Catching up with Cage Claypool - The Ol' Grizz & Phantoms of Barrington Hall

Josh and Frankie.

What a couple of dumb shits. Hello, primates! You found Primus Tracks. Congratulations.

Dr.

Josh Bald here. This week we are upending our Claypool Lennon Delirium timeline to speak with Cage Claypool about a couple of projects he's recently been involved in in the Primus world. We get to ask him about the old Grizz and Frizzlefry, the Phantoms of Barrington Hall, the illustrated book that is out on October 13th everywhere from Z2 Comics.

So here's us catching up with Cage Claypool.

In the case of your art itself, Cage, I don't know if you can confirm or deny this, but what's always struck me about your art is that It seems very inspired by Egon Scheele.

Yes, I love Egon Scheele. That also wasn't intentional. I just started drawing characters with these really exaggerated hands. And it's because my hands are kind of... They have a character to them, right? My joints are kind of knobbly and they're sort of big. When I draw hands, I'm actually just drawing my hands. I started drawing that and like kind of exaggerating features that I saw in it.

And then somebody was like, you would love Egon Schiele and showed me his art. Oh my God, that's exactly how I want to draw hands. And I have taken a huge influence from it, but it did actually start from like, I was genuinely just drawing like how my hands look, right? Like I very like, was it endo, ectomorph, right?

When you're very like scrawny, right? That's kind of my build. So I've sort of got like the, like I, I, the way I draw like characters, like a very exaggerated version of like myself, like you always drew a lot of artists accidentally draw themselves a lot. And I do it too with like the characters faces, like that Billiam video I made.

Yeah.

I don't think that looks anything like me, but my dad is like, like, he kind of looks like you. And I'm like, yeah, maybe in the nose. I don't like, he's got like this, crazy hair stretching. He looks insane, but I'm sure you can find one of those, or I could send you a picture of the clown costumes if you want to put one up for when we were talking about that.

And your poster was one of my favorites from the Claypool Gold Run.

Oh, thank you. Surprisingly hard to think of something to do for gold. I was already working on the Grizz video, and it was obviously about gold mining, so... I wanted to go for prospecting and I was just thinking about all these things. And I was just like, I know I got to go in a different direction. I do try and do something gold that I don't know if anyone else on the tour is done. And so gold, I just like gold tooth. And that's, that's literally where it started. I was like gold tooth guy fishing and the fishy caught as a gold tooth. And that was because I just wanted to like do something where I was like, all right, I don't think anyone else on the tour will have a poster like this. I could

be wrong. I'm pretty sure nobody did. I don't think so.

OK, that guy looked an awful lot like Wiley Woods.

Yeah, that was also unintentional. I feel like I swear I'm I'm all of my influences are so unintentional. But like, actually, yeah, no, I probably did just go like, yeah, like this guy's got a gold tooth and like and Wiley's got a gold tooth. I just started drawing a character and then like, I drew a bunch of different guys. I have a, I have a stack of sketches of like different types of dudes holding fish. Cause I was like looking at pictures of guys holding up fish and, uh, you know, all sorts like, like big fishermen, like little guys, like all, all sorts of like different body types and trying stuff.

And that one drew my eye the most. I was like, this is, this is the direction I started fault, like chasing down that path. And like, I think probably what happened and it's the same thing with like the hands and it's the same thing like Don Martin, uh, I don't even realize why I like this thing so much.

I'm like, oh my God, that looks like my buddy Wiley. And so it just starts to look more and more like him. And I'm pretty sure he got one of those for... My parents gave him one for his birthday.

Oh, excellent.

One of those posters, I think.

I hope he got it. Yeah. It's striking resemblance, certainly. That was great. I asked him about it, if he modeled for it, and he said no.

So. It was not meant to be him.

Let's talk about the Grizz, if you're down with that.

Sure.

The Grizz is closing in on 2 million views already, which is impressive, so congratulations on that.

That's nice. No, I heard it was doing very well. Last I heard was 1.2 million views. Yeah, I'm glad people really like it. I'm actually working on some personal projects in a similar style. The art style is actually something that... I was developing for as a pitch for a music video for someone else. And they ended up not going with it. I didn't do anything with them.

And so for a year, I have actually was sitting on this footage and it's in my in that the making of the Grizz video. There's a there's a video of me like it's a little like cut out like 3D collage cut out character of me. I made that test video to be like, hey, look, I want to make a whole music video like this. They ended up not wanting it. It's just sat for like a year on my hard drive. And then when my dad was looking for a video, he's like, well, I want to do something for the Grizz. Actually, that was a little bit of a long shot because I made it in such a different style. Right. Like it's it was kind of like that sort of cut out thing, that style.

I feel like it would it feels like it would be at home. in like a modern sort of like, like it'd be so easily slot into like a punk band. Cause it kind of looks like a zine sort of vibe. Like that's where it feels like that's supposed to go.

Right.

And so, but then we started testing it out on, uh, uh, we scanned my buddy, uh, Jack Gatto, who, uh, tater man on Instagram. He's a really cool 3d artist. uh, helped me throughout the whole video. Like we were working on it from the, from the beginning. Uh, we scanned, uh, we scanned him with some like suspenders and, and, and, and made the body. And then we, uh, did a bunch of tests on his face and my face did a bunch of different versions of the cutout thing until we figured out the right way to do it. Cause like the first couple scans of like, cause you got to, You get photos from every angle of somebody. So it looks like a collage that's constantly switching angles. And it's tough to know, like, what are you going to need

if this character needs to talk or emote? Because like we tried a couple, we were like, what if it's just the whole head and we just do the expressions we want? But I was like, no, let's do like different face pieces. And then we had to figure out like, okay, what are the minimum amount of expressions we want, you know?

We need smiling and then we need like frowning and we need all the different phonemes. So we ran all our tests and then we got my dad in the chair to sit down and do it. And we had figured we had. We got down to like a rhythm where like we could do all of our photos in like 30 minutes.

Right.

Like it was a long test on both of us trying to narrow it down to like what exactly we need. What's the quickest way to do this? Because it is like agonizing sitting there trying to sit still. while somebody's taking a photo of you from much different angles because we didn't we didn't have like you know one of those like 360 scan things to test with we just like like like I feel like in an ideal world you like we would have had access to like you know those studios where they like do 3D mocap and somebody just like for like they'll do it for like Call of Duty and like oh right yeah big video like somebody stands in the middle of a bunch of cameras and it snaps every angle at once and they're

like okay You're done, and you just do all your faces, and that would have taken, like, five minutes. We had to, like, do that, but somebody had to move and get all those angles, like, manually.

Yeah.

So obviously we didn't have access to that for the project because nobody's willing to rent out those kind of spaces.

How minute did you have to go with your angles? 90s, 45s, were you going in between those two?

That's actually kind of the reason why I didn't do... We ended up not doing the head as one piece because we would have needed 32 different angles. So what we did for basically everything from all sides. And that is just too much of a pain in the ass for your face, which you cannot keep still. So we got one like 32 angle of just like neutral mouth closed from all sides to get the head done. And then remove the face from that, like all the images, remove the face. And then the eyes and mouth, we just captured like, I forget the amount, but we just grabbed from like here and around like all these different directions.

And that saved us like ridiculous amount of effort, right? We just, all the face pieces, we only needed to scan from the front and we can stick those on as little collage pieces and that got us through. Wow.

It sounds like this, and I'm curious actually, as far as the level of challenge here, I mean, how would you rate the challenge of doing this? Because this sounds like so much upfront work that maybe you wouldn't normally have to do.

So it seems like- That is what it turned into, 100%. The first teaser that dropped for that video, like when it's just him walking and it's like 30 seconds long, That was supposed to be the release date for that video.

Oh.

Yeah. And that was maybe a month. Wow. You can look at it. It's like maybe a month, month and a half, two months later, the full video came out. Because basically, we didn't anticipate how much post work was going to need to be done on this. But like once the model was done, like once all the pieces were made. it was so quick. We were just like churning out anime and then we just, we finished it.

So it was actually shocking that we got that. Cause like that rig was so like kind of hard to work with at that stage. Like it was, we kind of like popsicle stick that one. And then however long later we had the real version and we could do all of the shots we had planned.

Okay.

The Easter egg on the mining cart.

Was that you? Yeah.

Yeah.

Nice. I knew we needed to throw a Festus in there. Well, actually, it came from, there couldn't be a giant blank space on the side of the mine cart. It just looked too visually boring for my sensibilities. So I was like, okay, it's gonna, maybe the mining company would have hand-lettered something on the side of it. You know, this belongs to Festus Clamrod Mining Company.

And, you know.

That was a nice deep cut. That was a great idea.

I mean, it's both a deep cut and a shallow cut because I was actually referencing the Festus from the lacquerhead video. From the TV.

Yeah.

Actually, I was obviously referencing the original Festus Clamrod band joke. Yeah. But because there was already this reference I need it. There's a blank spot. I need some text. I was like, what is a running joke that's already on some Primus lore? That's that's kind of how we got there. So if it hadn't already been referenced, it wouldn't have been on there.

We would have probably done some other joke, but it was kind of like, all right, let's throw this in there because this is like there's already a historical precedent for it.

But that one's a bit more hidden than if you had put something like the Bobcock Mining Company. That would have been pretty straightforward, right? People would have got that one. But I think you caught some people unawares with Festus, which is great. And thanks, by the way, for posting that behind-the-scenes look because that gave me– It was fascinating. Yeah, it really gave me a picture of everything you had to do to put this together. And, of course, you didn't do it alone. Um, but there was, there's just so much work involved. And so some of that footage was that blender where you're messing around with the limbs and moving them around, moving some eyeballs and that sort of thing when you're doing the overlays.

Yeah. It's all in blender.

Um, it just boggles my mind. Cause that's not something I'm familiar with, but.

It is not designed for it. That, uh, if we didn't have like pretty beefy, uh, like workstation computers, you know, as 3d artists, I would not have been able to handle it. Cause okay. You start getting into, you start getting into, uh, okay. You have a photo of every angle and those are laid out on a sprite sheet and it has to snap between them based on what angle you're viewing it at, which means, you know, it's gotta be a decently high res image to begin with.

And then you need 32 versions of it for all the different angles. It's snapping between. And so each image ended up being like 16 K eight K like, I mean, I, we actually, that was one of the big things we had to work around was we made a bunch of different versions of it. Cause there's only like a couple shots that it get really up close. And those ones we rendered him by himself and then composited him in because it was just so like, it would be such large textures and each. So each part of him is like a 16 K texture, unreasonably large. Snapping between these different angles like it was a nightmare to work with that version of it. So we used it for a couple close up shots. So you can be like, Alright,

we get the idea. This is what it looks like all the other ones, these kind of low res and like, when he doesn't get too close, we have our like, like our low quality version of the of the rig.

The stomping of the character is perfectly synchronized with the music.

That was important for me was every shot I wanted to kind of time to the part it was supposed to go in front of. In Blender, you can lay a song into the timeline and have it play back. So while we're animating, we were like just getting the bounce right to go to the beat and make sure it loops on. And it was actually really easy because I've had to do music videos where I think of the Fool that follows the Fool. I forget what the loop was, but it wasn't perfect. It was like almost like 17 or 24. I forget how many frames, but what would happen is it would, he'd start on beat bouncing and he would slowly get out of sync and there was no way to sync it up. Cause like just at 24 frames per second, there was no lining

it up. And so it would just like, so I had to manually adjust the, his speed at certain points to get it to work and cut away and cut back to get that one to work. Thankfully, this one, perfect. I literally told Jack and I told Nick, all right, I figured it out. 24 frames is the loop and it's 24 frame animation. So if you have him do a little loop that's 24 frames or 48 frames or any, it will perfectly hit the beat. And so it was really easy for us to make like really fun, like kind of slow bouncy movements and fast bouncy movements. And cause we already knew that it was going to, uh, line up.

Right on. And then for the, for the screen shake, is that, is that something that was pretty easy to add every time he stomped?

I did that. I actually did the screen shake in, um, I did that in blender. Instead of doing a digital bounce in blender, resolve for after the fact i just on the camera gave it a looping like bounce that was randomized each time he stomped so it has realistic motion blur as well i don't know i like my i like my renders to look as close to final as possible like i would rather get all my colors like looking good in the render in blender rather than go and try to like fuck with it afterwards. I know that the best way to work would be multi-layer EXRs and you export all of your lighting separate from your normal, separate from your... You would export all these layers and you would composite all. I just don't really

like working that way. I would rather it all just be captured in the shot and I can be done with it. I can make the lighting realistic and understandable to me rather than doing adjustments and like after the fact so of course you have to anyway i obviously graded it later but like.

To make a music analogy you're recording the music and mixing it and then mastering it later but you're you're doing those two things at once or in the same space in a sense.

I mean obviously like it's all getting like yeah mastered like i guess color grading is equivalent to like mastering and in the audio world um obviously i'm still doing that step it's just like i want it to sound as good as possible before anything's been like it'd be like it'd be like just baking in all of your effects like onto like you're like recording let's just say vocals or an instrument with the effects baked in so now you just have an audio channel that already has all the effects on it as opposed to getting a clean one and then adding it after Fair, yeah. I know it's the wrong way to work. It's just easier for me. I just kind of like it.

Yeah, you know what works for you. Why not? The end product certainly bears that out. It's fantastic. It's a wonderful video. Hopefully people keep watching it, sending you all kinds of breaks.

It's a great video.

It's great.

Thank you.

And yeah, when they previewed the teaser, as you mentioned, I immediately knew they were going to use that for the backdrop during the live performances. But what I was not expecting was that the full video would actually have footage of the band performing the song with that green pachyderm, which we didn't actually see during the tour. That was a really cool thing to see. And the way it all came together, it's nothing like the teaser. So I think it's a really, really incredible addition to the Primus music video catalog.

That's great. I'm glad to hear that. Because I mean, yeah, it looks really different from what the demo video was or the announcement trailer. Because like I said, that was functioning on kind of half broken rig where it weren't quite working the way we wanted them to, but we just had to have, we had to have it ready for, I forget if that was when the song dropped or when they announced, I forget what the occasion was for the post. Cause I was just so wrapped up in working on it. but I actually don't know if that was them first dropping the song or if the song had already come. I think it's no song had already come out, right? I don't remember the timeline myself, whatever it was.

And then you knew you really had to take care of business.

So we took a trip up to gold country actually to shoot a lot of, uh, like reference shots and photo scans. So like a lot of the environments are actually like things we scanned for real out in the wilderness. Um, so like all, all the little like, tree stumps and stuff.

Okay, so that's all out in nature. That's cool.

Oh, yeah.

I have, like, access to, like, lots of great, like, texture libraries and things like that, but I do want to, like, grab my own stuff as much as possible to just make sure that I have something, like, unique. Because, like, I love all these, like, asset repositories, and I think they're great, but, like, there's so many times where I'm...

It literally happened, like, a couple days ago. I think I was watching a movie or playing a game, and I recognized a rock. rock that I've seen on in a, in a asset library. And it just takes me out for a moment. And I know that's just me. Cause I'm, I actually look at these libraries, but yeah, we actually went out and scanned like all of it. And we still did throw in like asset library stuff where we couldn't, you know, have captured it ourselves, but like, it is mostly all stuff that we scanned. Wow.

Wow.

So you, you created your own library and you can draw on it now whenever you want.

Yeah.

And then same with some of these these cut out character things. I'm yeah, I am working on some more stuff in that style right now, but it takes a long time to cook. Right. But once you've made the pieces, you can really go.

OK, so have you then have you put a name to this style? Because I don't know, cut out collage overlay amalgam. I don't I don't know what you call that style, but it feels like it needs a name. So trademark it right away.

Yeah. Stick my name on it. Like, uh, I mean, the thing that we would call it in the industry is their billboards. I've, uh, they're called billboards when you have an object that like, normally it's off in the distance and it will like snap between different angles. Like you're playing like a video game and there's like a tree and it's just a picture.

Yeah.

Uh, those are called billboards. And so I've seen people discussing it and calling it like a billboard, like they, like they just say the billboarding technique. I've heard people call it that. Uh, I think when I first started working on it, I had a folder called, um, uh, cause I didn't even know, or I didn't even have that term. I called it like, um, Atlas bashing or alias bashing. Like I was just kind of like, like, It's like an atlas. It's like a map. I don't know.

That's what I named it while I was working on it. But I don't know. People can call it whatever they want, I suppose. They can call it the Grizz style.

Grizz style. Yeah, there you go. That's simple, easy, and memorable. That'll do it. Well, let's turn our attention to the Barrington Hall book. Were you working on the Grizz and Barrington Hall concurrently?

There must have been overlap. I first started working on it in 2020.

Cool.

Yeah, so, and my dad started working on it way before that. He wrote a, I think he wanted it to be a screenplay, but it was coming in a little short.

Okay.

Or, and, but he really had this vision for this story based off of Barrington and like his experiences there. I mean, I didn't sign an NDA. I can say whatever I want. Uh, I know that back when he was working on that, he wanted to be a film or a short film.

Yeah.

And he wanted that character who was supposed to be, uh, he was, he was inspired by, uh, Eugene from Gogo Bordello.

Okay.

That seemed, that seemed like a reference point there.

Yeah. Yeah.

At the time when he was working on it, he was kind of the age range that he would have wanted the character to be. And he wanted him to be like, he, he, I had this plan and then it just kind of became the story. And then time passed and, and eventually COVID happened. I was, I was, I was, I was studied and went to school to make video games. I was kind of in like the, like the hiring stages at a few different companies, but then COVID happened. And then all of a sudden nobody's hiring.

And I just was like, I moved out of my place in Laguna beach and moved back home. Cause it was like the only smart thing to do at the time. Like it just made sense economically. And so now I'm at home and I'm like, okay, well, I, if I can't work on video games with like a team, I will animate by myself and make some other stuff. And I just started trying to be productive on stuff. And so while I was doing that, while I was working on some of my other video projects, uh, My dad posited, he's like, I want to take this story. It wasn't working as a script, wasn't working as a novel. Maybe it would work as a comic book. But I really liked and I was reading it. I was I was helping him like edit a couple of things. I was like,

what if this was like a storybook? And I made this like really early composite. I don't know if it's in the the back covers of the book. I don't think it is. I made a really early composite of like, okay, this is what I want it to look like. And just kind of Photoshopped like a book that was like really wide and had black pages with gold text. And it had illustrations on one page. It was like a dark storybook for adults.

Yeah.

And then we just started formatting it for that. So he started making adjustments on the type and like started spacing it out so that it would work for images. I started designing characters. And that's what all those... old character designs in the back of the book are.

Yeah.

They're mostly drawings from like 2020. Oh, wow. And then I ended up getting busy working on other stuff and it just sort of fell to the wayside. And it was always just one of those things like, oh yeah, we'll get to it at some point. And then out of the blue, Z2 Comics reaches out and they're like, we want to, we've done these collaborations with these other artists and like they come up with a story based on an album or it's like a read along thing, or it's like, like there's a lot of different options, but they want to do something for Caesar cheese. And then I was just like, well, we're already working on this story written by less illustrated by me. And I don't think I had started the grizz yet, but I

was working on something. There was like something else occupying my time at the time. I don't remember what it was. Uh, I could probably just look at my past work, but, um, I was like, I'll do it. If I can do like character design, I'll do a character design art direction and like some layouts, but I want a really talented artist working with me who will do like line work and coloring and can like supplement. Cause I'm not going to be able to fully focus on this thing. And then of course, as we started nearing the end, I was like fully focused. Like some of the pages, there are pages that are fully illustrated by Abamel. There are pages that are fully illustrated by me. And like, basically all of them are a mix of either layout by

me and then uh the touch-ups by him and then colors by him and then then layout by me layout by him and then i go over like like each picture i could probably tell the story of like what what it was but it was such a a good way for me to be able to kind of broadly focus on like the overall artistic style of the book rather than uh While also working on the Grizz or whatever I was working on at the time. Actually, you know what I was probably working on at the time was some Delirium animations. So the last working file I have for Frizzlefry was 2.17 of this year. The oldest one.

I have some files in here that say, yeah, 2020. So I believe that Yeah, that's basically when we were finalizing everything, was around there. So February. So yeah, Grizz didn't start until after that. Okay, yeah, yeah. So there was a two-month gap between those projects. They felt really similar. So I was working on Delirium animations and stuff during that time.

Was the bonus blotter paper your idea?

It was not my idea.

It was a good idea. So whoever came up with that.

It was either Josh rants I I don't want to I feel bad that I can't credit the right person I don't want to miss credit anyone but it was one of their ideas and it was incredible.

It works so well yeah speaking of those extras did you get to choose the prints that came with the deluxe.

No, and I was actually curious if they were different between each copy. I actually only got one print copy thus far, and when they actually ship is when I'm going to get a few.

Yeah, we can compare.

All the ones I've seen online are the same.

I think they probably are the same. I should probably know my.

Own The outside Barrington Hall. Yeah, that freaky one. The staircase.

Oh, those are so cool.

Yeah.

Nice.

Right on.

Oh, and look, my book actually has the original illustration of the cover.

Oh, hey. Oh, that's so cool.

It was mirrored and it was going to be the Marlin reeling him in. Oh, yeah. This was at a period when They wanted to be really clear that, hey, this is like, it's Frizzlefry. It's like Primus. So maybe the Frizzlefry guy is on there. And I'm glad we moved away from this cover specifically because there's just so much going on. Like, it kind of like, that character doesn't even appear in the story, right? Like, it's sort of...

It felt like the reason we were doing it was to sell copies, right? Like, which is incredible. Like, I want people to like be walking through the book aisle and see something like, wait, that kind of looks like the frizzle for, I, I love primus. I haven't like maybe a, a, like a fan on the outsource. Oh my God. I haven't heard, I haven't heard promise of what, what is this? Oh, this is kind of cool. And then they buy it. Right. Cause like anybody who's like a primus fan, primus fan, they know this book came out and they already on it. And that's kind of why the special edition is like, it doesn't have a lot of like frizzle pride iconography on it. It's just based on the story. And then the, standard edition is

the frizzle fry head.

Oh, in the skillet. Yeah.

Yeah. Cause like, it's also, you know, we want to honor the, you know, the source material as well. It's just like, that was kind of a perfect way for us to like draw this balance of like, all right, it's its own thing. And also, you know, we want people to, you know, be walking by this thing in a bookstore.

Yeah.

And they might be reminded of Primus and want to get it.

Yeah. Oh, that's a great idea.

I was incredibly glad when this was announced and I realized that Z2 was in charge of it because I already owned two Z2 comics, graphic novels, and I was blown away by the quality. So I knew it was going to be a really great product.

I was stoked on that too. They were already really excited to be working on a Primus project. They were over the moon when we had... our own original story that we were already ready to go, that we were willing to work with them on. And then when we actually started delivering this stuff, they were like, how do we make this as good as possible? Like we, there was like so much communication back and forth about like the frying pan slip cover. Cause they're like, this thing has to look really good and it's got to have like this layers and it's, it's specular and reflective and like their printer, like, like you can just tell like so much like, uh, so much like care was like put into the construction of the book. Like if, if

we had made it with a printer who maybe like didn't care, they would have just, you know, made a little sleeve or like, like something out of paper. Like, I don't know. They, they really were so excited about what we were doing that they wanted it to be the best possible thing. And, and I, I really love that about them.

Yeah.

Heavyweight, high quality. Like you can tell just looking at it, but certainly when you hold that book in your hand, you get a sense of it. Frankie, I can't wait for you to hold it in your hand. It's so heavy.

I can't wait either.

I wanted to ask you, Cage, about our three main characters in terms of how you illustrated them. Les does say in the back of the book that the characters and their behaviors are amalgamous in terms of people that he knew at the time in that area. Yuri, Ajax, and Chicky. And you've already said a couple of things that have confirmed suspicions I had. And it all stems from the band in this book being called Monkey Rhythm, which is, of course, an Adam Gates band. And the illustrations of Yuri being modeled somewhat on Eugene Hutz makes perfect sense, all the sense of the world. That was my first suspicion. And really, it's from the text, because the way Les writes when he introduces Ajax, and what

he's wearing and his hair, that's what Adam looks like on the back of one of the monkey rhythm releases. I wondered if Adam was a model or a basis for Ajax in terms of illustration. And then Chicky, I don't know, but you can tell us where these guys came from. Or if you, because those first concept sketches of those guys are way more straightforward, which is really interesting too.

I mean, it's okay. It's called monkey rhythm.

That was a dead giveaway for me.

I mean, fuck it. You figured it out. I don't know. I was told... There was a period of production where it's like, alright, these characters are now their own thing and we're not specifically based... I feel like the original designs were too close to just... were just too close to Adam and Les. Chicky is more of a composite of a few different people you knew at the time.

But with... adam it was like uh it was just kind of like all right because he's still adam his character in this book and like his design is still just it just looks like adam and so when we went ajax that's when he kind of his design became like his eyeballs bugging out and he's a little bit crazier so we kind of got to be a bit more inventive with him at that point but his character like his was transformed quite a bit because it needed to get away from just being adam in the same way that yuri is not just less it's not just eugene he's kind of like his own thing because he's certainly less like animated than like my dad is right like like he's kind of like very stoic sort of like he's always got these kind of like sort of tired.

Eyes yes yes very tired eyes.

That was kind of he was just sort of supposed to be his character that you the reader could like relax into like identifying with because like all this stuff's happening. He's just kind of like, it's very neutral. So you kind of get to put, you kind of get to put yourself into him. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's why we got to be kind of like crazy with Ajax and chicky.

Like they're a bit more like, you know, expressive and, and excitable.

Yeah. Those, those sketches in the back, which is really great that there's that interview back there. And then some of your early concept art. So we get an idea of where this started. All three members of Monkey Rhythm are more, and I'm going to use air quotes, normal looking. But then, yeah, you loosened them up or made them more angular for their final version. So you mentioned Ajax's crazy eye, which what I love about it is for the first few pages, his crazy eye is his right eye.

And then there's an angle where it's his left eye. So it switches, which I think is really cool. I love that. People will notice and go, oh, they messed up. But I'm sure that was purposeful.

I mean, did people say that? I just always thought of him as like a... He's just an asymmetrical character.

I mean, I just noticed it when I was reading the book. Chicky's posture is crazy in the book. Like, physically impossible or you would have spinal damage. Oh, yeah. Yuri, you mentioned your hands. You draw your hands. Yuri has extremely long arms, for one. But now I want to look at his hands. So... they, they all really loosened up in their, in their final versions. And I thought that was great because it just matches the tone of the book without question.

Basically every, every page was approached differently. We did like really rough layouts and kind of, we're sticking it with the text and we're, we're moving stuff around the whole time. And there's quite a few designs that were just like fully Abamel. Like he, he, he, did a design. I'm like, that's fucking killer. And just, you just keep going. And like, there's pages that are just him and there's pages that are just me. Uh, but I think most pages I, I had to do like, or not had to do, I just did a, I would do a hand draw over because I'm so specific about like how they had to be posed. Cause you know, they'd be doing something normal with their hand, like pointing. And I'd be like, no, like he's gotta be like, you know, going like this

or like, like they'll do some like really weird, type of point that they wouldn't be doing, like sticking their pinkies out and stuff when they're like doing stuff too. Like I, that, I don't know. I just really like this gestural component. Like I, I, I, especially when you have characters like, um, like Yuri who are so like non-expressive that he's going to be really expressive with his hands when he needs to be. Um, and then, uh, yeah, with, uh, with Chicky's posture, he's, uh, sort of like, I mean, he's sort of like the court, sort of like, I mean, uh, Yuri's like deadpan and he's like, like kind of chill.

Like he's just always smiling and he's always like, you know, just kind of mellow. And so he's kind of always got him like sort of slouching and he's just sort of, yeah. And then, but then, um, Yuri's, is sort of more like he's a bit more like upright but he's like non-react he's very stoic character he's very like you know like that's how i see him moving and so they are all each of them kind of has their own little like uh personality that like I mean, the early drawings when I was like really like trying to figure them out and they were just all too realistic and like human. And I feel like I'm glad that I I'm glad that I like took a break and did a bunch of other stuff and then came back to

it now that because they're all very stylized, but they're like less stylized than my personal animations. I feel like like I do much crazier stuff than those maybe.

Yeah.

And so I kind of could bring that into all these characters and sort of like pull them into this realm of, of insanity because you also need, you know, it's very wacky. It's very cartoonish, but then you also have these scenes that are very dark and like, you.

Know, how, how did the old man from, uh, Slim Shady end up in the Moron TV, uh, background during the last tour?

Oh, right.

Um, They were looking for they were looking for something for more on TV. There's a few songs that they have not found their visual identity yet with the live with the live imagery. And like everything has some type of visual for it. But there are some songs that they are. actively looking for like new stuff for them because it's like time for them to kind of have their own, like they, they need to evolve and they need their own thing more on TV. They wanted something.

And I was sort of like that, like realistic face rig where he goes like, Oh, in the video. Yeah. That is like a, I actually rigged that for that for him to go.

Oh.

And yeah, which is completely overboard. I always do this. I always over-engineer shit. But because of that, I had this face that I could literally take my phone and record something into it and just map that performance onto that face. So him singing more on TV, I told my dad, I'm like, hey, download this app and sing the song to the music and I'll make something with it.

And he did that. And so now we have him going more on TV. We've got him doing all the vocal performance stuff. And that's him just, you know, uploading his recording to this app and giving me that data. And then I just plugged it into that model that I completely put way too much engineering into for that like two second shot. So I'm glad that it got a little bit more like life, like squeezed out of it.

Like here's, Like, okay, you did all that, so now there's this thing that it can be used for. Nice.

So, I mean, what really caught my attention when that video came out is that it has this particular style of animation, and then you get to see that 3D rendering, but just for a moment. It's just like a little treat. And it reminded me of when you used to watch Ren and Stimpy on the TV. And it had this particular style of animation. But if you really paid attention, every now and then, there would be these close-ups of the characters. And they were still oil paintings without animation.

But you had to really pay attention to catch them. And it was really cool to see them, because they were not like the full animation. They were just a moment.

That's exactly the type of gag that I was going for. that but.

I think it was worth it after having such a great time with the frizzle fry graphic novel and the way it came out so well would you would you consider tackling another record if c2 comics approached again.

Uh yeah actually the if there's um uh if if we've got any other story ideas we might uh We might be doing something like that. I definitely would make more stuff like this the same way that I did. I have a couple of my own stories as well that I'm dabbling with turning them into comics or illustrated novels now that I'm kind of like, okay, what's going on with the film industry right now? Am I going to ever get to make one of these things into a feature? Maybe it's going to be a comic book now.

you know, like, uh, physical, like selling like physical copies, like premium, like, uh, illustrated novel at comic books, actually, like I found it really rewarding. There's definitely the sense of like, you're holding this thing, like this tactile thing that you worked really hard on in your hands and feeling a sense of satisfaction that I really enjoyed. Um, so, you know, I, I, I'm playing with the idea of turning a couple of my things into comics, and I know that we've thought about and talked about, like, potentially, if there are any other Primus ideas, we would be down and they would be down.

Right on. Excellent.

I have a few shots from the book that I have questions on, if you're game.

Yep. Excellent.

Frankie, this is actually in the book. This is not a joke. Was that you or Abimile?

Both of the Disney illustrations were were were me.

OK, so is how how is doing this for you out of the comfort zone or something you a fun challenge?

It was a fun challenge. So actually, you can see one of the actually let me grab the book and let me make sure that what I'm saying is true. No, I don't think it's in there. No, it's not. There's a really old drawing that I did some time ago that was proof of concept of the girl sitting in the meadow. But it looked more like my style. And my dad kept insisting, it's got to look like Disney.

It's got to look like Disney. He kept showing me Snow White. He kept showing me Sleeping Beauty. And so I literally just fucking buckled down and painted All of them. It was kind of... Because I looked at drawings of, like... I looked at drawings of, like, the trees in Bambi. I looked at. Oh, actually, no. There is something that is Abamel's in here.

I did an original layout of her sitting down. He drew over... part of it and drew the layout of the tree. And I really love the tree. So I think the tree line work is his and maybe, uh, the shape of the grass, but I rendered the grass and rendered all the rest of it.

Pretty, pretty clever that this style, uh, essentially bookends the story. I don't want to give too much away, but it's cool that it does that. Um, and I'm just now noticing.

Kind of a funny story about the, um, the final illustration, um, Or the final illustration in this of Yuri in this cartoon style. And are we going to flip through more pages? Like, do you want to talk about that one when we get to it? Or should I go right into this?

I just had a few, but I didn't take a picture of the last one of Yuri, but go for it.

Okay. So we did not use AI for any of this, right? It's all human engineered. Excellent. like it was really important for us to like just stay away from using AI for any portion of this. But as a test, because we had drawn, I had drawn Yuri so many different times and we had Yuri, I drew Yuri as I normally draw him in like a flying pose. And I was like, okay, like AI, everybody's posting these AI pictures of like, this is me if I was a Disney character.

And I was like, okay, maybe they can do the Disney style. And I gave it to whatever free AI person program to like like disneyify it and it did a horrible job it made him like just have like these generic baby like you know how you can like identifiably tell like like just the proportions that it does they aren't even disney it's kind of taking a little bit of like anime like like eye size and head size and kind of mashing it with like like it's trying too hard like to do all these like like visually appealing things so you just end up with like characters that are always shaped exactly the same and so like it looked so terrible this version of it and so for the actual drawing what we ended up doing

was I brought up a ton of reference photos and And I literally found, oh, there's a character in Atlantis, that 2000s Disney cartoon who literally has the same eyes as Yuri and these great like cheekbones. And then the other main character has a jaw that kind of is very long. And so we like used inspiration from that and kind of like brought up all these images of actual Disney things and created a version of him that looks like a Disney illustrator would have drawn it. And so.

Oh, it's spot on, man. It's so funny.

It was just kind of like this perfect example of like, you know, to a non-artist, you can look at these things and be like, oh, look, it's like Disney style. But like, I'm sure if we had taken like this drawing and tried to do the same thing, because this is all based on Sleeping Beauty. In Sleeping Beauty, she has a very small head and like kind of like long limbs. And like like the proportions that she has on here are actually not how I would normally draw them at all. it's actually very much like how, um, uh, sleeping beauty is drawn. Cause like they kind of, that that's kind of her proportions. Uh, and if, if you had asked like an AI to do a Disney character, they would have inevitably given it these proportions that it

gives to all the other like Disneyified versions of things. Um, so yeah, basically, um, It made us realize that, like, okay, yeah, we're... Our hard work is not going to get replaced because, like, the type of thing that we're doing... You need, like, an artist's touch, right? To, like, kind of properly, like, stylize something the way you want it to be stylized.

I don't know.

Right on.

There's some nice foreshadowing over here, by the way, that I don't think I noticed when I first looked at this page.

I'm glad you noticed it. Yeah. Uh, the next one, uh, is there was actually in my other, in my older drawing of it, there was too many don't jumps.

Oh, okay.

Too easy to notice it.

Um, no, it's much more subtle now.

Good.

Um, this one, this freak out, uh, page is outstanding. Cause this is where he's really starting to lose it. And, uh, this is where he's so much looser. And those, those are some crazy eyes because as you noted, Yuri's mostly very stoic, but here he's, um, tripping bad.

This is, I think a full Abamel besides the, it's, it's funny. Originally I was like, I need, I, I, I was like, I need somebody who can like take my style and they'll do like the coloring and like backgrounds and stuff like that. But I liked Abamel's style so much that there's a lot of pages that are fully him. And in this one, he did the line work.

I did the colors. Those are sickening colors.

They're wonderful.

Well, I'll reveal my secret with the colors. I made a texture of just random kind of psychedelic colors. And then I set my entire screen or my whole Photoshop to black and white. And then when I was like shading a character, what I would do is I'd color pick off that weird color palette. Like, okay, here's some shadows.

Just grab a random like darker color and then shade it. And I would do that and I would just keep grabbing off of it until you get these like kind of sorbet looking textures on people. Because like I would just try to draw them like I was trying to draw realistic lighting using like black and white. But really all the colors I was picking from were insane, right?

And so we ended up with like all these really, and then I would remove the filter and then I would go in and like paint it like how I actually wanted it. But it was a really great way to just kind of get like a good randomness in there. And around halfway through the book, we start doing that. That's that style of like painting it. And, and we, and literally I, I have the layers of, I have like the illustration, it would be line work. with the color like the realistic colors and then the crazy colors and we would just kind of blend between them as needed and on some pages it's like it'll be more intense here and then like it's like okay this was a little bit more sobering up and so like it's gonna be you know he got freaked out and so

he's a little bit more sober so there's less colors or like something crazy happened and now he's really tripping and so we actually were kind of had two illustrations of everything and we're just like balancing between it as it went along.

So you're conscious of the intensifying trip and coloring as such. That's a great idea.

Yeah.

Um, by the way, this is what Frankie looks like when he's on the rail at a primus show.

Yes, exactly.

Also another trip effect. And this was something I wanted to do from the beginning was, um, cause you know, they're not moving. So there's no trails or anything. So I wanted to always have like, kind of like auras of like movement around the characters. And also, uh, pieces of the character that you wouldn't be able to see, or, like, like, echoes of, like, like, for example, he's got these big wide eyes, and there's those eyeballs all over his eyebrows, and, like, like, you're getting these, like, little fractal, like, that was another pass that we would do. So we'd have the line work, we'd have the realistic colors, we'd have the crazy colors, and then we'd have a pass where we just, like, go and just kind of, like, draw, like, like, quickly scribble, like,

little accentuations of like somebody reaching out their hand and we'll draw like an echo of a hand kind of behind it in a weird color. Like you can see them all over the book. One of my favorite ones is when Yuri is looking at Donna. I actually don't know if it's Donna or Dana, to be honest, because I've only read it.

I think it's Dana.

Yeah. And. You can see his he's his face is away from the camera. But you can see his expression because it's like kind of shooting off of his face. So we're kind of echoing it in front of his own face. So it kind of is like a weird, trippy, psychedelic version of like, you know, the cartoon wolf fucking dropping his tongue on the ground and eyeballs bug out.

But it's like we're using this echo thing that we're using all throughout the book to like go like, oh, look, this is the face he's making when he sees her. Yeah.

Oh, that's such a great idea. There's so many pieces like that throughout the book. It's phenomenal. This one, is that Tammer? I can't remember the name of this character.

That's Trammer, yeah.

Trammer, there it is, yeah. I love the contrast of the medical professionals and their stern faces with what Trammer's experiencing.

Yeah, I rendered all the colors on this, and I did a full psychedelic version of it, and then it just was kind of like, it would be funnier if we just And so I just kind of hid the layer of the psychedelic layer everywhere where the paramedics were just to show like, okay, these guys are like.

They're in reality.

They're in reality. And they're also not even that freaked out by what's going on. They're just kind of doing their job.

That's so great. So this is one of those pages where things are just getting incredibly wild.

And this is basically at this point, I think it was just 100 percent. Like, I think the plan was to make this one like 90 percent psychedelic image and like 10 percent normal image. But what ended up happening was we went 100 percent psychedelic for him and then like 100 percent realistic on them. yeah and i think for the rest of the book we maybe didn't even bother drawing a like realistic version of the colors it just we were just like all right at this point it's full acid and then it's a disney illustration and then we're out.

It's it's great i like these uh you know you've got more stuff trailing from the eyes here and everything and then uh whatever's coming out of the mouth they're great stuff it's it's It's wonderful to look at. So it's cool that you made this psychedelic palette and it's a lot to look at. It's a lot to take in, but it's, you know, you look in all these different corners, you're going to find something you didn't see at first glance.

And I'm sure that was by design too, that you snuck so much in. I think I had one more. This is my favorite visual gag in the entire book. The, the blemish that he pops with a fork. So is this, is this you? Abamel both of.

You it's a mix okay Abamel did the Abamel definitely did the final like line work because this one went through a few different iterations like it was hard to get it it was hard to get it right I think I'm layout he's like line work and then I think I did the final coloring on it he might have colored the last panel okay Yeah, like I said, you could literally pick out any photo from it and I'll be like, okay, this one's like... I can remember which parts I did. I've... just like not remembering drawing the, uh, I'm not remembering drawing like, uh, his faces on these.

So I'm like, he did the line work.

Okay. Well, one or both of you were in line, especially with this panel here, that third panel, one or both of you are in line to do a cannibal corpse record cover. Okay. Like you're on the way.

This is also very much like that. That there's a Mad Magazine comic that is kind of this. It's the exact same joke without the reveal at the end. Do you know what I'm talking about?

No, not off the top of my head.

There's a Mad Magazine comic where it is a guy. It's a guy has a zit on his face and he like he like just pinches it. and starts shooting out, and then, like, he turns into, like, nothing but bone, and, like, that's literally, we ripped that. We just added the part at the end, because at the end of that comic, it's just, like, okay, he's dead, I guess. That's the end.

And it's incredible, but, like, we were, like, okay, we're gonna do the same thing, but at the end, it's, like, you know, his buddy's looking at him, uh, Scotty's just looking at him, like, like, dude, Nick, you're freaking out. Like, you just get this deadpan, like, shot at the end to kind of like, you know.

Those expressions are perfect.

But yeah, like if anybody noticed that this is kind of that Mad Magazine comic, it's because it totally is. We were like, okay, let's just like, we're just going to like wear our inspirations on our sleeve here.

Well done. It's a great gag.

I love it.

Those were the four I wanted to put to you for commentary. So thank you for that. That was great.

Yeah.

The other, the other thing I didn't take a, take a, a grab of them. I didn't grab them, but the, I really liked the, uh, ground up perspectives, especially outside Barrington hall. Um, cause it looks like we're sitting on the ground looking up at, uh, the guys, but also Barrington hall in the background. And it's a really warped building. It's, it's really cool. It already like the building itself, you know, in the narrative, it's alive and breathing. And, um, it's definitely whacked out before they even go inside. So that's really, that's a great idea.

Love me some forced perspective.

Yes, that forced perspective is great. I did notice some Easter eggs. I don't know if we should spoil them for the people listening who haven't read the book yet.

If this is the last thing we talk about, you could put a spoiler warning here.

I will say I spotted a resident's eyeball. I spotted a Primus logo on a wall. And I spotted Billiam williams there he's in there uh and i think i spotted a couple other things that i didn't write down but there's i'm sure there's more to find so i'm looking forward to uh searching every nook and cranny of these pages.

Oh yeah there's lots of uh little clues written everywhere um yeah like uh there's the if you if you really dig in there there's there's we put some stuff in there.

There's a lot of lyrics on the walls too yeah everybody look at the walls the walls tell the tale really That's pretty great. Thanks for your time, Cage. This was a great talk about the Grizz and Barrington Hall. I think the Frizzle Fry book is out everywhere on October 13th. So if you didn't already pre-order, go get it.

If you were not fast enough to pre-order during the original window and you're searching for a lone copy of that green exclusive Frizzle Fry, that's going to be tough.

That's right. Frankie's not selling.

Nope.

I think you're at Cage Claypool on all the socials. Is that right?

Yep. I try to be.

All right.

I'm not really on all the socials that much. I'm sorry to anybody who's tried reaching out to me and I didn't see it.

Okay.

This is my phone.

Nice.

You're going back.

I'm on my computer all the time, constantly making stuff. And so I try not to be when I don't. It was funny.

Oh, there was one last thing I wanted to ask before closing. I noticed that it kind of came full circle as a family project with Chaney credited for copy editing.

Yeah.

Well, she copy edits everything my dad works on. Everything. And there are a lot of times in the past where she's caught something uh, or had a note that like nobody else thought of. And like, she's very, very good at that. So I don't remember what she caught, but there were, uh, there were just a couple, she, she got a few different like passes at the book. And, uh, and she, I think has copy edited basically everything my dad's worked on. And I don't know how many years.

That's a great family operation.

Yeah. Yeah.

I like that idea. Uh, thanks again for your time cage. Uh, and, uh, We'll see you out there.

Thank you, Cage. See you out there.

Catching up with Cage Claypool - The Ol' Grizz & Phantoms of Barrington Hall

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