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LoserKid Pinball Podcast
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Ep 84: Rushing for Whoppers

PodcastAnalysis updated 2d ago1 hr 14 min listen
From the creator

In this double feature episode, we start off talking with Stern's newest Artist Michael Barnard and his work with Rush. Then afterwards we talk to Greg Poverelli and Levi Nayman about the up coming...

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Highlights

  • Michael Barnard graduated from Columbus College of Art and Design in 1998 and discovered that fellow Stern artist Jeremy Packer (Zombie Yeti) attended the same school the same year
  • Barnard worked at a T-shirt company in Florida for 17 years as an art director before launching his freelance company in 2016
  • Rush was not initially familiar to Barnard before joining the project; he knew only 4-5 songs and had to study albums, documentaries, and lyrics to prepare
  • The decision to use cartoon-style depictions of the Rush band members came from the comic book adaptation of 2112, which most Rush fans were unaware of
  • Stern provided Barnard with marked-up templates showing where inserts, plastics, and targets would be placed, but gave him significant creative freedom on the overall aesthetic
  • Barnard worked on the Rush project for almost a year during COVID, when Stern employees were working remotely and the factory had plastic barriers between workstations
  • Three different backglass art packages were created with the Premium version featuring a steampunk design based on Neil Peart's drum kit
  • The most common fan criticism focused on the portrayal of Neal (Peart) as resembling 'Lemmy' or a 1970s magician, and Geddy's inclusion of a goatee/soul patch from the wrong era
  • Barnard received direct messages from many fans expressing appreciation despite early online trolling and criticism of the band member artwork

Notable quotes

“I think what we did on this one was we just kind of went with my style and just tried to pull in as many things as we could...Rush fans are going to look at it, and they're going to be studying it. They're going to be looking for little things hidden in there and, you know, kind of critiquing it. So we took it very serious.”
Michael Barnard
“And I was warned about them and everything, but I have to be honest with you, though. I got a ton of messages from people, just direct messages, telling me how much they liked it...there was way more love than hate for it.”
Michael Barnard
“When I first started the project, I feel like looking back on it, I was kind of just doing a little bit and waiting on feedback and doing a little bit more until finally they were like, hey, just go with it. Throw anything out there that you can think of.”
Michael Barnard
“I just kind of took it and, you know, they marked up...they said, you know, down here we're going to have, you know, five or six of the songs. So we want some graphics that go with, you know, these particular songs, whatever imagery you can think of.”
Michael Barnard
“Honestly the the amount of detail and parts and pieces involved in something like this I've never worked on anything that had this many uh elements to it...I worked on this project for almost a year and uh you know there's there's a lot of files a lot of stuff involved with it.”
Michael Barnard

Entities

  • Flip N Out Pinball· company
  • Iams Pet Food Company· company
  • Stern Pinball· company
  • Topps· company
  • Godzilla· game
  • Rush (game)· game
  • Columbus College of Art and Design· organization
  • Loser Kid Pinball Podcast· organization
  • Rush· organization
  • Geddy Lee· person
  • Hugh Syme· person
  • Jeremy Packer· person
  • Josh Roop· person
  • Matt Scott Larson· person
  • Michael Barnard· person
  • Neil Peart· person
  • Randy Martinez· person
  • Zach Sharpe· person

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