A friend of mine who was writing about Braid, who'd seen Braid at GDC, sent Jon my webcomic, I guess.
I think that's how it happened. Or got us in touch.
But the webcomic was essentially my portfolio for Braid.
So there was some kind of... something in the comic that was felt close enough in spirit to Braid, I think.
And I felt that way going into Braid, that there was some continuity and theme or approach or something like that.
Hello and welcome to episode three of the Braid Anniversary Podcast.
This time we're switching it up a bit.
Our interviewee is David Hellman, who is the primary visual artist of the game.
And when I say visual artist, that's always a little bit awkward because, you know, in the games industry we just call the person who does the graphics for the game the artist.
So David is the primary artist on the game, you would say.
But I don't like that terminology because I think game design is art and it's a very important art.
In fact, it's central to what games really are.
So, you know, why should visual art get the entire moniker of art for itself?
And so I tend to say visual artist just as my own particular eccentricity.
Anyway, David was the primary visual artist on the game.
Some other artists worked on the game and David will talk about that.
Most notably, Edmund McMillan did early animations and character designs that David then modified.
David's going to talk about how he got started working on the game and how he developed the style that is so recognizable today.
So let's get into it.
I'm ashamed.
What are you ashamed of, David?
Um, I don't know.
This game, this, if I'm trying, I'm not ashamed.
I'm not ashamed.
You really backtracked on that.
What are you not telling me?
Uh, this is an interesting thing to like explain work I did a long time ago.
Okay.
It's cool.
I am happy about it.
Um, I feel, I feel a lot of, I feel very fortunate about braid overall.
Yeah.
That it, it's been a really good thing for me, but it's also kind of, uh, it just feels lucky.
I guess I think of braid as something that was very successful in the context of my life.
And like people talk, talk about it like it mattered.
And so I feel both proud, but also like that's just really lucky.
Like there's always some distance.
There's always like a gap between having done a thing and then like what, however it's received
or exists in the world and other people knowing about it.
And that, so it's, it's unique in my life as a thing that people know about more than I expect.
Sometimes.
Do you think that, um, you know, you kind of mentioned that it kind of has a life on its own
outside of, you know, your experience with it.
Yeah.
And when you say you're ashamed that you feel lucky that, um, you know, is, is this just, um,
kicking yourself and saying that like my work's not important or is it that like,
like where's that coming from?
Yeah, I don't want to be overwrought.
Like I'm sort of kidding around, but, but I guess there's some, uh, like indifference feeling or
kind of two-sided feeling because maybe, because, uh, maybe it's the other side of like feeling
proud is feeling modest.
Okay.
Yeah.
But you are proud.
Yeah.
And I think I feel most comfortable if I'm talking about the decision-making and the work
and feeling excet creatively excited.
Then I think then I really like talking about it.
Okay.
But, um, I'm also proud that, that like it was successful and that like, if I'm,
I just met somebody upstairs and didn't bring up that I, you know, I met like an artist,
a game artist.
And I said, yeah, I'm like working on, I've done an indie game or something.
And then was it you, you came over, was it?
Yeah, you're right there.
Cause there's another time Tom came over and the same thing happened
with someone else came over and said like, he's not telling you he did braid.
And that's all that's happened to me a bunch, you know, and that's what people do.
Also, like that's what people do when you're talking to people in your industry and people
know of each other's projects, you know, but, um, it's not like I'm in some random bar somewhere.
And it's like, Oh, braid isn't that famous, but there's still that sense that I do feel proud
that I made something that's important enough, I guess, or it was like effective enough as a product
that we're now doing this much later.
So I feel like a sense of pride and also a sense of like security and kind of like, um,
I feel like I've received enough praise in my life to feel most, I don't know, fairly secure,
which doesn't always work, but yeah.
On that subject then, um, let's kind of go back to original braid.
Okay.
Um, and you know, I mean, I met you post braid.
I don't know that it was like out yet, but it was like, I played it somewhere.
The first time I met you.
So I didn't know David pre braid, but who was David Hellman, you know, like at the start of braid,
right?
Like, I know you're an artist, but you know what, like, what was your medium?
What were you doing at that time?
I was pretty fresh out of art school, um, in Baltimore where I grew up and I'd been doing
a web comic called a lesson is learned by the damages irreversible with my friend Dale Baran.
He's a writer and, um, I was interested in games.
I'd worked on some games in college with friend, a friend, some prototypes, I mean,
but I was pretty far removed from like, um, any actual industry activity or like viable
indie development.
It was just kind of hobbyist stuff in an art school context.
And I really didn't want to get a job.
Dale and I both felt that way.
And we were doing our comic as a way to forestall that, like, hopefully we would, um, just make
something we would own completely on our own terms and then make a lot of money off of that
and never have to get jobs.
That was the goal, but we didn't have the business sense to pull that off.
Um, I mean, I was selling posters that I was printing at home and it was just not the volume
wasn't there and my kind of turnaround wasn't, wasn't, wasn't there.
So it was, you know, paying for some of our costs, but, but not much more.
Um, and then John, um, John Blow, uh, a friend of mine who was writing about braid, who'd
seen braid at GDC, uh, sent John my web, my, uh, web comic, I guess, I think that's how
it happened or, or got us in touch, but the web comic was essentially my, um, portfolio
for braid.
So there was some kind of something in the comic that was felt close enough in spirit
to braid, I think.
And I felt that way going into braid that there was some continuity and theme or approach
or something like that.
Yeah.
I mean, what comes to mind for me, when I think of the two back to back, um, is surely
just informed by the fact that it's your art, but, um, there's definitely a tonal connection.
Yeah.
I think so.
Um, I, I mean, I actually struggled to come up with, with the, the adjectives to describe
that tone, but I'm wondering if, if, if you know what they might be.
I think the comic, a lesson is learned like braid.
I think we were struggling with just messy stuff about human feelings.
Um, kind of personal feelings, romantic feelings, uh, some yearning, some, sometimes literally
like a romantic desire.
And sometimes just the kind of discomfort, uh, in the world, like, like an existential,
uh, uncertainty or something.
So some feeling of incompleteness, kind of high level airy stuff, like, uh, emotional
stuff and.
You know, not like survival angst, but feelings.
And then the artistic expression itself being a way of engaging with that.
I think like the comic took many forms visually, like I, I, we were restless and changed it
up a lot.
And that's part of what made it really fun that we never had to just like be production
line style and do a bunch of the same thing.
It was always evolving a bit and exploring and that kind of search, uh, and like shifting,
I think had something to do with trying to resolve irresolvable things that you're feeling,
you know, and that's what I was trying to do.
And also having fun with it, like enjoying the, uh, uh, the possibilities.
And yeah, braid I think is also about some kind of hard to, um, some kind of search that's
hard to exactly explain, but some kind of existential search or search for the, for
like the truth of the world, um, access through one's own senses and thoughts, which are
unreliable and, um, and also some kind of romantic search that kind of searching for some attachment
that would be significant or profound or complete, complete the picture somehow.
And, uh, and yeah, kind of reshaping the world, reshaping your world as, as experienced through
your senses and thoughts.
So, so kind of the way, um, the style of the comic changed, uh, the world of braid is,
is in, is in the process of being created.
That's what we wanted to come across that it feels like it's being made in front of
you and it's alive and it's like, you're seeing a painting being painted in front of you,
but you're inside of it.
That was the, the idea.
So where is that idea coming from, you know, maybe thematically with braid, like, like
what, when you're, when you're expressing visually this idea of a painting coming to
life in front of you and you inhabiting that space, um, what to your mind is it that, that
is tying into maybe the narrative or the theme of braid that, that you're expressing through
that?
Well, I think Tim, the main character in braid is, um, trying to answer questions in his
life and, and he's, he's doing it actively through an act of creation or maybe even thinking
about it as an act of creation, because his thoughts become his world, the thoughts he
constructs around himself that he needs to kind of parse what's going on.
And so there's a kind of solipsistic aspect, maybe like, you know, I mean, I think we all,
you know, interface through our own interface, the world through our own perceptions and
everything.
But I think in braid, it's a very conscious overt thing where, uh, it's supported in the
narrative too, that he's like, has a creative power in the world and he's, he's, he's, he's
has a creative power in the world and he's sort of trying different, um, experiments
to see what will, what the, if he can understand the world better.
So, so the, there's a creative, um, don't know if I'm answering your question directly,
but the art, the art, the living painting idea reflects Tim's creativity in trying
to create a world, create a, uh, create a framework that will allow him to have like
that authentic encounter with, with the world, but he has to build that himself.
It's not, I guess he can't just access it directly.
It has to be discovered or, or yes, it builds some scaffolding towards it.
So when there's, for example, um, maybe pieces of, you know, real world, uh, that are maybe
like morphed and skewed within braids world, right?
Like I'm thinking of furniture and, and, and, and like the house, like when there's props
like that, you know, is, is that, um, is that Tim trying to sort of build a framework with
what he understands in, uh, let me rephrase that.
Is that Tim sort of like grasping at what he already knows and understands in, in, in
order to like build a new framework for, for sort of building this, uh, I don't know, this,
this, this new way of connecting, I guess you're asking if the, what role does that
stuff play?
You know what I mean?
Like, like, because it's, it's not just, you know, I'm thinking of, um, I don't know what
world I think it's five or six, where it's, you know, there's just like the giant drawers
and, you know, and like that to me as an observer is like, that's something from Tim's real
world that sort of like dream, like being painted into, you know, whatever he's got
going on right now.
Like, like what, what, what, what were you going for by incorporating those things?
Yeah, well, the scenery in each world reflects the themes of the world, which are particular,
which relate to Tim's particular state of mind and particular, uh, focus and, and everything.
So in five world five is about the question of staying or going and world five explores
two outcomes, two different outcomes from that fork, from that decision.
So, um, when you rewind the last thing you did plays forward, but you're now existing
in a parallel world.
So it's first implemented in the, in the game play and the game systems, and then the puzzles
engage with that idea that, that reality that created reality created by the programmer
and designer of two worlds that do in fact, in front of you exist in parallel.
And then, so then the art, um, tries to engage with that motif both, I guess, as a formal
thing, but also emotionally.
So if it's about saying or leaving, I want to represent both of those ideas.
So we have a lot of, um, domestic objects, like the drawers and the comfy pillows and
stuff.
They're not there.
They need to look really comfortable and nice.
Like what a nice, uh, duvet, what a nice sofa.
This pillow has a lot of texture on it, these beautiful old books.
So there's a sense of value in them, but then they're, they're all out in a swamp.
They're all out in the water and they're obviously deteriorating.
Uh, they're in piles, so they're not well cared for anymore.
So it, there's a contradiction that I'm just trying to turn into a visual, but I mean,
hopefully it's sort of intuitive.
It may feel kind of weird, but then it gives your mind something to like play with while
you're also doing the puzzles.
So when you're talking about these, these themes for different worlds and, and, you
know, the visual elements that you use to, um, to visualize, I guess those, those themes,
right.
Um, are these ideas that were presented to you in a fully formed way, or were you able
to contribute creatively to braid beyond just the visual looks of it?
I got to contribute.
Yeah, the way it started was John explained the theme of each world.
And I remember the first email and it was just, uh, about this and it, and there was
literally a list of like world two, uh, world three, world four, like one line about each.
I mean, he would elaborate on it more, but, but I did start from just a very simple direction
of, you know, the idea of, um, and I'd have to look at what that was to say exactly, but
it might've been like the idea of staying or going, um, or, uh, world, you know, world
two, which is the first one, confusingly being, uh, having a sense of possibility and adventure
and optimism and feeling the most sort of normal as like a, uh, green Hills game area,
you know, and then the world following that world three, having an increased sense of
like magic to it, but also danger.
Um, and, and forward from there.
So it's just kind of like a very simple direction.
And then, yeah, I had room to play.
There might've been cases where he had a specific thing he wanted, but I definitely had room
to explore.
Did you contribute in a game design sense at all, or were you strictly limited to visuals?
I did get to contribute the design a little bit and, uh, I was happy with it.
I was happy about that.
I remain, remain proud of it, uh, because I only recently started working with John
and it was all remote over email.
So, you know, but I was excited.
So I didn't know this guy, but I was excited that we were doing this thing together and
great job for me to have at the time.
And John was trying to figure out how to visually justify how to make it intuitive that there
are moving cloud platforms that disappear and then reappear somewhere else kind of looping.
They're just moving platforms that have to loop, um, from kind of arbitrary positions.
And he actually emailed me and some of his designer friends, and there were a bunch of
ideas and I had the best idea, which was to use something that already existed, which
were the cannons.
There were already two kinds of cannons, cannons that shoot fireballs, which is what you would
expect and cannons that shoot, um, monsters.
So there was already an idea that cannons can shoot non-obvious things.
And so the cloud was just another extension of that, the cloud cannon.
And that way you have the cloud itself is the visual starting point of the cloud.
And when the cloud hits an object, hits a wall, it will disperse and then the cannon will
fire again.
So, uh, yeah, it was just like kind of an elegant solution.
As a former producer, I very much appreciate the recycling of concepts.
What was the state of the game when you first got involved?
When I first got involved, the game was functionally complete.
It would change in some ways after that, but it was fully playable and looked done except
that the art wasn't there.
Well, there was some art.
John had actually hired some, I think he hired a firm which had assigned some artists to
the project, but then they were taken off of it because of another client, essentially.
And they were, the art that was there had, if I remember right, it had,
it wasn't like photo real, but it had kind of more towards a realistic children's book
illustration style, I think.
And I remember like logs and forest scenes and the scale was different.
Like the logs were very large, like it made Tim look like a little bug or something.
And everything else was like tall grasses and logs and twisty trees and stuff.
And actually that kind of, that had some influence on me.
Like I took that as a cue to do trees, which I like drawing trees anyway.
But then large parts of the game were just like without art, like just like bounding boxes
or like simple volumes with a repeated texture or whatever.
Edmund McMillan of Super Meat Boy, Binding of Isaac fame and others was working on the
game and had done character sprites.
So the character sprites were quite far along, maybe finished.
And so that was, that didn't stay, but they remained influential.
Like I ended up working over them.
So in some cases they remain very much the look of the characters.
Does that include Tim?
Like, did you design Tim or did you just refine him?
I refined Tim.
The Edmunds characters that remain very close are like the greeter dinosaur at the end of the worlds.
The claw or the plant that comes out of the pipe.
The rabbit is pretty close.
The monster creature, the sort of Goomba, like round guy that walks, was redrawn a lot.
But, but use, like kind of re-use frame by frame.
So I think like the way the feet move are exactly how Edmund did them, I think.
And then Tim, Tim, I changed the look fully.
Like the face is totally different.
The head, the proportions are a little different, but I think it was based on all of his, his framework.
So probably the way he moves is, is Edmund's work.
When you're drawing Tim, is he a real person to you?
Is that, is that a person in your head?
No.
I try to give him John's cheekbones.
Is that right?
Yeah.
I think that's all though.
So do you think of him as, as, as autobiographical John,
or do you just think of him as a video game, generic sprite?
I think of him as having elements of John, just because the game was John's game.
But, I don't know, he's, he's, his job is to be like the game character.
So he's like, he's Jumpman.
He's the guy who's in there doing that stuff.
And like, he's, he's, he's emotive, but not to the full breadth of like,
what the story would, would imply or demand.
So he's more of like a cipher for the player.
He's like there to be the game character.
And I think, I think there, actually, I think there's some interesting tension between
like the amount of depth or kind of like emotional range suggested by the story,
by the parts you read before the, the worlds and the way Tim looks.
Cause he's, he's not as emotive as, as, he doesn't have the burden of like
acting all these different, different shades and facets.
He's like a game character.
On that note, your personal life before this, before Braid,
what was your relationship to 2D platformers?
Was that, was that a kind of game that you enjoyed prior to this?
Yeah. I grew up on Nintendo games.
Let's see. I mean, there's a lot of Mario references.
So yeah, that absolutely was loomed large for me.
So when you're, for example, thinking about, you know, animation frames,
like turnaround frames, jumping frames, are you mostly drawing from Super Mario?
You know, well, I mean, again, the, a lot of the animation was already
prototype by Edmund or drawn, fully drawn by Edmund, but it ended up being treated
as a prototype because I painted over, but those are his poses in general.
But there is a way that like Tim's look is Mario like, I mean, he's wearing a suit,
which I think, I mean, you know, thinking about it now and having like surprising
thoughts because the, uh, what I was going to say about it was Mario is like a game,
archetype. He's just sort of like a game character.
And then Tim is sort of taken into more realistic real world direction.
Like he's wearing a suit. So he's like a real guy.
But I don't know if that makes any sense. I mean, Mario is wearing overalls because
he's a plumber. He's just blue collar and Tim is like the white collar.
So I think it's probably truer to say that not that like Tim is a realistic Mario,
but he's just a white collar Mario. He's like the, he's a PMC Mario.
He's professional class Mario. There's rabbits in this game.
Yep. You foster rabbit.
Yeah. That's the question.
We have rabbits, but that happened much later.
Okay. So no connection in your art style.
No, no, no.
I, in fact, I would have drawn the rabbits differently if I'd had rabbits when I was
working on grade. Okay.
You know, let that water, there we go. Um, what would you change about the rabbits
now that you're, you foster rabbits? If you were starting from scratch?
That's a really good question. I have, I have like a very much richer and personal sense of what is
cute about rabbits. So I would have, um, I would definitely would have captured more of the
expressions of, of our rabbits and their body shape. Probably.
Would you have kept them as vicious as they are?
Yes, I think so.
Tell me about art school. What did you study in art school?
I was a general fine arts major, which gave me the most flexibility,
which is very much in keeping with my whole like avoid a job, avoid obligations stuff
and do things that I want to do. So, um, that let me do, I did a lot of studio art classes and,
and, um, I wanted, I was grounded in like real materials. I was very interested in like
charcoals and paint and stuff like that, which I hadn't done a lot before.
So that influenced me a lot. Um, even though I would end up working mostly digitally, uh,
like braid is all digital art and everything I do now, but, um, that experience of working with
real materials changed how I worked. Cause it, it's much more fluid and like, you're like molding
and sculpting sometimes, you know, like, like with, um, like as a kid, I would draw it mostly with
markers and you just have to kind of anticipate the page well enough to like put the lines down
with a strategy of like building up from, you know, you kind of pre-visualize it enough and
then you build up with some strategy to like assemble things and leave the enough room for
everything and put the focal point where you want and everything. But with materials like charcoal
and oils, they can evolve. You can go over and move them around a lot. So I got very interested
in that whole process and, um, felt that it reflected in some way, like the complexity of,
of like being a human or something that we were trying to capture in the comic,
a lesson is learned and that I felt was relevant in braid that life involves a kind of messy search
for the right shape of things. And you're gonna, you're gonna try something and then wipe it out
or go over it again, or it will, there'll be surprises and discoveries as you go and you'll
find yourself doing something by engaging with that confusion and that mess. Um, you'll find
something you wouldn't have found otherwise. So you're not always able to pre-visualize and
just go indirectly. Not, not that that doesn't also involve discovery and responding to what's
in front of you. It does, but I got interested in that messy process. So in that process, I mean,
does, does that messy approach, um, allow for like say happy accidents for sure. Yeah. You're
bound to have happy accidents and I like things that are irregular too. So sometimes, um, you end
up, you know, making a, sometimes I literally make a, make a mess, like just make some scribbles and
then start to draw over them. And then I'm forced to focus in a way that I'm seeing the new thing
I'm putting down, um, and kind of filtering out the thing that it's on top of, but then it gets
incorporated surprisingly sometimes, so I may only cover like half the canvas, but the half that's
showing through is now serving the thing that went on top kind of by accident. But then I allow it
to allow it to exist. Were there any elements that come to mind in braid that, um, you weren't
visualizing when you started throwing the digital paint down that just sort of like materialize
themselves out of the marble? Well, you said out of the marble. That reminds me of a quote,
isn't that the Michelangelo quote that, did you know that? Oh, I thought that's why you said out
of the marble. But there is a quote from Michelangelo, I think, um, or at least a saying
about him. Oh, sure. I mean, that is what I was drawing. Yeah, yeah. That he would, uh, see the,
I see the figure in the block of marble and free it. And that's what I'm thinking of when you're
describing this mess process and that sort of carving away at it. But that quote, I don't know,
I haven't heard like discussions of that, but that suggests to me almost more of like a sense of,
um, that the final form is kind of faded or dictated somehow. Like it's already there and
he just has to reveal it. And then, and marble is, is so, um, like hard and doesn't move around. So
once you chip something off, it's basically done, but that's so different from like the,
from messy painting where you're pushing things around back and forth and there's no like definite
endpoint. It's just like, um, you could work it forever. You don't run out of marble to chip off.
I don't know if I answered your question though. I think you did. So you had done some, let's say
amateur game development before braid. Are there like braid looking prototypes that, you know what
I mean? Like that you worked on, like, is there any sort of similarities between braid and, and,
and your, your past, uh, game prototypes? I don't think so. Um, I don't remember the things that I
can think of now look very different. Like I remember working in, um, like black and white,
low res pixel art and doing 16 bit style art and even doing some 3d stuff, which, um, as I remain
a beginner in all that, but, um, you know, building like some kind of 3d castle and having a critter
run around. So probably nothing like braid.
I think a hard time visualizing 3d art from you to be honest.
It's just like a Minecraft type thing. Blocky, but I, but I do like space and designing spaces
and the feeling of being inside of a thing or you've gone outside or on top of it and all that
stuff. Yeah, that I'm having an easy time imagining for sure. Just based on, you know, things like
second quest, right? Like that's, that's definitely you. Um, do you feel that there were, you know,
do you feel that there were other artists you were tapping into when drawing bright?
Yeah, I always cite Paul Cezanne definitely his work definitely had a huge impact on me and, um,
and I've looked at it a lot. I really liked how they're probably just some like formal
similarities. I could point out like the way he constructs things with a lot of regular brush
strokes that many of them are kind of kind of close in size and shape and it's just like
a lot of strokes, but he's also building with like a very strong sense of geometry.
And I do that in some way, but, um, there's also to me, like a vibrancy in the way he combines
colors and, and I just have a feeling that his work has a search about it. Like he's searching
for something beautiful and ordered for him and the way he handles contours and shapes
they kind of shimmer. It's kind of like, there's a vibration to it. So, um, things aren't like
locked in completely firmly. Like they're like marble. It has a kind of shimmeriness to it. Like
the way, um, which feels like perceptual to me, like the way your head moves around side to side
a little bit. And therefore things are kind of hovering around more than, you know, being
completely, uh, reliable and solid. I think that kind of hovering feeling is also feels somehow
related. I don't know. Just, that's just how life is. Like things are kind of, things shift and,
and are a bit unreliable, but you try to keep your bearings. It's interesting. This is, you know,
maybe the second or third time this theme has come up in this conversation of, um, kind of
searching for truth through art. Right. I mean, is this something that, you know, I feel that from
the game design as well from the narrative, right? I mean, is this, is this something that
you think maybe connects you and Jonathan? Yeah, I think it, I think that was a similarity that
made me feel at home with the project very quickly. Yeah. And it's something that, you know,
is it something that, well, actually this was the next question I was going to ask was, um,
what did you think of the game when you got it? Were you, were you like, oh, this is, this is a
cool game. I'm really excited to work on this or, you know, like, like what was your perception of
the game when it came in? I thought the game was cool. Um, I thought it was clever. I thought it,
um, I thought it was clever. I thought it had integrity. Like I, I could tell, you know,
cause he would talk about this, but it was also obvious in the game that it, it really, um,
gets to the point, you know, it's doing something interesting and it's self-aware and focused. And
so it's not like larding it up with a lot of, um, tropes and kind of trinkets and things.
So it's, um, you know, John would always say this game values your time. So yeah, it felt,
it felt like something intentional and cool and, um, intelligent, like there was some, some, uh,
but you know, it also, it also felt like, I think it w this may be retrospective more than how I
felt at the time. I don't know, but it, it did feel also like the natural thing for someone to do,
because I, even though I was living in Baltimore and just kind of engaging online and stuff like
that, I think there was a sense that, uh,
games were ready to become more personal and to use some established, um, forms and formats to,
um, to be more introspective or philosophical, that kind of thing. Like I remember kind of applying
that to even a Zelda game, like talking about the light world and the dark world as having some kind
of, I remember actually my friends laughed at me because I was getting too, uh, highfalutin about
it, but like, you know, the idea that there's a world and then there's like a, there's like a,
a symbolic world behind it that reflects some truth. Like I thought I just wanted to, you know,
like, I just thought games can do all this stuff, you know, but you, you, if you strip away, um,
this stuff that just feels very like genre, uh, tropy and, and kind of put in some signifiers to
kind of hint that it's okay for people to think about it more deeply, then they'll start to have
a more profound experience with it. So, okay. So you were in Baltimore, um, working remotely over
email. Um, when you were working on Braid, where did you do that physically? I was in my parents
house. I'd finished art school and I'd moved back to my parents' house, which was nearby
and I don't remember what I was planning at the time. I tend not to plan very much. So if I have
something to do that, you know, if I'm doing a creative project and I'm okay in the present,
I focus on that. So, um, I'm, it's possible I was just living there and, um, got this
Braid gig and was doing that for a while. And then, and then it didn't take long to start,
to start, that I started to think about moving to San Francisco. I kind of, I did want to move.
I did want to leave Baltimore, but yeah, that's where I was at the time. When you do Braid art
then and, or, you know, other than like original or anniversary, I mean, is there,
is there a particular like mode that you have to put yourself in? Yeah.
Well, there's certainly, yeah, I'm sure there is, but I might have to like conjure it,
but I guess there would be like some emotional mode, but definitely like a technique mode.
Like the way I painted Braid, actually I don't do that anymore because it, it's too time consuming.
Like I worked, like I mentioned a lot of little brushstrokes. So it's a very inefficient way to
paint actually. It's just kind of crawling over everything with like a small brush.
It's not the smallest, you know, but it's a lot of individually placed. It's like a lot of
stippling and poking and, you know, a lot of sampling. What I would do was work with kind of,
kind of work with one brush a lot of the time. And that changed a bit, which one I was using,
but I'd work with one brush that was like a round brush with a very simple shape or maybe
like a little bit of texture, a little bit of grain on it. Or like sometimes I was using a
brush with a canvas texture that a lot of people noticed in the original Braid. I'm using one brush
and its opacity is set to like 60 to 75%. And as I go, I'm, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just
sampling with the eyedropper. So I'm sampling locally, painting transparently and then sampling
again. So I'm getting more subdivisions of color. And so that, that's kind of how I worked on it.
And when you revisited it, did you go back to your old techniques to make sure you were sort
of being true to Braid or did you, did you have new techniques to come up with sort of similar
aesthetics? I think I did largely the same thing. I was working, actually I did the new Braid art
mostly in Procreate on my iPad, which I was using for a long time. So a little bit different
workflow, but yeah, very similar ultimately. Thanks for listening to the Braid Anniversary
podcast. We'll be back next week with another episode. What'll be in it, we don't even know yet,
but till then enjoy life. In this episode, Frank Ciafaldi asked the questions, David Hellman,
answered the questions, Jason Brisson produced, and Will Torbett edited. Thank you and we'll see
you next time.