays you do because you rarely last more than two or three issues in a comic book. In the olden days. You get locked into a particular character or series and you would do the same thing for a while. Yeah. I mean, the dream of a comic book artist for working for a big two would be, you know, a 12 issue run. And 12 issues is like a year of your life easily or maybe a little more.
00:08:59
Speaker
So, yeah, I mean, it's great. You can develop the character, you can, you know, get across a lot of cool ideas with a character. I don't know, Batman. But if halfway through you get, yeah, if halfway through, you guys can see the face that Alan did. Yeah, Batman. We all know Batman. We don't need to know more about Batman. He needs to go to therapy, really.
00:09:29
Speaker
But yeah, six months into a run, maybe you want to do something else and you're not there, right? You cannot leave. You cannot. I mean, you can't leave, but it's a dubious career option if you just up and leave a successful comic.
00:09:51
Speaker
Yeah, that's I mean, that's certainly true. And that to a lesser extent is a trap in RPGs.
Fantasy's Dominance in RPGs
00:09:59
Speaker
You can end up doing one genre like fantasy repeatedly. Yeah. So especially if you have a very particular style or a strong style for something.
00:10:10
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, totally. I agree that it's more of a there we go again with the balance with balance thing, right? Because it's, it's strange, I noticed it in my in my social media, right? I mean, people first identified me with strongly with science fiction, right? Because a lot of my followers,
00:10:37
Speaker
got into my artwork because I did a lot of Warhammer 40,000 fun art and illustrations in the Warhammer universe. So, you know, they were used to watching Space Marines and whatnot. And then I started doing more fantasy stuff when I started working with Galen Night Games. And that was like, oh, wow, this guy can do fantasy great as well.
00:11:05
Speaker
And usually what happens is that the common folk, the one that doesn't know a lot about RPGs maybe or whatnot, it tends to gravitate towards fantasy. It's easier to sell a lot of the rings than a foundation, right? Yeah.
00:11:23
Speaker
Yeah. The RPG space certainly has an orientation towards fantasy RPGs, which is, in my opinion, a little bit odd compared to what you see in the rest of pop culture. You know, Lord of the Rings is popular, but it's certainly not at the level of Marvel or Star Wars, right? Yeah. Wow. Star Wars. Right. Are arguably the largest IPs in the world at the moment. Yeah. And the Star Wars isn't even
00:11:49
Speaker
Yeah, and Star Wars isn't even sci-fi. It's a space opera. So an even smaller genre. You know, if you were to sit people down to watch Flash Garden, they would go crazy, but they can watch Luke Skywalker, you know, jumping around for hours. So yeah, it's a strange and you have to strike balance and you have to try to avoid, you know, getting
00:12:18
Speaker
typecast into a genre or I mean for me particularly I cannot escape my style so that's not something I'm going to be able to I can play with my style I can make it you know
00:12:33
Speaker
I can do those full color super rendered illustrations. I can do the stripped down Mignola black and white stuff. I can gravitate between rendering styles, but my style, yeah, that's a little more difficult to escape. So what I have found is that
00:13:04
Speaker
instead of trying to adapt yourself to a particular genre, sci-fi, fantasy, whatever, I mean, what makes you unique is your take on these different genres or monsters or whatever. So because I see a lot of people sometimes cracking their heads
00:13:30
Speaker
trying to come up with the next original concept and you know this is something that no one's ever seen before and yeah well likely we've seen it before yeah and when you have a lot of experience in a field like you have for example
00:13:46
Speaker
I doubt that there's, you know, a new idea in RPGs that you're going to be like, oh, wow, I never thought of this.
Archetypes in Storytelling
00:13:54
Speaker
You can likely go back and say, yeah, you know, there was there were these guys that did it in 1985. Right. Whatever. But what you can bring to the table is how you
00:14:09
Speaker
portray those archetypes. Anyone can do a zombie book, but only you can do your zombie book. Your zombies are going to be unique.
00:14:26
Speaker
where the key to surviving in this business is all about. There's a common sort of adage among game designers that if you think of a cool idea, Greg Stafford probably did it before. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Because sometimes the foundations are the foundations
00:14:50
Speaker
for a reason, right? So in the field of comics, for example, Jack Kirby said a lot of those foundations and working, I've been working like 15 plus years in this. And maybe, I mean, if we count the amateur years, it's more. And I've found that the, I've experimented a lot. I've tried new things and
00:15:15
Speaker
whatever you want. But you always go back to what he did that worked. And it works for a reason. So yeah, what you can do is bring your own
00:15:31
Speaker
style to it. I don't know if it's saying there in the US, but here we have a saying that says that you can give the same ingredients to 20 cooks and you'll get 20 different cakes, right? That translates well, yeah. I often tell people that if you ask somebody to define an RPG, if you ask five people, you'll get six different answers somehow.
00:15:59
Speaker
Totally. Yeah, exactly. There's one of my favorite books is All the Marvels by Douglas Wolke. You've and I talked about this before. Yes. There's a part when he's talking about Spider-Man and he's talking about how the shadow of Ditko and Kirby across Spider-Man and Fantastic Four in the early days caused people to mostly spend their time reinventing Kirby and Ditko and doing it not as well as they did, right? Yes.
00:16:28
Speaker
You had these arcs that were basically shadows and recreations and just aping the ideas that already existed. Yeah, totally. And it wasn't until folks took the themes and then re-spun them into new content that was different that those stories started to resonate again in a sense. Exactly, which is why I think Romita Sr.
00:16:50
Speaker
got the notoriety he got drawing a spider-man because he didn't want to do a ditko he came in and and you know stan lee was like yeah excelsior you know you're gonna draw this book and he was like i don't want to draw spider-man because he came from another background he was doing something completely different and his style didn't look anything like ditko so he was like i'm going to do something that is not ditko but
00:17:20
Speaker
you know, they gave him the go-ahead.
Interpreting References in Art
00:17:23
Speaker
And he became the artist that probably my generation identifies as Spider-Man with. I mean, I knew Ditko much later than I knew Romita. For me, Spider-Man was Romita. And later I found out about Ditko. So,
00:17:46
Speaker
The fact that Romita was able to make it his own is because he didn't try to emulate anyone else. Not even, you know, Ditko, which was, he was an amazing artist and he gave Spider-Man. But there we go again with the, I'm a very Jungian guy, you know, because of Carl Jung. I love the archetypes, right? And I've been studying them for
00:18:15
Speaker
a long time, which is why I like the tarot as a, you know, symbolic archetypal, you know, you can call it a divination system, I call it sort of, you know, it's a collection of archetypes. And it happens. Yeah, and it happens in the way in what we work, it happens a lot. Because you always have the hero, you always have
00:18:42
Speaker
the villain, you always have the turncoat, you have the comic relief. It's the different masks of the same gods and different cultures from Campbell. Exactly. Every culture has a trickster god, they have a storm god, they have a father god, a mother god. Exactly.
00:19:02
Speaker
what I always try to tell people who come to me and maybe ask me, you know, how can I make this, you know, stand out? Or how can I develop my style? And, you know, the thing you have to learn is that you cannot escape the stories that we have always told ourselves, right? As a species, we
00:19:27
Speaker
like and we and we tell certain stories because they are universal and there's people being born all the time that never heard them and they're going to hear them again and they're going to be as fascinated by them as we were when we were kids because when I was I don't have the time right now but we played a small campaign of Tiny D6 with my kids
00:19:56
Speaker
And they were like, Oh, you know, a dragon appeared and it was like, wow, a dragon. This is crazy. You know, and, and it didn't have to be a dragon. Like, you know, I see it a lot in, in the official D and D materials, for example, that they're trying to make this, you know, a frost giant dragon, Eldritch, leech, whatever the thing, you know, and it's like one
00:20:25
Speaker
thing on top of another. And it's like, you know, a dragon is a pretty fascinating creature in itself. You know, you don't need to add a lot of, you know, gimmicks to make it work. Yeah, the same goes for heroes, for villains, for everything. You can add your touch. But yeah, you have to be careful.
00:20:49
Speaker
So let's talk about that in the realm of illustration. So one of the things you often do when we work together is I will come to you with an idea and I will say, hey, I need you in this case, we'll pick a dragon. I will say, I need you to draw a dragon for this book. Here's the physical dimensions and the details of how the art needs to be made or whatever. Yeah, exactly.
00:21:11
Speaker
I will say the visual style, sometimes I will say it's open to you. Sometimes I will give you specific pointers. Like I don't want it to look like this, but I want it to look more like this. Or I'll give you reference images, et cetera.
00:21:23
Speaker
How, in the terms of communicating this story through a single panel, how important are those references? And is there, is there like a style of reference you prefer? Do you prefer visual references? Do you like text references? Do you like, you know, like somebody to sculpt a 3D model out of clay or draw a stick figure? Like, what kind of, should I compose an interview about how they about it for you as a reference? Like, I'm going to get you sculpting really soon.
00:21:52
Speaker
No, but yeah, I mean, it depends on, you know, the client, if we're talking about you in this instance, but in general, you know, when I get private commissions or even a comic book script, it depends on the client and how
00:22:13
Speaker
in control, they want to be with what they later will see on the page or on the image, right? So if you want to be super specific and give me, you know, visual references are great because you can see what the person is sort of, you know, thinking about when they're sending you that brief.
00:22:37
Speaker
So visual references are great. If you're going to add text to that to sort of break down what makes your interpretation of this dragon, for example, yours, that is also great. And it gives me, contrary to what you always hear artists sort of complain about people, I mean,
00:23:06
Speaker
the publishers or editors being super overbearing and micromanaging your image and
Balancing Deadlines and Artistic Integrity
00:23:15
Speaker
whatnot. And I usually prefer to have more references than not, right? Because that gives me the freedom to draw, which is what I like to do. Maybe I don't want to sit down and have an amazing concept of a dragon. Maybe that's your job. And my job is to
00:23:36
Speaker
bring it to life. And I have a great time with that, which happens. I don't know if you've seen a script by Alan Moore, but I imagine you have. Is this the Twilight of Superheroes one that never came out? Yeah. There's been a lot of
00:23:57
Speaker
published Alan Moore scripts, you know, from that to the killing joke and whatever. Yeah, no, no, no, no. There's been a lot of manuscripts and the guy sort of, you know, writes you a book for a couple of pages, right? And everyone's like, oh, so difficult to work like that. And I'm like, no, it's great because you don't have to think about it at all. You just sit down and you enjoy.
00:24:26
Speaker
which is what I love to do. But if you want to make it more collaborative, like we do, you sort of come to me and say, yeah, I'm thinking about dragons, but, you know, dragons in more of a Viking, you know, Norse mythology vein, right?
00:24:52
Speaker
So you go like, draw me a dragon that's more oriented towards that. And so there I put more of myself. But what I think makes it, I've heard a lot, a lot. I'd say the majority of my clients always say the same thing about my images, which is,
00:25:17
Speaker
Wow, it's like you read my mind, right? So it's interesting because I think the key there is not so much my style or it's that I don't twist the archetype.
00:25:37
Speaker
they want me to draw a dragon. So I'm going to draw a dragon, and I'm going to add certain elements that can come from me or can come from your brief, but it's going to be a dragon. Because in the end, that's what people want to see. If they ask you to draw a dragon, in the end, they want to see a dragon, right? They don't want to see like a serpent with wings. Unless they specifically say, I want like an eight winged, three legged, really weird dragon, right? Exactly. Right. Yeah. Exactly.
00:26:06
Speaker
Which is, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, go ahead. No, no, no. Related to that, because you and I have worked together for almost a decade at this point, oh my God. Yes, yes, Jesus. And we're old and tired. You're getting prior every day. Yes.
00:26:26
Speaker
The we have reached a rapport in our artist writer relationship where I will give you an idea. And if you have feedback, you feel comfortable enough almost always to approach me and say, hey, I know you asked for X.
00:26:41
Speaker
but I had this idea for why, what do you think? And we, and we kind of collaborate back and forth to make sure it works. And sometimes I say, oh, that's great. Yeah. Do your thing. Or I'll say, no, uh, I have a really specific vision. Here's why. And I'll kind of communicate that to you. So you understand the intent now as, and that sort of, you and I, that sprung up just due to working together so much. And you know, we talk almost every day at this point.
00:27:08
Speaker
My wife, I think assumes if I'm talking to somebody online, it's you at this juncture. Yeah. Unfortunately for you, because I'm always asking questions about, you know, Oh, let's do this and let's do that. Well, the benefit is we have a time difference. So, you know, I can, I can be like, Oh, I was asleep. Even if I'm not.
00:27:31
Speaker
Yeah, or I mean, like you said, we've been working so long that you can just say, you know, Nick, draw what I tell you to draw. It's like, we have deadlines, man. Absolutely.
00:27:47
Speaker
I don't care what it looks like. I just need it done so I can rely on the product. Well, but that's a really important thing that I've learned. Thanks to you. So I'm making you responsible again. But I mean, I knew it, but it didn't put in practice. The whole finished not perfect. Right. So I rather have a book out and not have a great idea sitting in a stash of paper in my room.
00:28:17
Speaker
Absolutely. Yeah. And you know, if art is part of that book, that is part of that process, right? Exactly. The text is all done for an RPG and you're, you know, we'll say dilly-dallying over the art because you want it to be perfect. Well, that I'm not making money to pay you for art. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And that's a problem that maybe, you know, it's become so
00:28:41
Speaker
How do you, I don't know how to put it, but it's become so, so every part of the process of the creative process has become so niche. Like writers only write and artists only write. And the editor is there to, you know, push them both for them to make the deadline or follow the line instructions and so forth. And I think that what we have and what I try to have with other
00:29:11
Speaker
writers and other authors is that back and forth where we can all contribute to the product so that we understand what the other person might be feeling or might be I mean, I don't put editors in the you know, the bad guy and
00:29:34
Speaker
category like, Oh, these guys are only there to, you know, hound me about deadlines. And I mean, they're doing their job and their job consists of making a product on time. So if you're not on time, absolutely. The whole line gets, you know, broken up. You, you can't, yes, you can't, you can't rule.
00:29:58
Speaker
Nothing will make a company look profitable than having nothing to release, right? Exactly. You can't pay people. But at the same time, which is something that you do a lot is you have to be able to step into
00:30:14
Speaker
you know an artist or a writer or whatever shoes and understand that as much as we can uh industrialize and and and you know schedule art it's still art right and there's going to be days
00:30:32
Speaker
that you're going to be stuck or that you're not going to be in the mood for.
RPG Industry and Indie Projects
00:30:37
Speaker
I mean, you can write maybe three RPGs in an afternoon if you're feeling like it. And then some of the days you sit down and you're like, what? Why am I doing this? I should have been, you know, I should have been a lawyer like mom wanted. Yeah, yeah, totally. I could be a judge by now. And you're like,
00:31:01
Speaker
Why? Why am I doing me a judge? I would still resolve it with dice. It would be no good for anybody.
00:31:07
Speaker
That would be amazing. I mean, truly objective, because it's like, yeah, well, okay, now it's got to the point. You are sentenced to 36 years in Britain. Exactly. That would be amazing. But yeah, you have to, I don't know, maybe as an industry, because I see the word industry used a lot in the US, right?
00:31:35
Speaker
So everything's an industry for North Americans. It's the fitness industry. It's the RPG industry. And industry, I think, you know, sort of takes you to this place where it's something that's, you know, highly organized and mechanized and, you know, and very sort of flat, right? It's an industry. It's like ABC gives us D and there we go.
00:32:05
Speaker
That is interesting. I had never considered that perspective. I have always referred to as industry just to define the parameters of the conversation. The RPG industry is just people who make RPGs. It doesn't matter where you are in a hierarchy or anything, it's just drawing a dotted line around the conversation.
00:32:26
Speaker
Absolutely. And I get that the term was first put there to define those limits. But sometimes the way we say or the words we choose to describe something actually affect that something that we are describing. So when you say industry, I think of a factory, right? I think of a great building. Interesting.
00:32:53
Speaker
with blocks of cement and a line of people doing their job. And if one stops the line, the whole process gets fumbled and whatnot, which is something that I've recently discovered with manga, because I've been getting more into it after ignoring it for years to my detriment.
00:33:18
Speaker
Usually editors in manga help the authors develop their ideas, develop their stories. They help in the visual process. They go like, yeah, but this panel could be this and you could divide this. I mean, they are creative people as well. And usually when we say industry, it becomes this sort of
00:33:45
Speaker
great process, this sort of really dull process in which I write something, you draw it, I package it, and another person tapes it. And I think art is more organic than that. Sure. In our modern world, where if you want to make a living with art, you do have the tendency to need to commercialize it.
00:34:13
Speaker
Yes, totally. It becomes a friction point between, I think, what you're describing as this organic nature of art and the need, especially at a small scale like you and I operate on, to always be commercializing it so we can afford to keep having the organic moments that make art, right? Yes. But also, I think it's
00:34:33
Speaker
It has to be a conscious decision that you make, which is why I like working with you and with Galanite Games. You never sacrifice the creative part because you have to put a product out. If you are going to spend money on a product,
00:34:52
Speaker
you want that product to be something that you can relate to, that you can cry to, that you can tell your kids about, that you can tell your friends about. It's not just, which is what I see in the RPG industry, you know, the large conglomerates
00:35:12
Speaker
like research of the codes and so forth. They make the cookie cutter product, right? The product that you know will sell that has a lot of
00:35:26
Speaker
marketing behind it and people like dragons, so we're gonna make 15 different dragons with scales and ice and fire. So I like the indie stuff because the indie stuff brings the sort of life that I think this field and this medium
00:35:50
Speaker
needs to thrive. I've seen all the coverage of GenCon, and I see a lot of indie stuff that is great.
00:36:09
Speaker
little scenes, RPG scenes, and I've seen so many amazing styles and stories and whatever.
00:36:21
Speaker
can think of in really small spaces and maybe just a couple of pages, then, you know, makes me have more fun and makes me want to join more than maybe those, you know, thick books that just, you know, I mean, they're great.
Connecting with Audiences
00:36:39
Speaker
professionally, they're great and they have a great standard. But they lose a little bit of that, you know, that spark, that organic thing in the process that I think the Indies are always sort of, you know, keeping alive. And speaking of the words we used to describe certain things then affecting that, there's a discussion in, you know,
00:37:09
Speaker
in social media, especially, about content and art and writing and photography and modeling and everything being content. And, you know, I agree with those that say that content sort of, you know, kind of brings down a bit of, you know, all these different
00:37:36
Speaker
that are great. And I mean, an amazing illustration by I don't know. We were talking about Mobius, you know, before we started recording. But an amazing illustration by Mobius cannot be just content, you know, something that you scroll by. And okay, that's that. And you keep scrolling. And so you want to stop you want to look at it, you want to take it in and have an opinion.
00:38:05
Speaker
exactly and maybe you want to take it home and maybe you want to take it out every few weeks and look at it again and you'll find something else that you didn't see the first time and I think as a whole
00:38:20
Speaker
you know, both the comic book industry and the RPG industry and all the industries could use with a little bit of, you know, winding down this need to, you know, constantly searching for the best product out there that will sell hundreds of millions of dollars, which is what I see, again, with Golan Knight Games.
00:38:50
Speaker
you know, usually puts out a product and maybe it won't be, you know, the greatest product ever made, but it's going to find an audience and that audience is going to love it. I still get messages about beach patrol, for example, which if you think about, yeah, but if you think about it, it's crazy, man. I mean, you did an RPG about, you know, lifeguards.
00:39:20
Speaker
Yeah, and I drew it I had a lot of fun with it people had a lot of fun with it and I still get asked about it, right so yeah that that back that back and forth and that interaction with with people and that you know again with the organic thing that
00:39:40
Speaker
going forward and bad words and telling you, I played this game and I had a lot of fun. I think we don't have the word industry. We don't have to let it eat the concept or the world that it is referring to. I think we have to keep the organic part alive as much as possible. Of course, we have to work.
00:40:10
Speaker
Money, we need, you know, I'm not saying that I'm not going Oscar Wilde, right? And then we have to just sit down and look at the sky and then smell the flowers, right? I'm not that much of a hippie, but or a Bohemian.
00:40:32
Speaker
But as much as we can, I like to keep that fun part of the process alive. And I think that if you have fun and if you enjoy what you do, people notice it. And the people that are going to be attracted to your product are going to be people that enjoy it, that
00:40:57
Speaker
that cherish it and are not going to be complaining that, I don't know, you charged an extra dollar for your RPG or, oh, you didn't make the dwarves like super great and I've been waiting for dwarves to be super great all these years. Yep. No. I mean, I prefer to have
00:41:24
Speaker
a different relationship with my audience. And I sort of suffer a bit from it because I've seen other accounts in social media, for example, that have much more
00:41:41
Speaker
following and widespread, you know, acclaim and whatnot. And my account is usually, you know, very low in numbers, I mean, compared to others. But the people that are following me are amazing.
00:41:56
Speaker
I can count on them to understand what I'm doing and to really love what I'm doing and keep pushing me to keep doing it.
Reflecting on Favorite Projects
00:42:09
Speaker
It happens to me with you. I mean, you do that for me.
00:42:16
Speaker
Well, I'm happy to tell you that you're not good enough and to do better. I will always push you. Yeah, absolutely. And to work faster. Work faster, damn it. Work faster, Art Monkey, which I think is my affection for my Zendu and messages sometimes. Yes, yes, yes. And I'm feeling especially sarcastic. Yes, yes. Yes. I love being an Art Monkey.
00:42:40
Speaker
For a gallon that gains at least. Oh, wow. We love having you. You've illustrated quite a few of our books. So is there one of our books you've illustrated? You know, you mentioned Beach Pill gets brought up a lot, but is there one you are particularly proud of or really feel very strongly about?
00:42:57
Speaker
Oh, man, this is going to sound really corny, but I love them all. Really? Sometimes I sit down and I look through the Galen Night Games folder, and I'm like, wow, this one was great. And then I jump onto the other end, and I'm like, this one was great as well. But if you put me in the spot,
00:43:21
Speaker
because of my background and what I've always loved to do and everything, I think you know what I'm going to say. Tiny supers, that one is
00:43:35
Speaker
maybe the first really big game that you trusted me with, I mean, in terms of the page count and the number of illustrations that it had, and the development as well, because you trusted me to come up with concepts without you going into nitpicky territory.
00:44:00
Speaker
Yeah, I need a superhero that has, you know, the suit is going to be this color and it's going to have these gloves and it's going to have these boots. No, no, you just you told me, you know, what the essence of the character was. And you let me run with it. So sure. And the fact that we created a whole, you know,
00:44:21
Speaker
uh universe with a lot of characters that's you know i i haven't done it before ever and it was great and i think it's yeah yeah it's the one i i love the most especially the the supplement with the
00:44:40
Speaker
the South American heroes campaign guide. Yes, the international angle was great. I loved doing all those heroes, you know, and going to Europe and going to to coming down here to South America. And that was amazing. And it opened so many other
00:45:03
Speaker
doors and I'm always sitting down thinking like, yeah, this is a big deal. I mean, for me at least it is, but I hope for people as well, but yeah. For me it was Tuesday, as M. Bison would say. Of course, yes. No. When folks ask me, I often tell them,
00:45:26
Speaker
On a personal level, because of how much I love the genre and how well I feel the book came together, Tiny Supers is probably my favorite of the Tiny D6 games. Obviously I love them all, but there is a personal satisfaction for me as a lifelong comics reader and person who deeply cares about comics as a medium to
00:45:45
Speaker
be able to, one, release a superhero RPG that felt unique and distinctive, and two, the year it came out in 2019, it was the best-selling superhero RPG on Drive-Thru RPG. That was a big deal to me personally, because I think it's a medium that is often misunderstood in terms of gaming. And at least for me, I felt like Tiny Supers really got it right in a way that worked for me as a gamer, but also as a creative.
00:46:12
Speaker
Yes, because I think, and we circle back to what we've been talking about, that is because we
00:46:21
Speaker
understand and i'm maybe i'm self-aggrandizing a bit here but we understand the archetypes and we wanted to bring you know the the fun and the joy of those archetypes to the game and we weren't trying to you know sell a gimmick or do you know or or compete with the marvel universe or anything like that if if anything we were trying to
00:46:51
Speaker
pay homage to all the people that inspired us when we were kids. And when we also got a comic book, we were like, wow, this is amazing. You know, and I think that that shows. I think that what that's what what made it the the, you know, a best selling game and people connected with it. Yeah, and I appreciate that.
00:47:17
Speaker
So, you know, if you could look at any of the games you've illustrated with me, is there any of them you'd want to redo?
00:47:27
Speaker
Like you feel like you've grown as an artist or you, you know, think you could add a twist that would make it maybe more distinctive or more flavorful or something like that. That's a good one. Yeah, I thought so. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm going to try not to make, you know, too long of a silence or funny noises while I think. But yeah, no, I think, you know, and
00:47:55
Speaker
I'd never thought about it, so it's a great question. I usually finish a project, and five minutes after you finish it, as creatives do, you hate it. It's like, oh, man, this piece of garbage, and you start something else. For me, the books I've illustrated for Galanet games have all
00:48:25
Speaker
they've become a path, right? A journey, if you will. So it's the first time, I think, right, it's the first time that I don't look back on a project and go like, oh, I changed this, or I wish I could have done this in color, even
00:48:51
Speaker
something going back to a tiny waste lens, for example, which was, you know, one of the first. I think that was the first major project we did together. Yes. Yes. I think it was. And I look at it now and it's like, yeah, it holds up really well. And I mean, of course, if I did it now, maybe I'd do it with a bit more skill. Maybe I'd add, you know, certain effects that I didn't completely
00:49:21
Speaker
managed to put down on paper. But the essence of the work is there. So I don't feel the need to change it, because it's like, you know, it's a snapshot of a moment in time. And really, which, again, it's what happens to me when I take a look at the folder. And it's like, oh, this game is like, wow, this is great. In fact, at some point,
00:49:51
Speaker
I'd say I don't even view them as games anymore.
Current and Future Projects
00:49:58
Speaker
And more like, yeah, I mean, the term is going to sound like super pretentious, but I kind of see them as works of art, right? Sure. So if we took Picasso,
00:50:16
Speaker
Yeah, and since we're self-agronizing, let's keep going. If you took Picasso and brought him, you know, and told him, well, you know, you have this face of your work that is amazing. Everyone loved it.
00:50:32
Speaker
you know, the critics think it's the best work you've done. But would you consider the other works you've done, you know, sort of less or I don't think, you know, I don't think he'd go for it. I think especially for artists, visual artists,
00:50:52
Speaker
we have to understand that every single image that we do is a step in a direction, right? It could be forwards, it could be backwards to revise something that you think you could do better, but it's always working forward. So yeah, yeah, they're works of art, truly. Yeah.
00:51:16
Speaker
I mean, that's a, that's a great answer. Oh, not terribly helpful for the actual question, but you know, very, very long, a very long time. I'm a long winded kind of guy. Yeah. I bore my family too. So we're coming up on time here, Nick. Yes. Do you have any particular questions you'd like to ask me? Oh man.
00:51:46
Speaker
No, no, I don't know. I think I think you work. I think you're you're constantly working and constantly creating. So I think the best thing that anyone can do with all and more
00:52:04
Speaker
is to just ask him what he's making at the time. Sure. That's fair. Yeah. And let him, you know, like tell you, yeah, there's this concept and this concept and I've written this and I'm writing this and it's like, wow, great. Fair enough. So what I am currently working on at the moment is I just finished laying out Siege Perilous. Yes, which is amazing.
00:52:33
Speaker
Well, thank you. I got to work with Tom Brown on that one and I was very excited and really brought it to life. Yes. His illustrations are, you know, I compared him once with, I told him that he reminded me of Michael Coludo and he was like, oh, it's amazing because I love the guys in the studio. And I told him, I mean, I meant it. Like he's got that style that's really,
00:52:59
Speaker
difficult to bring to the table. I think that's absolutely accurate. Yeah. Yes. I have started working on an expansion for one of the projects we did together. Deep Dark, I'm working on a Hell Knights expansion for it that will allow you to be dwarves and goblins invading a underground and underwater lake of Hell Knights. Oh, man. You added the water and you made it
00:53:29
Speaker
Even better. Hell Knight's writing giant underwater anglerfish monsters. Oh, yes. Yes, man. Oh, shoot. But I have to finish stuff first. You do. Maybe there's your warm up for the day, right? But you do that, you see? You keep me, you keep me tied up with your amazing ideas.
00:53:57
Speaker
And then Tiny Cyberpunk is underway. So I've almost finished writing on that. So those are sort of the three things I'm currently got on my plate, though I have some other stuff as well that I am working on.
Artistic Influences and Challenges
00:54:08
Speaker
Yes. As usual, because you're very prolific. Well, I like to not starve. And if I don't work on anything, I will starve. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes. Yes. And I am working on
00:54:23
Speaker
various things. You've been doing some comics works lately. What are you working on for that? I really can't say because of the vein of NDAs. But yeah, there is one project in particular that's been going on for years
00:54:43
Speaker
And I think it's going to be published next year. And, you know, it's a hefty book because I've done like hundreds of pages for it on and off. Yeah, that's going to be a big one. Can you ask who it's coming through? It's going to be self published. The author.
00:55:06
Speaker
got tired of shopping around and getting no's for an answer. I can understand that. Yes. He finally went like, yeah, I'm going to put it out myself and get it out there.
00:55:21
Speaker
Sure. So that's one of the bigger ones. Then I have a lot of work with Galen Night Games, of course. And then I have a couple of, you know, personal things I've been doing, like the Iyengard strip I've been posting on social media.
00:55:43
Speaker
Which sort of happens within the universe of tiny supers, if you know more how the universe works from the writing stance. But that is something that I've been exploring for the past couple of years. I've been wanting to do strips for a long time.
00:56:10
Speaker
social media gives you that space, you know, to post something maybe daily. Absolutely. And honestly, I wanted to
00:56:22
Speaker
expanding the tiny supers universe because it's like, why draw Batman when you have all of these characters that you designed and that are amazing and that have no fan art or art, I mean, outside of the book. So it's like, yeah, I'm going to draw
00:56:48
Speaker
You know, Superman, no, no, no, no. I have to stop myself and go back to Tiny Supers and draw something from there, which I think it's much more productive in the end. Sure. Well, I think that's... I mean, I think there's certainly... I would never stop anybody from drawing Superman because, you know, Superman. Yes, of course. Of course. But we've got our Superman, so...
00:57:18
Speaker
Absolutely. Yeah, there's something to be said for that. So, okay, well, there's always two questions I ask folks at the end. And I'm gonna start with the first one. And the first one is, name, quickly in a bullet point form, just kind of briefly, who are the three artists who inspire you the most and sort of help define what makes Nick an artist? Yes, you kind of let me know about this one beforehand. So I've been thinking about it.
00:57:48
Speaker
I'd say, well, like I told you, Mobius would be first. Absolutely. Then we've got Bruce Timm. Because Bruce is just like, I mean, all of my superhero work comes from Bruce Timm and his influence and all of the Franco Belgian artists, Herr Jay, Uder, so the artist for Asterix.
00:58:18
Speaker
Yeah. All European influences you can think of. I love those. So yeah. Yeah. One thing we can share is we love Franco Belgian comics. Yes, absolutely.
00:58:33
Speaker
Yeah. Wonderful. And of course, Mike Magnolia is fantastic. Yes. Mike is amazing. I still, you know, every time I open up one of his hellboys, I'm like, Jesus, this guy. It is a bit unfair.
00:58:52
Speaker
Oh, man. And what he can do with just a couple of lines, it's like, well, speaking of a couple of lines, Alex Toth, I've been, you know, going over again. And that guy, I mean, Jesus. If, again, if I could draw, I think my three biggest influences would be Hal Foster. Yes. Big Hal Foster fan. Yes. Totally.
00:59:19
Speaker
Yes. Just a genius. And then I really, I really always loved. Now I'm blanking on his name. The, he was the, he drew Supergirl, he drew Witchblade.
00:59:35
Speaker
Oh, Michael Turner? Yes. I've always been a big Michael Turner fan. He was actually the first comic artist I learned to recognize by sight for his art and put a name to it. He blew everyone's heads off when he drew Witchblade. It was a style that had never been seen before.
00:59:57
Speaker
and spawned a lot of guys that follow him after. But yeah, I loved Turner. So I think those would be my three. Yes. Heavily detailed. Heavy on the details for those influences because Hal Forster and Roulette is like, Jesus, so many lines. I'm more like
01:00:20
Speaker
You know, I want to go to that as few lines as possible so I can go as fast as possible. Yes. I want that Alex toes power of, you know, drawing three lines and making a face. Jesus. I don't know how he did, but yeah. Well, practice. Yes. That's how it always is. Yes. And then.
01:00:42
Speaker
The last question I always ask, oh wait, nope, I've asked them all. Oh wait, have I asked you? No, I'm so sorry. We've been talking so much that I have blanked. Have I asked you if you, what's one question you've always wanted to be asked in an interview that you've never been asked?
01:01:02
Speaker
To be honest here, I don't do a lot of interviews. So I'm doing this one for you because we're great friends and collaborators. I usually prefer my art to do the talking. But when I've done interviews, I think what I've never been asked is if it's
01:01:28
Speaker
difficult to make art. Because usually people sort of assume that because you have a talent, it makes it easier.
01:01:38
Speaker
Oh, interesting. I always assume it's difficult to be creative. Well, but because you are a creative. And that very well may be, but even since my youth before I, you could say I was, you know, creative per se. But usually people will hear you say, I wrote an RPG and they'll go like, Oh yeah, of course he wrote an RPG.
01:02:05
Speaker
And yeah, it's not as easy as it sounds. It's not as easy as it sounds.
Praising Tiny D6 RPGs
01:02:11
Speaker
You get frustrated a lot. You have to put in a lot of time. And well, that's another thing. You can write an RPG in a day because you've been doing this for how many years? Maybe too long. Yeah, absolutely. But you're not going to stop now.
01:02:36
Speaker
This is when it gets good. Now that we are older, and we're making the good stuff now. So yeah, I think that's something that people sell the masks, if it's hard, if it's difficult. They'll see me draw, and they'll go like, oh, man.
01:03:02
Speaker
You make it look so easy. Yeah, it ain't. It's hard. Yeah. But it's, I mean, like all good things in life, they're hard. Nothing that comes, at least in my experience, nothing that comes to you easy is something, you know,
01:03:29
Speaker
I like fighting for things, really. Skill earned is in some ways more valuable because you learn so much getting to that point where you can. Yes, absolutely. Which goes, again, back to what we were discussing about the whole industrialization of art and the organic process. Sometimes if you
01:03:57
Speaker
when you learn to draw a flower, maybe it takes you years, but it's better from a spiritual perspective than, you know, getting a program to do it for you. Absolutely understand that. Yeah, it's it's it's the small things. It's the simple things, which is why I love tiny d6. Because it may look super simple,
01:04:27
Speaker
but it isn't. It's like, it's hard because they give you, I mean, you give players like the bare minimum and then tell them go out and make something out of this. And that's a lot.
Conclusion and Gratitude
01:04:49
Speaker
You don't get to cut corners with that. You have to put your mind to it and imagine and yeah,
01:04:57
Speaker
Yeah. Right. I mean, I think people help us a lot in many of the projects that we have made. I think they are the other half of the equation from the creators that end up adding a lot to the, I mean, if you put out a lot of rules, then it's about you. But
01:05:25
Speaker
Right. When you go to the, you know, when you go for, for the, the, the simple stuff for the core stuff that engages you like crazy. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, I left you thinking like a lot. You were like, Oh, right. Yeah.
01:05:55
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I want to thank you so much for making time to come on. I know locking you down for any sort of non-drawing related presentation is difficult and I know how much you dislike interviews per se. So I appreciate you making the time. It's wonderful to get to talk to you and to let people hear your voice and your ideas and your insights.
01:06:18
Speaker
Oh, Jesus. I bet some of them are going to use them to, to go to sleep, but, uh, yeah. Well, if they're, if radio free RPGs and putting them to sleep, what am I even new? If folks want to find you and support you, where's the best way to do so? Uh, well, lately on, on social media, on Instagram and Facebook is where I'm posting daily. So, uh, if you look for me there under my name.
01:06:47
Speaker
I'm going to pop up and you can give me a follow. And of course, anything that, uh, I mean, there are a lot of, uh, JPG projects I'm, I'm making. So if you follow Galanite games, you're going to find me there for sure. All right. Well, folks, this has been my guest, Nicholas Giacondino and I am Alan Barr. And I want to thank you for listening to Radio Free RPG. We'll see you next time.
01:07:21
Speaker
you