A NEW YEAR means NEW GUESTS! Alex (former UI designer and current character concept artist at Naughty Dog, as well as a freelance children’s book author. Her credits include The Last of Us, The Last of Us: Left Behind, Uncharted 4, Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, and NBA Live 09) and Olly (Art Director on Firewatch, and graphic designer best known for his work w/ Mondo, Harry Potter, Star Wars, the Academy Awards, and much more) join us to talk about growing up on message boards, NBA Live 09 and the UI of sports games, whether knowledge limits your creativity, communicating a feeling through art, being critical of your own work, creating Garfields for fun, experimentation, UI in a background role, creating spaces in Firewatch that felt natural and not meticulously designed, how to lead the player without being too obtuse or explicit, creating Drake's Journal in Uncharted 4, misconceptions about work, why Breath of the Wild is great, and Tom Bombadil.

Our Guests on the Internet

Alex's Twitter and Website.

Olly's Twitter, Garfield Repository, and Website.

Stuff We Talked About

Alex's Young Drake designs

Olly's Harry Potter book covers

Garfield Minus Garfield

That millennial SNL skit Alex mentioned

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse trailer

How We Made The Last of Us's Interface Work So Well by Alex Neonakis

Drake's Journal by Alex Neonakis

In the Valley of Gods by Campo Santo

Our theme music was composed by 2Mello, and our logo was created by Lily Nishita.