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Episode 2: Cozy Cosmic Horror with Tom Brown
101 Plays1 year ago
Host Alan Bahr is joined by Tom Brown, one of the minds behind the multi-media property Hopeless, Maine. We chat about the differences in illustration mediums, influences, cosmic horror, working in RPGs without playing RPGs, and more!
LINKS:
Hopeless, Maine
Recommended
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 the next episode of Radio Free RPG. I'm joined today by my friend, illustrator, creative, and sometimes author,
00:00:40
Speaker
Tom Brown. Hi, Tom. Hello. Hello. How are you? I am excellent. It is a frozen wasteland here in North Dakota. Oh, God. I can imagine. It's like you don't really miss. No, we celebrated that it got above zero today, so. Yay. Yay, indeed.
Hopeless Maine Graphic Novel Series
00:01:02
Speaker
So, Tom, you are primarily an illustrator, but you also do creative work, writing and other sort of
00:01:10
Speaker
I'll call them gat about sort of jobs. Yeah, that suits. And your primary work you might be known for is the graphic novel series Hopeless Maine. Yes, indeed. Yeah, that's a big labor of love. What is Hopeless Maine? Let's talk about it. Right. So let's say that Hiyo Miyazaki and H.P. Lovecraft were to have an unnatural child.
00:01:40
Speaker
And you're welcome for that mental image, by the way. See, I can see his expression, folks, and you can't, and it's priceless. That's basically hopeless Maine. It's an island that's cut off from the rest of the world and lost in time. And what happens there, the setting is really as much of a character as any of the people alive, dead, and sort of marginal.
00:02:08
Speaker
There's no real retirement on the island. There's Miss Calder, who works in the orphanage, who was killed by vampires and then just showed up for work the next day because that's how things are on the island. Wonderful. So this island, is the name of the island hopeless? Yeah, that's what it is. And it is in Maine. It's in Casco Bay, so just off the coast of Maine. Okay. Now, if I recall correctly, you are actually
00:02:37
Speaker
from Maine, is that correct? Yes, I am. Sorry, that's how you would respond to that question in Maine-ish. You say, yeah, but you say it on the inhale, so it's, yeah. Oh, but you have moved to the UK. Yes, I have. Excellent, which explains your non-Maine-ish accent there. Yeah, that and I grew up watching the BBC. Fair enough.
00:03:05
Speaker
So this hopeless Maine, is it primarily derived from your life in Maine?
Artistic Process and Inspirations
00:03:13
Speaker
Is it influenced by this change to sort of these British sensibilities? Some of each. Certainly when I started it, it was entirely based on my experience in Maine and pop culture and just, you know, Maine is actually uber haunted. It's just kind of in the air there.
00:03:34
Speaker
So an expression of that. But also I found Nimwe's work online and started reading one of her novels, Breathing in a Stonehouse, and fell in love with the writing. And so when she came in, she brought her sensibilities of standing on the hilltops here when the fog is in and looking at the landscape as though it is islands that are cut off from the rest of the world.
00:04:00
Speaker
And obviously there is European and other influence because people get shipwrecked. Yes. So Hopeless Maine has a very evocative visual style throughout the graphic novels, primarily due to your illustrations coupled with Nimoy's writing and sort of
00:04:24
Speaker
physical descriptions that you are working off of? Is that how your process works or is it sort of the inverse? Do you draw first and she writes to what you draw? It's some of each. It's a constantly evolving collaboration. Some of the things that have become major plot points now are because I had a page that I thought needed something interesting to be going on in the background.
00:04:50
Speaker
So I drew an old, you know, decaying Victorian industrial structure. And that became the Guinea Refinery, which, you know, later becomes an important story point. I did the cover illustration for the first version of Personal Demons, which is the first book in the series, before Nimwe wrote it, which is entirely backwards. And I can't recommend this, but it worked out okay on the end. That's because she's a genius.
00:05:20
Speaker
You know, I say mad thing. Look, here's a mad thing and it happens on the island and nobody says, okay, and this is how it works. Wow. That's wonderful. So, uh, as somebody who has written a single issue of a comic, it is a lot of work.
00:05:39
Speaker
Yeah, it is a very distinct creative process compared to the other forms of writing as fiction novels, prose, what have you. Do you find that the challenges that are sort of inherent in that medium are are a strength in making the final product stronger?
00:06:06
Speaker
Ooh, because that's an interesting question. That would be primarily a Nimwe question. I started before we met, but those things have gotten folded in, but are not the actual script. As far as the artwork goes, I would say definitely yes.
00:06:27
Speaker
much easier just to do a single illustration, for example, a book cover or something, rather than an ongoing piece of linear narrative. Absolutely, yeah. As linear as Hopeless Maine is, I suppose. Yes, well, it's a bit dreamy. Yes. So I've read all the volumes of Hopeless Maine. I mean, I quite enjoy it. It's a fantastic read.
00:06:54
Speaker
It tickles a lot of what I like in my cozy, cosmic horror, we'll call it. Oh, I like that. Yeah, Nimue's in the kitchen laughing, so you got something there. Okay. Oh, awesome. Feel free to use that tagline. Thank you. It has a lot of delightful, I'm going to kind of Brian Frond evoked surrealism in the non-human
00:07:20
Speaker
inhabitants of the island that I find very enjoyable. Do those creatures and those other beings, for example, the spoons? The spoon walker. The spoon walkers. They are these delightful walking spoons. I don't have a better way to describe them. Yeah. They are an expression of disturbed effort with glowing eyes and spoons is all they are and a little bit of tentacle.
00:07:51
Speaker
And where did they come from? What, what made you think if kitchen utensils had tentacles, they would be more. Evocative boy. This is, I really should have made up a clever answer for that question by now, but I haven't. Um, I don't know. They were just out there and, and they landed on me. I guess inspiration happens in the strangest ways. I understand the.
00:08:15
Speaker
One of the joys of hopeless domain is that sort of constant sense of discovery about what is different but familiar in the setting because it is drawn from elements that are familiar to pop culture in a sense.
00:08:35
Speaker
Is that a deliberate effort to combine familiarity with subversion or is it a happy happenstance? Oh, well spotted, sir. Yes, absolutely. We've tried to take pretty much every major horror trope and just twist it or turn it on its head or do something surprising with it. We've got vampires who cough.
00:08:57
Speaker
because they they got pulled in to be the cure for consumption. And they they drank the victims for immortality, but they they picked up the cough. So their stealth is now pretty negligible. You know, they try to loom poor deers, but you know. It it has a sort of. Dark British comedic sense to the setting.
00:09:26
Speaker
That fits very well with the northern, northeastern kind of, I'll call it an Ivy League vibe that Maine kind of portrays itself to have. Yeah, absolutely. And Nimway is a genius of dark comedy. Yes, I have laughed out loud many times. Actually. Whereas the young kids say L-O-L, I suppose. Oh, God, this is good news.
00:09:52
Speaker
Yes.
Film Project with Puppets
00:09:53
Speaker
So aside from Hopeless Maine, there are other Hopeless Maine related projects such as a film with puppets that is sort of in the works. Yes, indeed. I just had a meeting about that today, as a matter of fact. We went to there's a partially finished Gothic mansion not far from here because we're in our element.
00:10:21
Speaker
And we were going there because we're doing a performance, there's a hopeless main music side as well. And so we were doing a concert there. And I looked around the place and I said to Max, who was the caretaker, Max, we've got a film idea with a blind fisherman and I gave him a copy of the book and I said, Can we film it here? And he said, I should really talk to talk to people in control here. But basically, yes. And there's a
00:10:48
Speaker
There's an old boat house that would make a fisherman's shack perfectly. This is basically fate. And in the main hall, there are fireplaces going up the wall because they never finished the floors. It's the right sort of decaying mad edifice with owl gargoyles and really everything you could want.
00:11:10
Speaker
Well, that sounds fantastic. I need to, I will have to ask the name and look at some pictures of the place. That sounds delightful. Yeah. Yes. So you have music, you have an upcoming puppetry film. What made you choose puppets? Okay. We, we were, uh, watching a lot of black and white silent films for a while. And, you know, as you do, we went through a phase and, uh, and I realized that the black and white film and, um,
00:11:38
Speaker
comics are a really, really, really close match in terms of storytelling, especially films from that period. And so I went online and said, you know, wouldn't it be cool if someone were to do The Blind Fisherman as a black and white film? And I just I had a record at that point of just going on Facebook and saying, hey, why doesn't somebody? And they did. So that's how we found Greg McNeil of Dark Box Photography, who said, oh, not only
00:12:08
Speaker
You know, is this possible? But I know exactly how. And he is a student of period film. Not only the techniques and the chemicals and everything else, but also the art form and how the practical effects were done from trip to the moon and so on and so forth. So he is he is our director and well, co-director and John Bassett, who also wrote the script with the Nimwe. Also, yeah, that's
00:12:39
Speaker
That's got to be exciting to have happening. It is. It's it's exciting and it's frustrating because a lot of times it's, you know, two steps forward and then three steps back and a little bit of a dance. But we're getting there. So is there a particular reason you chose a sort of multimedia property, something with music and film and illustration and prose?
00:13:05
Speaker
Or did it just happen from the desire to see the world of hopeless Maine grow? Some of each. Originally, even before I met Nimue back in the US, or about the time I met Nimue, I was writing the stories and I said, what comics need is kind of a music accompaniment. Comics and music go together. So I approached local bands.
00:13:35
Speaker
and said, you know, I would like to use some of your music or could you do some music that would go along with what we're doing? And I released the whole thing digitally on CD with the music soundtrack. So that was part of the vision from the start. And I wanted it to branch out from there and just, you know, kind of become part of people's lives. That reminds me of how ingrained music is in Obar's The Crow. Very influential. Yeah.
00:14:05
Speaker
Perfect example. Somebody walked by outside and my poor dog is upset that they dared to come near the home. The nerve. Yes, indeed. Didn't they know my 15 pound dog will have a save?
00:14:22
Speaker
So this element of hopeless main is just one facet of what you do. And as this is radio free RPG, we're also going to talk RPGs.
Illustrations for RPGs and Cosmic Horror
00:14:34
Speaker
And so you do illustrations for role playing games. Yes, I do. Primarily covers, though, some interior work as well. I'm given to understand. This is also true, yes.
00:14:46
Speaker
So what does all this work sort of sit inside the cosmic horror genre? Do you do other genres as well? Um, I am most comfortable, uh, with cosmic horror and my first illustration work that I got, um, I went to art school in Providence, Rhode Island. So of course there was a lot of, yeah, I don't even need to say do I? Okay. I am Providence. Um, uh, but a strange, terrible little man he was anyway. Um,
00:15:18
Speaker
So I fell in with the the Lovecraft literary crowd and the people that were publishing the mythos stuff. And that was my first illustration work. Understood. So yeah, that's that's pretty much home. And I read Lovecraft, you know, before I knew what how problematic he was, you know, it was like 12 or 13, I'd read his work and then walk around into England and go, Oh, my God, that could be here.
00:15:44
Speaker
I could be here and it sort of, it enchanted the landscape for me. Interesting. So I grew up in North Dakota, which is very much winter and plains and bison and nothing, quite literally. And reading fantasy or other fiction, I was not familiar with the sort of landscapes that were depicted.
00:16:12
Speaker
you read Lord of the Rings and they cross the mountains, there are no mountains. Our tallest mountain in North Dakota is a place called Turtle Mountain, which is really a big hill. You can walk up it and I think you only change 500 feet in elevation. It is not terribly large.
00:16:30
Speaker
Yes. So there are these elements of these stories that I had to construct completely based off the words on the page. And so comics in a sense were a much easier avenue for me because they came with a visual depiction.
00:16:52
Speaker
Now, obviously, I could look at a picture of a mountain and know what it looks like or seen it in a movie. Right. But there is something different about being consistently exposed to the environment that correlates to the medium you're in taking. Oh, absolutely. And do you find that that was a major influence on this direction for you, the fact that you were constantly being immersed in this this I'll call it a sort of an interstitial space between reality and fiction?
Arthurian Myths and Collaborative Process
00:17:22
Speaker
Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Yes. Wonderful. That's something I am quite envious of growing up. I had to forge my own path in that way and to be immersed in it from the start would be very different. I find it an interesting concept.
00:17:41
Speaker
So, in full disclosure for our listeners here, I have worked with Tom in illustrations, both as somebody who has hired him to do illustrations for my company Gallant Night Games and some other projects, as well as somebody who has managed some of his work when he did the Morte de Arthur graphic novel for Nocturnal Media. Yes. Which should be coming out from Chaosium sometime soon, I'm given to understand. I sort of forgot that was going to Chaosium.
00:18:10
Speaker
Yes, I'm not involved in that project anymore, but I see the Kickstarter updates every once in a while and I'm given to understand that they are finishing it off and going to print soon. Really have to spend on a journey, that book. Yes, so the surreal dreamlike quality of your art coupled with Nimue's writing in the adaptation of La Morte to Arthur is
00:18:37
Speaker
is sort of a natural fit for your work process. The Arthurian mythos is very, very static, but also surrealist at its most confusing points, we'll say. Yeah. Lots of dream. I'm going to do a quick correction because Nimway actually did not write the Le Morte Arthur. She was the colorist. Oh, John Matthews wrote it. I am incorrect.
00:19:05
Speaker
I knew that too. But I'm a goth and I'm afraid of color. And the world of Arthur needs to be, you know, pageant. It needs to be rich. It needs to be global. So Nimoy, who is not afraid of color at all, seems to rather like it. Anyway. That is correct. Thank you for the correction. Did the brilliant colors for that.
00:19:33
Speaker
So did you, so that's a different working relationship for you in Nimway then. You're illustrating, she's coloring, somebody else is writing. That's a little outside of your wheelhouse, probably. Was that a fun experiment? Was it challenging? Was it, did you learn something that made your working process better? She learned that she's really, really, really most at home with the oil pastels.
00:20:00
Speaker
Um, she can dig in with those. And we came up with a process that allowed her to use the oil pastels, but I dropped the, uh, the detailed pencil work back in on top of the oil pastels. So we got the, we got the detail required, but the richness of color interesting that she put in. So that sounds fascinating. I don't think anyone else has done that as far as I'm aware. Look at you innovating. Yeah.
00:20:30
Speaker
So in some of the work you've done for me, you did the cover for our game Tiny Cthulhu, as well as its upcoming expansion, The Illumination of Alder Brown and some other work.
Creating RPG Covers
00:20:43
Speaker
What makes you like doing covers for role-playing games? Is there a particular element you enjoy about that? Okay, comics and book illustration are very prescriptive.
00:20:58
Speaker
Um, you have this much leeway only. Um, you know, obviously working with Nimway, I've got more leeway because if I put something strange in, then she has to explain it later. Um, and I got to look, um, but with book illustration, I've got to, you know, I've got to consider the fact that this has got to be something that's got to work in a thumbnail about yay big. Um, uh, and I've got to consider,
00:21:27
Speaker
that it needs to be recognizable as a specific genre to sell the books, so the people will go, oh, this sort of book, I know that. Game illustration, much wider open field. I can get concepts. I've got room to put my own stamp on my own ideas of details.
00:21:45
Speaker
and so on and so forth. I do end up doing, and this is not buttering you up, I think I end up doing some of my very best work for you because you hand me the concepts that I'm going to be able to play with and then you stand back and just say go. I have learned that hiring experts means you should let them be experts, not micromanage their expertise. It's a hard lesson to learn, but one I have taken too hard over the years.
00:22:15
Speaker
So when you do your illustrations, you primarily work in a physical medium based on our conversations. I have some of the physical elements of your work in my house. I have the pencils for the two Cthulhu covers you did. I'm sorry I forgot about that. Yes. One of them was gifted to a friend who loved them as a wedding gift. So they are hanging in a place of pride in their game room. So that's great. They are bringing a little bit of joy around the world.
00:22:44
Speaker
Tentacles of joy. Indeed. So, do you do your coloring physically as well, or do you do your coloring primarily digitally? I do my coloring for games work exclusively digitally, aside from those with mine stuff, because that has a look. So, Nimue's coloring. And I'm also taking on a colorist. Okay. So, what makes you do game work digitally instead of physically?
00:23:12
Speaker
Just, there's only so many hours that Nimue can spend or was able to spend doing coloring. So, yeah. A necessary workflow. Yeah, she was doing a multitude of hopeless main graphic novel pages. Okay. Well, that's interesting. Do you like working in digital coloring? I do, actually. No.
00:23:39
Speaker
That's by far the easiest part of the process. I imagine. And my technique is loose enough so that I end up surprising myself pretty much every time. And a lot of your coloring is very muted. I don't want to say drab, but you could call a lot of the drab olive greens or those kind of drab mustard yellows. Yes. Show up a lot in the coloring you do.
00:24:08
Speaker
aside from being a goth who fears color, is there a reason you prefer those muted hues? I think it's easy to get a quick atmospheric sense. It depends on theme. I've been contracted by an individual to do a set of Arthurian tarot cards.
00:24:36
Speaker
And for those, what I'm doing is I'm keeping the subdued colors, but I'm picking one color in each card, in each image, and just punching that so that when you look at the card, you see that, and then everything else in the eye journeys around the rest of the card. You know the blue is for the hierofit, for example. Yes, exactly. Right, and have you. Excellent. And so, tarot must be different than a book cover. A book cover is quite large.
00:25:04
Speaker
Yes. And you can have a lot of room to sort of spread out the art, be expansive. Tarot is very constrictive. Those cards are only 3.5 inches by 4.75 inches, what have you, and need room for text and borders and ornamentation. Do you find it challenging to sort of squish that down? It's made me think more about design.
00:25:32
Speaker
So it's as much a design process as an illustration process. And I wanted to find something in the design that would set the deck apart from any other deck. So in the first design I ended up having
00:25:49
Speaker
Mordred spear leave the border and a bit of a cliff leave the border on the bottom. So I was like, okay, if I keep doing that throughout the deck, people would just unconsciously pick up that this is a series of images that are related. And when they see them, they will know this is this deck.
00:26:07
Speaker
And now as the person who commissioned the Arthurian Tarot, it's me. Well, I'm going to ask a question that I would only know because I'm the one who commissioned it. Okay. I have requested that they be presented in both the pencils and the color so they can be used both as cards and then as illustrations in a book that is going to accompany them. Yes.
00:26:32
Speaker
That sort of dual use, does that affect your composition or the way you think about it? Do you have to work differently knowing that you need to have two stages that are both presentable in a published product? No, that's basically the way my pencil work looks overall when I've got the time and I'm taking the time on the Teradek because this is an important project and the response to it, even though we're only part way in,
00:27:02
Speaker
has just actually been overwhelmingly positive. Yes, as Tom completes the individual pieces, he is selling the physicals and they have been snapped up every time he puts another round up. They are in hot demand right now. So keep an eye on Tom's avenues if you're interested in those, because they are truly gorgeous pieces of work.
00:27:28
Speaker
Yeah, I've had people fighting over them and that's just, you know, a wonderful problem to have. It's like, no, I'm sorry, that one was taken in the first five minutes out there. Oh no, my work is too in demand, whatever will I do? Yeah.
Exploring Organic Sci-Fi Art
00:27:42
Speaker
So aside from Arthurian and Cosmic Horror, are there other genres you enjoy working in? We've kind of touched on those two and they've been sort of a repeated theme for you. The only thing that I don't like to do is anything current set.
00:27:58
Speaker
you know, telephones, tables, cars, things like that. No, no. Interesting. Is there a genre you've always wanted to work in, but you've never had the opportunity to? Whoo. I've not done any science fiction and I think I could really do something with a sort of organic science fiction vibe, not a hard edge, but a more organic
00:28:24
Speaker
More of the 1930s rocket ship pulp. Oh, that was Jules. Jules Verne. Oh, that would be very cool. Yes, that would be. Well, this is going to be a dangerous conversation. I can already tell. Excellent. Good. Now my brain is spinning. Unrelated two games at all. And I when I watched this movie, you were one of the first people I thought of. Have you seen Mad God by Phil Tippett, the stop motion animator?
00:28:55
Speaker
No, I have not. I'm writing it down. I would recommend you watch it. It is a movie he spent 30 years completing. He was the gentleman who did the stop motion on Jurassic Park and Star Wars movies. Very talented stop motion animator. Wow. And it is this surrealist. I will call it gas mask science fantasy.
00:29:21
Speaker
stop motion journey of a descent into madness. It is delightful. It made me very much think of your visual style. That is very much of my dimly lit street. Yes.
00:29:38
Speaker
One of the things you are excellent at is the presentation of the archaic recognizable but subtle way. I'm thinking of some of the Arthurian art you've done or the hopeless main art where this thing looks familiar. You know what it looks like. But there is something that is unsettling or off about it. It strides that uncanny valley to use in art.
00:30:08
Speaker
Yeah. And what is your process for putting that into your art? Because a lot of artists attempt to either fully replicate reality or just move away from it. And you have developed this style of sitting firmly in that sort of cross section of, it's almost real, but it's not. And you can tell. I think, well, there are a few things at play there. One is that that's basically the inside of my head.
00:30:43
Speaker
And apparently I had another one, I started that sentence, but I can't think of it now. Basically, that's the inside of my head. Fair answer from any creative, I think, that is just how our brains operate sometimes. Yeah. I'm interested in the numinous and things that aren't quite one thing or another. I think there's a lot of rich
00:31:06
Speaker
Rich stuff going on there. I find the images that occupy that liminal space in the human experience to be sort of the most evocative. Absolutely. Those images you feel you could glimpse out of the corner of your eye. Yes, exactly. Yes.
Hopeless Maine RPG Iterations
00:31:23
Speaker
Yes. So we talked about hopeless Maine. There have been two iterations of a hopeless Maine role-playing game. There is, I'm given to understand, the third one coming. Yes.
00:31:36
Speaker
Now, what obviously hopeless main straddles, films, games, comics, prose, music. No lunch boxes yet. No lunch boxes. Well, maybe you'll find post on Facebook. Apparently that works. That's my trick, yeah. Now, these games, you or yourself are not a person who plays role playing games, but you're very familiar with the medium considering you do a lot of work in it. More and more all the time.
00:32:05
Speaker
Yes, and what draws you to the idea of folks creating their own stories in Hopeless Mean? It is really just exactly that. That people would want to spend portions of their lives being on the island, being people on the island. I don't even know how to describe what that does for me. That's an amazing idea.
00:32:29
Speaker
And it's kind of, we've got a space called the Hopeless Vendetta where we invite people to come in and just, you know, if they've got an idea for the island, then they'll throw it at us and we'll put it up. And things become canon by, if someone else picks it up, someone throws it out there, and then somebody else picks it up and runs with it, that tends to become canon.
00:32:54
Speaker
And my guess is the same sort of thing is going to happen as people play the game and talk to each other on online communities. The island is going to keep evolving in people's heads. That's desperately exciting. Yes, that sort of living legacy I think many of us creatives only hope to achieve. Yeah, exactly. So when is this new game due out? Now the previous two games are unavailable due to publishing.
00:33:23
Speaker
chefs, but this new game. The new game is probably going to be crowdfunded early in this year. There have just been some personnel changes. I don't want to say this is a cursed game. There have been some personnel changes in the company. This is a couple of gentlemen, Europeans living in Japan, that are putting it together at the moment. But I've got a promise of a really good forward for it.
00:33:53
Speaker
Excellent. Now, I personally loved gaming in Hopeless Main. I worked on the second iteration of the Hopeless Main role-playing game. I find the setting too, like I said earlier, that cozy cosmic horror is a very different vibe than classics like Call of Cthulhu, which is sort of a seminal role-playing game in the cosmic horror genre, which you also have done art for.
00:34:18
Speaker
Yes, yeah, I've got a really good relationship with them. The folks at Chaosium do good work. Now, do you find that you have to evoke different stylistic choices between the two games or are they very similar for you when you do the illustrations? Pretty similar. Chaosium have a much clearer idea of specifics.
00:34:41
Speaker
when they hand out the assignments, and that's the only difference. This time period, particularly. So I'm able to keep the atmospheric, but I've got to have some very particular visual cues that the reader and the art director are going to recognize when I pass in the work. Probably a little more back and forth to get the final piece exactly where they want it. Absolutely, yeah.
00:35:04
Speaker
Excellent.
Where to Find Hopeless Maine Online
00:35:06
Speaker
Now, if folks want to read Hopeless Maine or engage with your work, what are some of the places they can find you and Nimway's work on the internet? Let's see. Well, we are on Facebook. We are on Twitter, which is still going. But if you just were to use the search engine of your choice and go Hopeless Maine, you will find us. Excellent. Hopeless Vendetta is another place to go.
00:35:34
Speaker
Wonderful. Well, I give the hopeless main comics my personal recommendation. They have, I was already a fan of Tom and Nimue, but they have only elevated my appreciation for their artistic vision and creative energies. And Tom, I want to say thank you for coming on to speak with me. It was a wonderful conversation. And you can let Nimue know that I hope to have her on in the near future.
00:36:05
Speaker
Right. Because as a fellow writer, I have many questions about her process. Okay. And I intend to learn a lot from her expertise. Fantastic. Do you have any questions for me, anything you'd like to ask?
00:36:24
Speaker
Gosh, no, I wasn't prepared for that one at all. That's all right. I will think of them just as soon as this is over, actually. Excellent. That's why I don't tell my guests in advance I'm going to ask them that. I don't really want to answer that question. So if I spring it on them, I never get asked anything. It's my secret plan. Well done. Now that I've said that, once these podcasts are live, people will know that and I'll be in trouble. And then Mike was in the room, so she's going to be ready. Well, I just won't ask that question then.
00:36:51
Speaker
Wonderful. Well, folks, I have been Alan Barr. I will remain Alan Barr unless I end up on hopeless vein in which I will cease to be Alan Barr and become someone else entirely. This is Tom Brown, my guest today, an illustrator, creative and all around get about of cozy cosmic horror and other Gothic elements in his life devoid of color.
00:37:15
Speaker
I think we've covered everything. This has been Radio Free RPG, and I want to thank you for listening. We'll see you next time.