ResExcellence Interview - 30 Jan 2003
From Homestar Runner Wiki
"The Creators of Homestar Runner, The Brothers Chapman" is an article written by Michael Coyle from an interview with the Brothers Chaps. Topics discussed include how the duo's creative background and use of technology shapes Homestar Runner.
The article was published to Coyle's website ResExcellence on January 30, 2003. By late 2006, the site had been transferred to new management and this article was no longer available.
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[edit] Transcript
Mike and Matt Chapman are proprietors of the fine web site, Homestar Runner. If you're not familiar with Homestar, it contains dozens of short flash cartoons featuring the interactions of quirky characters. What makes it so popular is that the site is updated weekly. The quality of the work is high and the humor is rated PG, so if you have children who are at least twelve years old, the whole family can enjoy the exploits of the Homestar crowd.
That's exactly what we do every week in the Coyle Household. Each Monday evening we huddle around the computer in a scene reminiscent from the early days of radio and enjoy the newest Strong Bad email. After visiting for almost two years, often I wondered who were the puppet masters behind this undertaking.
Back in 1996 one of the sites creators, Mike Chapman, was attending the University of Georgia working towards his Bachelor of Fine Arts. That summer the Olympics were in Atlanta and Mike had picked up a job. Finding himself with a few days off, he called his buddy Craig Zobel and not having much else to do that day, the pair created a childrens storybook titled, "Homestar Runner Enters the Strongest Man in the World Contest." At Kinkos they made a few copies for friends and that was the beginning of HomerstarRunner.com, one of the most entertaining sites on the internet. Mike gives this account,
"The original Homestar Runner book owes its dues to boredom, I guess. If we had something important to do that day, it might've never happened. At the time, we didn't have many computer skills other than playing King's Quest and the like. The book was hand drawn and not colored in, originally. By the next summer, I had gotten a computer, so we scanned in the drawings and colored them in with Photoshop."
That might have been the end of it, but four years later, Mike and his younger brother Matt discovered Macromedia Flash. Searching for a project to animate, they dug out the original Homestar book and scanned it. The results of this early effort can be seen in the Homestar archive. How did Mike, a fine arts photography major, make the transition to computer animation? He answers,
"I had to take a lot of drawing and painting and sculpture classes. I only took one computer class. It was pretty much an introduction to Photoshop. I then went to Baton Rouge for graduate studies in photography at LSU. One year there was enough for me, so I decided to move back to Atlanta and start teaching myself graphic design."
While Mike handles the character design and animation, his outgoing brother Matt hams it up in front of a microphone performing the voices of all the characters (except Marzipan!). I asked Matt if he ever considered a career as a commercial voice over.
"I've done some voice work for other projects and some local radio spots. Though I've found that I'm pretty terrible at regular voices. Like if you need a voice for MALE #1, you're probably not going to dig what I come up with. I've got a really boring regular voice. But if you need a voice for the PRETEND ROBOT PANTS, I'm your man.
(While working on Homestar), I definitely have different faces and postures for each character. I don't do them on purpose, but they just kinda happen as I start doing a voice. I get all hunched up and angry for Strong Bad. I twist up my face and talk out the side of my mouth for Coach Z, and part of Homestar's many speech impediments is that I have a big smile the whole time I'm doing his voice."
While his older brother Mike studied Fine Art, Matt enrolled at Florida Sate University to study film. His first job out of school was for a local internet service provider.
"Then I worked for EarthLink for a while. Customer service, then purchasing, then graphic design. That's pretty much the post-film school employment road as I understand it. It's what Spike Lee did, I think, anyway. When I grow up I definitely want to get back into customer service. My place is on the phones, getting screamed at, refusing to give folks their money back."
In reality, gaining entry into the Film or Video editing industry usually requires a long apprenticeship that doesn't generate much income. So instead, the two brothers formed a company named "Harmless Junk, Inc." and finance their Homestar endeavor with freelance Flash animation projects.
Homestar Runner has a huge following among college students. The popular Strong Bad receives over 2000 emails each day! While the Brothers have a soft spot for original Homestar character, there is no denying Strong Bad has the largest following. Matt continues,
"Somewhere around making "A Jumping Jack Contest" we realized that Strong Bad was probably the most interesting character. Everybody loves watching the bad guy make fun of people plus he's got all these inconsistencies. He acts like a tough guy, but he likes baking and singing songs and stuff like that. Maybe they just like him cause he comes the closest to cussing."
To produce the weekly Strong Bad email, Mike settles in for an eight hour animation session. He gives a description of the tools used.
"We built most of the site on a Windows machine and a PowerMacG4, but now we have two Windows boxes. (Don't yell at us. We still plan on being as Mac friendly as we've ever been. We're just self taught graphics people and we taught ourselves on PC so we're more efficient on them.). "We pretty much just use Flash. We import some drawings through Streamline to turn them into vectors and we do some stuff in Illustrator, but we're drawing more and more in Flash these days. The trick is to make it look like you didn't draw it in Flash."
"(For the sound track), we really just have a decent microphone and that's about it. We run in to the computer through a mixer, then record it with our sound card utility. We have CakeWalk for the more fancy songs and stuff, but for general sound it's just me sitting in front of the computer holding the mic. We've built our own sound effects library piece by piece. We're trying to record a lot of our own effects lately. You know, like Michael Winslow."
The "Brothers Chapman" hope to continue the Homestar Universe and grow their Flash Design company. I'm sure in the future, we will be reading much more about this dynamic duo.
Visit Homestar Runner and spend a few hours watching all the archived material. Then stop back each Monday for the newest Strong Bad email. It's a great way to start your week!
Download the complete set of Homestar Icons for MacOS X and Linux.
[edit] Fun Facts
[edit] Explanations
- ResExcellence was centered around macOS customization, hence the focus on Macintosh computers in the article.
[edit] Remarks
- The Brothers Chaps are described as "puppet masters" in a metaphorical sense; later in 2003, they would become literal puppet masters with the launch of the Puppet Stuff series.
- Though Coyle states Matt voices "all the characters (except Marzipan!)", technically Pom Pom's "voice" is a recording of Mike blowing bubbles.
[edit] Inside References
- One of the local businesses Matt recorded radio ads for was Mellow Mushroom, as he discussed in 2001.
- Strong Bad's penchant for baking was first mentioned in Marzipan's Answering Machine Version 1.0 and followed up on in The Interview. Strong Bad Sings explored his singing.
- It is mentioned that the brothers' cartoons avoid cussing.
- Homestar icons can also be found on the homestarrunner.com Download page.
[edit] Real-World References
- Spike Lee is a director. He got his start in film production after graduating from film school, as Matt alludes to.
- In The House That Gave Sucky Treats, Bubs dressed up as Mars Blackmon, a character created and portrayed by Lee for his debut feature.
- Michael Winslow is an actor well-known for imitating realistic sound effects with his voice.
[edit] Fast Forward
- The article mentions that there are seventeen main pages. The eighteenth would be added a few months after this interview.
- Later that year, a different interviewer recalled Matt's remarks about voicing "Male #1" versus "Pretend Robot Pants", and requested he perform a voice for "Pretend Robot Pants".
- By 2004, the brothers would no longer take on freelance Flash work.
- The article describes Mike as handling art and animation duties by himself. Many other interviews, beginning later in 2003, would describe the art and animation duties being split roughly 50/50 between the brothers.
- Mike mentions playing the King's Quest games. The series would later inspire the creation of the game Peasant's Quest.
- By the time of the 2017 Screenland feature, the brothers would have wholly switched to using Macintosh computers for animation.
[edit] External Links
- Read "The Creators of Homestar Runner, The Brothers Chapman" (archive link)
