Chris Saunders (00:28.62)
Welcome to Nerdpreneur, where we have fun conversations with people making money with their nerdy passion. My name is Chris, and as always, I'm joined by my co-host, Frank. And today we have a very special guest for you. He is a full-time artist with over 20 years working out of his studio in Washington, Justin Hillgrove, also known as Imps and Monsters. Welcome to the show.

Frank (00:38.103)
Hello.

Justin Hillgrove (00:53.56)
Thanks, everyone.

Chris Saunders (00:56.009)
How's it going? Justin, what is your nerdy passion?

Justin Hillgrove (01:02.056)
I love to paint monsters, robots, cats. man, holy cow.

Frank (01:09.231)
You

Justin Hillgrove (01:11.316)
You know, it was fine. It was fine until I was on camera. I just need to loosen up. I promise that that was the one that was my one.

Chris Saunders (01:17.265)
Ha ha.

Chris Saunders (01:21.268)
You got it. This is great.

Frank (01:25.711)
Do you want to take that again? Okay.

Justin Hillgrove (01:26.796)
Yeah, I'll take that again.

Chris Saunders (01:28.008)
Yeah, I feel like I screwed up my intro into that too. So I'm glad we're taking it again. I was like, I don't know why I was like, how's it going? I never say that usually, but anyway, all right. All right, Justin. Well, Justin, what is your nerdy passion?

Justin Hillgrove (01:31.869)
Yeah, you are right.

Frank (01:37.167)
Yeah.

Justin Hillgrove (01:44.04)
I love to paint monsters, robots, and lot of nods to my favorite fandoms.

Chris Saunders (01:49.3)
That sounds awesome. Actually, I have seen some of your art and it is awesome. It's been yeah, yeah, I I actually read a few things a little bit about you before him. But like, did you do something with Adventure Time as well or in some capacity?

Justin Hillgrove (02:05.546)
yeah, well, you know, I've, I've been able to do a lot of really fun things. And one of my favorite things was I did get to do a couple of comic book covers for Adventure Time. So it's not like I worked on the show or anything, but, just even just working on the, on the covers, just because it's one of the things that I, my kids were raised on Adventure Time and among other things. So yeah.

Frank (02:14.798)
Wow.

Chris Saunders (02:26.174)
That is so cool. Well, I do like Adventure Time as well. I thought of your style actually fits really, really well with Adventure Time, I thought. So I wasn't sure how much you'd done, but that's still very cool. And I also heard, what are some of the other big things, just for anybody who's an artist listening, what are some other big things that you've had a chance to work on and be a part of in your artistic career?

Justin Hillgrove (02:49.9)
Yeah, I mostly just kind of do things on my own. I do my own comic. I just released my big graphic novel compendium of all the omnibus of my last 10 years of my comic. But I've also done a bunch of murals for Facebook around Seattle and London and Bellevue, so mostly local. Some other murals do for other places as well.

worked on tabletop games for a while with a little company that we made with a couple of my friends. And we went to Gen Con and would kind of slog our wares there at Gen Con. It's called The Implands, not Implants. The Implands. Yeah, know after painting for about

Frank (03:33.485)
What was the comic book called? Or what is it called?

Chris Saunders (03:39.38)
Cool.

Justin Hillgrove (03:47.288)
ten years, I decided my creatures all needed a place that they, where they lived, where they came from. You know, people would come into my booth at shows, at conventions, and they'd be like, okay, you you're painting all these things. I don't really get it. But, you know, it's cool. But as soon as I had a comic, they were like, okay, this, you know, it gave them context. And for me, it was a way just to do a little bit of storytelling and also come up with a little bit of context for myself in my own mind.

Frank (04:18.031)
Nice.

Chris Saunders (04:19.348)
the art that you do is heavily based in sort of a fantasy, like you said, emps, monsters, sometimes the cats in there, right? I'm curious about like where, like, maybe we'll go back to the beginning of your artistic journey, but how did you get into actually making art and that becoming your style?

Justin Hillgrove (04:40.706)
Yeah, I, you know, I always did more traditional fantasy. The only reason I really kept drawing, I think, in high school as a teenager and everything else was I was just drawing everyone's D &D characters. I was drawing my characters. You know, I had notebooks full of that kind of stuff. As I got older, I liked to paint a lot of traditional fantasy and a lot of just darker stuff as well. And when my kids showed up, it's like I wanted to do something that would

be more fun, like something that would be a little more approachable for them. So there's a little bit of that, but also it had been a few years. I like, had stopped any kind of art. Really. I was working at a magazine. I was doing graphic design. I was a little burnout on my own art. And I remember walking to a deli one day with a friend of mine. And I looked through the window at this just place there and I saw all these toys in the window and I.

let myself in and I'm like, Hey, everybody, what you doing in here? You got a lot of toys. That's fun. Um, and it was, it was fun co. And there was probably only, I don't know how many employees, maybe a dozen or so it was pre pop days. You know, they were making bobbleheads and spastic plastic and some of their early lines. And, um, I ended up meeting, uh, one of my best friends now, uh, his name is Mike cap, but he, um, over the course of

visiting them a few times and becoming friends and actually doing a little bit of work for them, doing some toy design. I started hanging out with Mike and one day he brought in this painting that he had done of, it was just a really great oil painting he had done from one of his kids drawings. And I had this conversation with him where I was like, hey, so you just paint whatever you want? And he's like, yeah, man, I just paint whatever I want. I immediately was like, I want to do that.

You know, I just want to paint whatever I want. And at the same time, my grandpa had just died and he was an oil painter in his retirement. And he had sent me a bunch of oil paints and, I had inherited them, I guess, some canvases and oils. And I just immediately started putting oils to canvas and painting weird stuff.

Frank (07:03.203)
So you started drawing and then in this, was this the moment that you first explored oil painting or had you dabbled before?

Justin Hillgrove (07:11.572)
I had maybe done one oil painting before that, before 2005. And I had done a lot of acrylic painting, but most of that was applied to my Warhammer 40,000 Armies and fantasy and everything else. I mean, I was comfortable with acrylics, but I started with oils when I began like this part of my artistic journey 20 years ago.

Chris Saunders (07:24.764)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Frank (07:25.153)
Yeah.

Justin Hillgrove (07:36.414)
where I actually started showing people and it became it turned from a hobby into a career. But in currently I use acrylics I abandoned oils after just a little while because my kids were young and I didn't have anywhere to paint and so everything was wet for like two weeks. Very dangerous. Yeah, I I remember putting one of my paintings up on the windowsill to dry and like looking over and seeing one of my kids climbing up there and

Chris Saunders (07:51.785)
Yeah.

takes forever to dry, Oil is a long process.

Justin Hillgrove (08:05.762)
running fingers down my newly finished painting and just going, thanks, hon. All right. And so I was like, oil just doesn't, it doesn't work when you're in that small of a space.

Chris Saunders (08:11.358)
I don't know. acrylics are kid proof.

Frank (08:12.249)
No.

Frank (08:20.365)
small space that stage of life totally. So what happened after you started like where did the business come from after you started kind of painting what you.

Justin Hillgrove (08:32.814)
Well, so I just, I started suddenly having all these paintings and my wife was like, hey, you should start showing them. And I remembered an old cafe where I had hung art once and I actually called them up and I'm like, hey, I sent them an email, showed them my new paintings and I'm like, hey, would you want to hang my stuff again? And they're like, no. And then I, so I was like, oh, okay, you know, whatever, that's fine. And I'm like,

Chris Saunders (08:55.07)
Yeah.

Justin Hillgrove (09:02.978)
Well, you know, I'll try a event, like a show. And we have a local show around here. I'm in Snohomish, Washington. And they had something called Kalahaya Days. And I was like, OK, you know what? I'll drop $100. I'll get a booth. I'll set up my paintings. My setup was terrible. was included bungee cords, hanging paintings from the side. It's like a really messed up tent.

Frank (09:24.943)
Really industrial.

Chris Saunders (09:28.531)
Yeah.

Justin Hillgrove (09:28.878)
And I sold like maybe four prints and it was to my friend Mike, who I mentioned previously was to his wife. So there were some pity purchases and lots of money. was like, okay, maybe I suck at this. But Mike and I had already decided we would do this adventure where we would sign up for shows and we had already dropped like a thousand bucks to get a booth for Bumbershoot, which is another big show up here.

And I remember thinking, my gosh, apparently people don't like my art. This is a terrible idea. We're already in for a thousand bucks. was 500 bucks each to, because we were sharing that booth. but it was too late to back out. And when we did the show, I just remember such a relief. You know, people were buying my stuff. It was a very positive, experience. I called my wife that first day.

and was just like, you know what? You're never gonna believe it. People actually like my art. It just showed me how important it is to find your audience, find the right audience for what you're doing.

Chris Saunders (10:29.917)
Yeah

Chris Saunders (10:39.116)
Is that sort of a philosophy that? Is that sort of a philosophy for? Because I've heard that from other artists that you you kind of go where you're appreciated, but like is there a philosophy to figuring out where that is if you're kind of a newer artist or is it just sort of go do a bunch of shows or go put your stuff out there and somebody will find find it if you've got that that if you've got a view or a style that appeals?

Justin Hillgrove (11:05.87)
Yeah, know, I don't know if there's a way to know ahead of time before you actually put yourself out there and try it because you never really, you never really know who's going to appreciate it. Even if you look at it and go, well, the only kind of person who's going to appreciate this is, you know, this type of person. But then you show up somewhere. Like I would think, you know, comic book conventions and things like things like that I would do great at, but you know what I do way better at art in the park type.

or street fair type shows. And part of it, I think, is because my art stands out a little bit more in that situation. But also, it's something different. you get all kinds of people and you get to see, you really get to see what kinds of people do stop and enjoy and smile when they see your work, even if they don't buy it. You get that moment where someone's walking by, they're looking like maybe they're not having the best day.

They see something in your booth and they stop and they smile and they just keep walking and you're like, okay.

Frank (12:06.639)
I will say your art is because I stumbled upon your art in a kind of one of those boutique spots up in Ballard and I purchased the doctor the doctor on the TARDIS. Yeah yeah yeah that's right. I forgot that's what it's called and it's like right over here. But yeah I remember getting that and thinking you know there's something comforting.

Justin Hillgrove (12:22.85)
Yeah, what's up, doc?

Frank (12:34.017)
about this art and I was looking at all of your other pieces and the, is it a ducky that's in a toilet or an octopus room?

Justin Hillgrove (12:41.398)
Yeah, I have an original character that I've named Arthur. That's my middle name because we share a number of neuroses. So it's just this duck that almost feels like he's behind enemy lines. He's in enemy territory, but he's in all these different situations in a bathroom with a very complicated relationship with rubber duck or rubber ducks.

Frank (13:05.441)
And it's very, yeah, I remember looking at it and thinking like, that is comforting. There is something that was captured in this that is soothing. I don't know if it's the overarching blues and the cool colors and then this bright rubber duck that stands out and the octopus or what it was. But and then seeing your art at, you know, Emerald City Comic Con for two years. don't remember if you were at

Do you ever go to PAX?

Justin Hillgrove (13:36.034)
I've been to PAX as an attendee, but I've never sold.

Frank (13:38.807)
Okay, then I'm just mixing my memories up. But I've definitely seen you at Emerald City Comic Con and every time I see your art, it is that feeling of, you know, there's something about you, especially because, you know, let's be real, Emerald City Comic Con, a lot of people are there for the thirsty anime art. it's, the audience is there for, a lot of the audience is there for something specific. So your art is always a change when I've been there.

Justin Hillgrove (14:05.55)
Thank you.

Chris Saunders (14:07.556)
I think your art has a really distinctive style too. very like to me, you're recognizable when I see something that you've done. I wanted to ask like, how long did it take for you to kind of just develop that style or was that, how did that style come to emerge for you?

Justin Hillgrove (14:24.738)
Well, like I was mentioning before, it kind of was an amalgamation of what I used to paint, which is, you know, lot of fan, mostly fantasy stuff really, but with the idea that I want it to be approachable, that I want it to be, you want to be dropped in media res. Like there's a story going on, you may not know what it is, but there's definitely some kind of story. There's just all these things.

Chris Saunders (14:36.766)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Hillgrove (14:54.552)
that I, I don't know, I like to make sure there's some kind of emotion being portrayed and that there's some kind of interaction happening between one or more characters. Even if one of those characters is a rubber duck, you know, who isn't technically emoting, but you still kind of feel it. But I think the style comes from a lot of the things I was kind of raised with with.

Like I loved Jim Henson growing up. I watched Dark Crystal on my birthday every year. I watched, you know, Labyrinth. My favorite book growing up was Where the Wild Things Are. And I would just stare at the cross hatching and the colors and just, you know, beautiful, beautiful art. I love, I loved children's books and illustrated books and even some of the other like, you know, Edward Gorey and all that kind of stuff too. It's just a...

Chris Saunders (15:24.404)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Hillgrove (15:48.642)
really fun stuff. And then as my kids showed up, we raised them on all the Hayao Miyazaki films. So like, you My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle, that's our family favorite right there. Which, you know, it doesn't get much more mainstream anime than that. But we, yeah, we love it.

Frank (16:09.698)
Yeah.

Chris Saunders (16:13.428)
Mm That's very cool. I think that when you when you have when you I do see that in your art, the story element of it, it's almost like a snapshot of this like fantasy happening where there's where there's really a push and pull between characters. And I that is that it's it's not quite a comic book itself, but it's like a frame out of out of something that's that's bigger than what we're seeing right now, which which draws people in.

Frank (16:38.135)
Yeah, yeah, the story aspect, I think. Yeah, that's a great point, Chris. I think that is something that really drew me in when I first saw your art was just thinking like there's a story here and it's sparks the imagination and I want that on my wall.

Justin Hillgrove (16:54.382)
I like it because it makes you think for a little bit longer. After you walk away, you're still thinking about it. If it's on your wall, you can look at it a little bit longer. It just gives you a little more something out of the image.

Chris Saunders (17:09.822)
wanted to, I mean, obviously you started to get some reactions to your art that were positive at some of these initial events, right? Maybe not the very first event, but like the next couple events, sounds like it started to go a little better than the first one. like, when did you get to the point where you're like, I think I could do just art. Like I could do art as a full-time thing.

Justin Hillgrove (17:21.678)
Yeah

Justin Hillgrove (17:35.246)
So I, at the time when I started doing this, I already kind of considered myself an artist. I was a graphic designer, worked at a magazine. We mostly did advertising. It wasn't like a cool magazine, you know. But I got to do page layout, but it didn't use up all my energy, my artistic energy. So I would get into work like an hour early to miss traffic, and I would paint in the mornings, and I would paint at lunch.

And then I would, you know, go home and hang out with the family and all that. And sometimes after everyone went to bed, I'd paint some more. But, well, there I go. I've already forgotten what the question was. What was the question again?

Chris Saunders (18:18.61)
When did this sort of become, when did you start to feel like this could be a full time thing?

Justin Hillgrove (18:21.012)
yes. So I started doing shows while I was still working there. And as I mentioned, my friend was actually doing them with me. And it took about five years until they got to the point where I could actually go, you know what, I don't have time to do both these jobs, because now I'm working two full time jobs. I've got kids, I've got a wife.

I used to have friends, which I don't see anymore because I'm so busy all the time. And that was at the point where I finally figured, okay, I can let go of my old job. And I told them, you know, I put in my two week notice, I guess. you know, the cool thing about that was my boss actually kept my two week notice. He didn't send it on to corporate.

Cause he knew that there was going to be some layoffs. And so I got laid off just two weeks later and I got severance and that severance was the only reason I made it through that first year. so I was always, I was always really appreciative. It was, it was, it was a cool move. Yeah.

Frank (19:27.16)
Whoa.

Chris Saunders (19:27.22)
Wow.

Frank (19:31.151)
That's kindness in the universe.

Chris Saunders (19:31.156)
That's amazing, the grace.

Yeah, that's that's the grace. You must have done some positive things with with that team and the people there, too, for them to want to treat you that way.

Justin Hillgrove (19:40.43)
I loved the people I worked with. They were great. They are great. They still kind of support me and we're still friends.

Chris Saunders (19:44.062)
That's awesome.

Chris Saunders (19:49.704)
And so that first year sounds like it was a hard year, a little bit of things. mean, I don't know what can you, what were some lessons out of that first year that made it so that, you know, one, you could get through and also like so that the next year was better.

Frank (19:49.774)
You

Justin Hillgrove (19:55.233)
Yeah.

Justin Hillgrove (20:05.986)
Well, you know, like anything, it takes trial and error to figure out if something's going to work. And with shows, that's especially true. You never know when you're doing a show, how it's going to hit. And, you know, once you do all the work you can, you don't really have any control over whether or not people buy your art. You can only do so much. And the hard part about that first year was suddenly I went from

any money I made at a show is extra money to, I better actually sell something or, you know, there's no groceries. So that was, that was the big challenge. And then it was just a matter of finding the right shows, finding the right balance. So I'm not doing so many shows that I can't, I don't have time to create. So the shows have to be big enough that it's worth my time. can't be doing a show every weekend or doing all the farmers markets. Cause you know, when am I going to

What am I going to create? I know people who do it, and I think they enjoy the shows more than I do. I love being by myself. I love being by myself in the studio painting and being surrounded by people. Because as much as I love persons, I don't necessarily like people. so it makes it a little challenging. Though at the same time, I got to say, you know,

In the wintertime, I'm not at shows. And when I go to those first shows and I see some of my regulars, I love it. I have like the best, the best, what would you call it? Like a tribe, I guess, that supports me. They're all super kind. They're really just the greatest people.

Chris Saunders (21:49.681)
awesome.

Frank (21:49.741)
So you fostered a community. mean, that is how did how did how did that come about?

Justin Hillgrove (21:56.322)
Well, know, 20 years is a long time to do anything really. And so I've got people that come to my booth every year that are like, Hey, I used to spend my babysitting money, you know, here in your booth. And now I've got three kids and I want to, you know, we're going to put stuff in the nursery or, or, know, there's just these people come and if, as long as you're genuine and you're, and you're really connecting with people and then they come again the next year, it's like they become friends.

And yeah, sometimes they buy stuff, sometimes they don't. Sometimes they run out of wall space and it's still great to see them when they come by and say hi.

Chris Saunders (22:33.692)
What events sound like are a big part of your, your overall business and a big foundation to it. Cause it sounds like you not only met a lot of clients through events initially, but also it's been a way to maintain relationships and clients over, over time. Are there any keys to events that you think made that easier for you, to actually accomplish going to these various events outside of just picking the right ones and kind of learning the hard way.

to know what ones, but were there any keys to events that made a difference?

Justin Hillgrove (23:06.406)
I'm not sure I understand the question,

Chris Saunders (23:12.54)
Well, I guess that's that's interesting because when I think about an event, I always think about from my it's probably because I'm not as much of an artist. I'm more of like a very tactical sales philosophy guy. So when I go to an event, I'm always thinking about like, how is this going to be the most effective way for me to make this profitable? But what I find interesting, sometimes we talk to artists and it's not necessarily that way. So I'm curious, what is your philosophy when you go for an event around like how to make it successful?

Justin Hillgrove (23:36.291)
Yeah

Justin Hillgrove (23:40.544)
I know, I get it now. You know, I think in general, I've been successful. One of the reasons is because I only paint stuff that I love. I remember, for example, I get asked all the time, like, Hey, have you, you know, are you doing this? Will you do this? A couple examples are like Game of Thrones when Game of Thrones was big, they're like, Hey, are gonna paint Game of Thrones? And I was like, I don't really care about Game of Thrones. Sorry, sorry. You know, I remember one kid came to came up to me and

Chris Saunders (23:42.004)
Yeah.

Frank (24:06.465)
Yeah.

Justin Hillgrove (24:10.094)
And he's like, Hey, did you paint any minions? And every once in I say something without realizing how I sound. then, you know, someone will be like, Hey dude, do you know how you just sounded? But he's like, Hey, did you paint any minions? And I'm like, well, you know, I actually only paint things that I like. And then I was like, Oh, oh, sorry. Yeah. I was like, yeah. Yeah. I've been Deadpool too. It's like, I just like, no, I don't have any Deadpool paintings. I don't really care about Deadpool. Sorry. Yeah.

Frank (24:26.413)
Hehehehehe

Chris Saunders (24:30.46)
Ha

Chris Saunders (24:37.598)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Hillgrove (24:40.396)
But yeah, so painting things that I really love that I can get excited about, painting my own original characters as well, or nods that are a little more subtle. Like I have a painting that's a nod to the old 1930s photo of the construction workers sitting on the bridge. So I've got one where they're all sitting on a log and it's all these Pacific Northwest style creatures just eating their lunches. Thank you.

Frank (25:07.863)
I love that one, by the way. That is one that's been on my mind of like, well, I got some space up near the ceiling. I could probably put something up. It's great.

Justin Hillgrove (25:15.318)
Yeah, so just having having the kind of stuff that that I love helps. And then again, just being genuine as I talk to people, being just kind, being nice, it makes a big difference. But also, I always after each show, after each season, I always look at my my setup, and I try to figure out a way to you know, what what what is going to make this more of an experience instead of just a

place that you can buy my art. Like when you step in, you know, let's have an experience. So yeah, I think that's pretty much it. and also I guess the other thing is I like to have things in there that everyone can afford. There's like a step at which anyone can afford. If a kid shows up and he's got three bucks, he or she has three bucks, then yeah, that kid can buy something. You know, if someone comes in and they want to drop,

$2,000 on an original or $265 on a signed and numbered canvas. There's that available too. Or just the good old $20 print for on the wall.

Frank (26:30.445)
You mentioned the different things that people can buy. Would you mind just kind of giving some examples or the categories of products that you have? Because you have quite a few on your website.

Justin Hillgrove (26:41.494)
I do. I love to make stuff. And one of the things about that is I love to paint, but you can't paint all the time. You can't do any one thing forever. So I like to have lots of projects that I'm working on so that I can jump from one to the other when I become either disinterested or uninfatuated with.

with the project or if I just need a break. I'm right handed on the computer, but left handed when I draw. even if I just need to give my hands a break. But I have pins and vinyl stickers. I also do playing cards. And the tabletop games, I usually have one or two of the games that I've worked on in there. I've got my comics. I've got prints.

Puzzles, I just started doing puzzles this year, which is really fun because I'm using Portland Puzzle Company, which it's been hard to find a... As someone who enjoys puzzles, my wife's really into puzzles. Anyone who's a puzzle snob knows that it actually has to be good. It can't be a terrible puzzle. So that's kind of the latest thing I've added to the armory, I guess.

Chris Saunders (27:54.718)
Mm-hmm.

Frank (28:00.343)
And I think I saw on your website coloring books.

Chris Saunders (28:00.372)
That's cool.

Justin Hillgrove (28:04.172)
Yeah, you I like to do sketchbooks every once. It's been a while, but yeah, I do. I've done a few different coloring books or sketchbooks.

Frank (28:14.671)
Yeah, yeah, it's a large variety and I can see the part of the business strategy behind that. You know, not only are you making stuff for your tribe, but you know, and the loyal fans and your audience that knows you. But there's an opportunity for other people to find you in different ways. You know, someone is looking for, you know, a coloring book. And they're like, I really love this style, you know, and then if they happen to go down that rabbit hole and find some of your other stuff, it's a really

I think it's a great way to think about being an artist and an entrepreneur. It's you just like you said, like things might feel stale. So it's nice to have multiple projects. But for the person that just likes to fixate and fixate, which there are plenty of nerds that are like that, you know, when you when you fixate on something you may and you just paint or whatever someone does, it's good to have other ways that people can find you. And I think that that's one of the other things that really stands out about your business is that you have diversified.

And how did that come about? Was there a moment where you thought, want to, was it for marketing purposes or something else?

Justin Hillgrove (29:23.502)
You know, it's really, like I said, I like to make stuff. I, my background is graphic design. When I was in high school in the early, early nineties, um, like 90, 91, 92, 93, um, there was no internet. So it's not like, like I, I, the only thing I was good at was art and I didn't know how one becomes a fine artist. It just wasn't really on my radar.

So the only thing I could think of is, guess maybe I'll try to be a graphic designer. And so that background in graphic design has been really beneficial, even though was kind of a fallback. I wouldn't trade it for anything just because, you know, like this year, this is my 20th year doing, I guess, sharing my art at all, 2025, because I started in 2005. Excuse me.

And so I'll be working on my 20 year book, which is exciting. And, you know, I put it all together in InDesign. I write all the text myself. It'll be a nice fat coffee table book. I did a 10 year book, you know, 10 years ago. So this will be like the next 10 years. So I'm actually looking forward to sitting down and starting to hash that out.

Chris Saunders (30:47.732)
That's awesome. I was curious because you brought it up like the time to create. What percentage of your time do you use for creation now versus say business stuff like I don't know like running the business kind of thing?

Justin Hillgrove (31:01.634)
Yeah, business stuff's the worst. Well, it's hard because I actually don't mind it when I'm doing it, but it's like I'm two different people. There's business Justin and then there's artist Justin and neither one get along. They don't like each other. While one is there, the other one's not allowed to encroach in his space. So yeah, I'll sit here and I'm in the studio right now. I'll sit in the studio and I'll work on business stuff if it has to be done and I'll just

Chris Saunders (31:03.813)
Yeah.

Chris Saunders (31:16.692)
Hmm.

Justin Hillgrove (31:31.554)
keep finding more business stuff I have to do. in December, I redesigned my website, you know, and did all that kind of stuff. And then there's all the end of year, beginning of year, owning a business thing and all of the stuff that goes with it. And then the last few days, like, I finally sat down and was like, okay, I'm going to finish these couple of paintings I was working on. started a brand new painting and actually just finished that.

yesterday. So yeah, it's, there's not a percentage, it's more like the when there's a need, that's the Justin that steps forward and, and does it but artists Justin is, I'd rather be that person. Yeah.

Chris Saunders (32:21.172)
Does it get tough kind of balancing those two things or does artist Justin get to win over sometimes and then business Justin like comes out like how do you manage those two Justins going on at the same time? there a way?

Justin Hillgrove (32:32.842)
It's, you know, in the in the summer when we're traveling and doing shows, it is it's tough. Some some years I find the perfect balance. You know, I for me, one thing I try to do is I get up early. You know, the mornings are mine. I get up at around five thirty. I try to go for a walk, whether it's outside or on a trail or on the treadmill in here. I try to sit down. I try to read a little bit.

to maybe meditate, do some sketching, and have that sacred hour of prep time that no matter what else happens during the day, whether it's I get stuck on a project, I have to do a bunch of paperwork, which is like my kryptonite, I still had that hour of time.

Chris Saunders (33:28.468)
When you think about the work that's put into create the art, does that influence your pricing strategies in terms of business? Because I think one thing we often talk to artists about is when they started off, they maybe were under pricing their work because they were just starting and then they had to kind of learn where the pricing is. And I'm curious your philosophy on pricing when you factor in your work versus what the market will bear, all that kind of

Justin Hillgrove (33:57.78)
Yeah, I started pretty low on everything. In fact, I was even selling small originals for like 25 bucks when I first started. They were like, you know, little guys. sold one of my first paintings was a bigger piece and I sold it for 100 bucks. And I was fine with it because I had a job. I didn't know any better, you know, that like I should be paid for my time and all that kind of stuff that is so obvious now.

But it was a hobby at first. And as I realized, you know, hey, I could sell stuff. It needs to be sustainable. It needs to be something where I can actually support myself. know, my time is worth not just paying me minimum wage, but also making sure that, you know, I can actually support my family. I did have to raise prices, but at the same time, I've been really careful to try to keep my, like my prints have been $20.

pretty much all along because even with inflation and everything costing more, lot of the people, you know, my tribe, I want them to be able to afford a print. Even the originals, I could keep raising the prices, but I think I've, I don't like the idea of raising them any more than they already are because I've already priced some people out.

And I don't want to go so far that if someone really wanted it, you know, that they wouldn't be able to afford an original.

Frank (35:29.761)
You really care about about your tribe and your audience. I can hear it and making sure that there is something available for anyone.

Justin Hillgrove (35:39.608)
Well, you know, they're the ones that support me. They're the reason I get to do it. And I think just having gratitude makes you appreciate and enjoy even the process. You know, while I'm sitting there painting, it's kind of like, I can't wait to, you know, show these to my people. You know, this one's, this one, they're really gonna like this one. you know, maybe it's, I wonder if they'll like this one.

Chris Saunders (35:57.682)
you

Frank (36:05.003)
Yeah, it's I bring it up because it's kind of a it's kind of a beautiful reoccurring thread that we hear with artists that they have an active community and they engage with it. And I was curious what you do, like what tools maybe it's tools you use or what events and how my turn.

So I'm wondering what tools maybe you use or community spaces you use to connect with your tribe.

Justin Hillgrove (36:36.29)
Yeah, you know, just, guess I have a circuit of shows that I do that some of them are local, some of them are down in California or Salt Lake or Boise. So I have my regular spots. usually stop Emerald City Comic-Con, of course. I've been doing that show for over 10 years now. And then like we have a great artist community up where we are, which just a couple of years ago,

friend Nikki and some other friends formed called Snomish Artist Community. And so, you know, we kind of gather once a month or they do and I occasionally cameo because I tend to be out of town or just feeling kind of hermity. But I also do an open studio at least once a year where people actually come to the studio and they hang out and they, you know, my wife

makes cookies and we have a like a once a year sale on just the the prints and all the merch and stuff not on originals but it's really fun just having people come out and Snohomish does a Snohomish artist studio tour also in the fall where you know people last the last couple years they've even been able to get on like a like a little shuttle bus and go around and visit some of the studios and and then of course you know Instagram Facebook which

I have a lot of followers. mean, everything's relative. I have a little over 10,000 followers and I know maybe 300 people see any given post that I might drop. But I get that not as many people are checking it and it's hard to scroll past that many ads and all of that. So that's not as good a way to connect, but I still have my regulars that'll comment on there.

It's really fun to hear from them.

Chris Saunders (38:34.793)
Mm-hmm.

Frank (38:35.951)
You mentioned the. The different the different kind of live events that you will partake in, and then you mentioned how. You know, you'll have some cookies made and it made me wonder about your team and what your team looks like. So pivoting the question here a little bit from the tribe aspect to more about the team that you have and what what does your team currently look like now and what do you rely on them for?

Justin Hillgrove (39:04.418)
Yeah, so like right out of the gate, there's a lot of local galleries and shops like the one in Ballard that you sell my stuff at. So that will represent me and I just, I'm really thankful for them because a lot of people see, a lot of time that's the first time they come across my art is they come into a.

a gallery like that and they'll see that and then they'll later connect with me either on Instagram or see me at a show and be like, hey, I saw your stuff here. And so yeah, very appreciative of those people. So I kind of, I consider them as part of the team, but otherwise it's usually me and my wife, Jessica, is great. She helps me with order fulfillment. She helps me get ready for shows. She does a lot of packaging of the prints to get ready for the shows.

She drives everywhere. Well, she gets carsick when I drive and I hate driving anyway. So it's like this beautiful, yeah, it's fantastic. So yeah, we'll do these road trips or do the local shows. My kids grew up as art carnies, just art carny kids running around the shows. I'd usually bring one with me to a show and it was great with them.

Frank (40:00.065)
Wow.

Frank (40:03.703)
I see. Perfect.

Chris Saunders (40:04.724)
So win-win.

Justin Hillgrove (40:25.23)
Most of them are older now. I have four kids. The youngest is 15, the oldest is 20 something. 22 or 23, I don't know. Once you get over it, yeah, I'm not too worried about it. He knows how old he is, that's all that matters. I don't even know how old I am. But yeah, it was this great bonding experience to be able to.

Frank (40:37.677)
We'll edit in the correct age. Yeah.

Chris Saunders (40:39.7)
Hahaha

Frank (40:42.435)
You

Frank (40:46.575)
Yeah, that does happen.

Justin Hillgrove (40:52.45)
bring a kid with me on a road trip. Like, hey, let's drive down to Half Moon Bay. You get to visit your aunt that you almost never get to see. And we'll stay with her. And we'll go have lunch. And then we'll go set up and do a show. And it was just for 20 years, the kids just going to different shows and helping me out. As they're older now, they don't really do the shows as much with me now. So Jessica's kind of taken over that.

part of it. know, Emerald City Comic Con comes around and of course it's like, I want to help. I want to help.

Chris Saunders (41:29.108)
Mm hmm. Right. That's a pretty cool place to be at that age too, right? So yeah.

Justin Hillgrove (41:32.918)
yeah, it's like, you you're saving up all your, all your, all your monies that you earn helping, helping out in the studio. And then you, you get to blow it all at Emerald City Comic Con.

Chris Saunders (41:43.54)
Yeah, that's awesome. mean, it's what it sounds to me like you really like your life as far as being a professional artist. Yeah. And I think that that that's important for people to hear is that one, you can become a professional artist and and and and not only that, but it actually is a really great way to to be able to live and do your life. I mean, what is your favorite part of your life now? Being this successful, nerdy.

Justin Hillgrove (41:50.286)
I do, I do like my life, yeah.

Chris Saunders (42:13.044)
printer on an artist.

Justin Hillgrove (42:13.362)
Yeah. You know, most my favorite part of my life, it's a little broad. You know, I love taking a break and playing Smash Bros with my kids. You know, I love in the evenings when my wife and I sit and watch Sandwiches of History on Instagram every night. You know, but I also love as far as this part.

goes, you know, I just, I love painting, I love to sit here and I love the whole process. I love the feel of the brush on the canvas, you know, that little bit of give when you're working on stretch canvas, I love mixing the colors. Usually I'm mixing them right on the canvas. It's just, it's great. I mean, after 20 years, I still really enjoy it. And you know, there's been years where I've burnt out. And in fact, thinking back on

you know, when there was all the shutdowns and suddenly there was no shows that happened in March, right when those of us who do festivals are at our poorest, right? We've already spent all our money. There's really no shows unless you're traveling to Florida or Texas or I don't really know because I don't really, I only go places I can drive usually. And when it all shut down,

It was almost like it was like a relief for a little bit because I just I was a little I was a little worn out. And then, yeah, I didn't have any money. But I hit up my brother in law and was like, hey, you know, he's a handyman. He also does metal art. And I worked with him for a little bit. We did some condo renovations and I was just like having the time of my life doing condo like a yeah, just some kind of renovation. I don't know anything. He was teaching me stuff like here's how you change a light fixture.

And was great. then at that point, I was very, just very blessed. I got a call from someone I had worked with doing toy design in the past. And she was like, Hey, we have this toy design or we have this toy line. We need somebody to take it over. Can you take it over? And I was like, yeah, I can do that. And so that's what I, that's what I worked on during those COVID years. and I still, I still do contract toy design. It's something I've

Justin Hillgrove (44:38.89)
when I was a kid, you know, I didn't want to be an astronaut, obviously, because heights and claustrophobia, it's like mixing the two worst things, right? It's terrible, I just don't get it. But I did want to be a toy designer. would draw, my dad would bring home these packets of paper from the waste bin, the recycle bin where he worked. And so there would be all these like,

Frank (44:45.295)
It really is.

Chris Saunders (44:46.974)
haha

Frank (44:51.887)
you

Justin Hillgrove (45:05.218)
technical things on the back and I would flip them over and I would make these books and I would design these toys and all their accessories and all their weapons and they were like action figures.

Chris Saunders (45:16.179)
Cool. Neat.

the you mentioned before getting into galleries and I know that that sounds to me like it's been a significant not insignificant part of your success is being seen right and and getting into those places where you can be seen and people can experience your art how did you get into galleries like is it I don't know how it works in the art world so

Justin Hillgrove (45:38.968)
Yeah, you know, I'm not even sure I know how it works. A lot of times it's just, you know, being in the right spot. Sometimes it's being at a show and someone who owns, actually that happens a lot. I'll be at a show and someone will be like, hey, I have a gallery here. And as long as I don't like to have my stuff in more than one place in a city area because I don't want it to compete against itself. I want to support the business owner.

Chris Saunders (45:42.513)
Ha

Justin Hillgrove (46:07.936)
in the best way that I can. But I think most of them have come about that way. One in particular I remember, the shop in Ballard that you're probably thinking of is called Monster. And my friend Mike and I were at a, it was like a, it was an art rave, which I had never done before. I don't even remember how we ended up doing this thing. It started at like nine and it went till four or five in the morning, which

Frank (46:20.206)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Hillgrove (46:37.438)
Before we started recording, I told you how my IQ halves, know, every starting at four, like every couple of hours, I just get dumber and dumber. But yeah, we did this, we did this show and it was crazy. There was all this dancing. It was dark. was, we were kind of painting and hanging out with our paintings. And we just, we met this, this just wonderful person who I think she was walking around on stilts at first, and then she popped down and

she was telling us that she was opening this shop and if we wanted to be in it. So a lot of just like weird interactions like that that turn into, hey, I guess I'm in this place now.

Chris Saunders (47:18.386)
Art raves, that's awesome, yeah. So we'll have to add that to our list of tips for people to get out there. Right place, right time, yeah.

Justin Hillgrove (47:19.534)
Yeah.

Justin Hillgrove (47:24.494)
It's one of those things where you never know what connection you're going to make. Even with Comic-Con, I mentioned I do a lot better at the open air shows versus the convention type shows. But you just never know what kind of connection you're going to make. And I've made some of the best connections at Emerald City.

Frank (47:24.676)
Good night.

Chris Saunders (47:48.638)
I think there's such a lesson in that to be a successful artist, or really almost a successful anything, you need to be open to opportunities that are around you. And sometimes those come in the form of people that you meet, right? And what I imagine is that, you you probably treat everybody awesome, right? When they come up and look at your art and they're talking and the thing is, right? When you have that philosophy,

Justin Hillgrove (48:10.914)
I tried to.

Chris Saunders (48:17.338)
it remains, it allows you to be open because you never know who you're talking to, right? Or who you're going to meet through these experiences. Cause what I'm hearing is like, I just met these people through doing the things I was doing, but because they liked you, they liked your art opportunities wound up showing up that you could take advantage of whether it be going and being able to work with somebody, having your stuff at a gallery or, you know, opening up other shows or other opportunities to meet.

Justin Hillgrove (48:23.607)
It's true.

Chris Saunders (48:46.77)
other artists like that's a, just, hear, we hear about that all the time on our podcasts from different businesses and not just artists, but I think there's something really valuable about if you're, if you're an entrepreneur, just being open to finding those opportunities around you.

Justin Hillgrove (49:03.02)
And you have to make those opportunities a lot of times. I think growing up, I thought in order to be a fine artist, it's like there had to be, you just had to be really good for one thing, which isn't true, by the way. It's so relative anyway. Really your stuff has to connect with people. That's more important than actually it being good, if that makes sense. But I used to think that if you were good enough, someone,

Chris Saunders (49:15.783)
haha

Frank (49:16.323)
You

Justin Hillgrove (49:31.71)
some like magical success fairy would fly over and just pick you up out of the crowd and get you into galleries. And you would be like, OK, now you're an artist, you're successful, here's a bunch of money. When the reality is you have to create those opportunities, you have to go out, you have to do things. Even that first story I told about meeting Mike over in Funko.

I think about how my life would be different if completely against my own nature, I hadn't just walked right in and introduced myself and said hi. And they ended up doing some toy design as well as starting to paint because of just meeting someone who got me excited about painting.

Chris Saunders (50:25.876)
It's amazing. There's so many times in our lives where I look back on moments like that in my life too, where, wow, if I hadn't have taken action on this one thing, or if I hadn't have, you know, talked to this one person or, and sometimes it is things that you wouldn't normally do. Like I listened to this podcast about dog training. I don't even own a dog, but in there, uh, it got me the lead to where I'm working now, you know, and the, and the opportunity I've been in for like 10 years. So like these kinds of things happen, I think when you,

Justin Hillgrove (50:51.165)
that's awesome.

Chris Saunders (50:55.314)
I don't know if it's the universe resonating you say that or you just make things happen by being out in the world and doing stuff. That's we gotta be, we gotta remain open to that and an embrace when it comes in. But yeah, that's awesome. That's, that's good. Good, good stuff to share with people.

Frank (51:12.623)
Speaking of opportunities, hope I'm not misremembering this, but I think I've seen that you've done some large canvases, but haven't you also done actual work on walls inside office? Yeah, like actual like.

Chris Saunders (51:27.316)
murals.

Justin Hillgrove (51:29.166)
Yeah, so, yeah, one of my first ones I did was for Facebook and it was just because one of my tribe, they were doing some kind of internal vote and he was like, hey, you what about this artist? And a lot of, I'm local, you know, they were all up here and they just had an internal vote and they were like, yeah, we want Justin to do a mural. And so he ended up contacting me and.

Frank (51:32.003)
How did those come about?

Justin Hillgrove (51:59.604)
I ended up getting to do that. And then because of that, I was able to do another one. And then I did the one in London for them, which was really fun because, you know, I haven't done a lot of traveling. That was the first time I'd been to Europe, first and only time, I guess. And so, yeah, and same thing with I did a really big mural in Altoona, Iowa. And it was I had met the mayor of Altoona while I was doing a show in Salt Lake.

He bought a piece that was hanging up on his wall. was the, if you're familiar, it's the piece called The Night Max Wore His Wolf Suit. And it's the characters from Where the Wild Things Are and they're in a police lineup. And I put them all in the positions from the poster from the usual suspects. But he thought it would be hilarious if that was on the back of their police station. And I agree, you know, it is hilarious. And so I, yeah, I ended up flying out there with, or...

Chris Saunders (52:45.918)
Yeah.

Justin Hillgrove (52:57.198)
driving initially actually, which huge mistake. Don't drive to Altoona from the Seattle area. It's too long of a drive. I drove there with my friend Mike and my son Calvin and the three of us, you know, we rented a lift and did our thing. It was crazy. It was a lot of fun.

Frank (53:20.057)
Can you speak a little more to the experience? I'm wondering if, you know, maybe somebody is listening that is interested or fascinated with the idea of doing mural art and its differences from, you know, obviously it's bigger, it's bigger, but what is something about it that you enjoy or, you know, some lessons that came out of it from your experience?

Justin Hillgrove (53:41.098)
Yeah, so I've done, since then I've done quite a few and a lot of them, like my, you can't tell from my camera, but there's several murals in my studio. If you're on my website, you'll kind of see, I think I have pictures of them on there somewhere. But there's nothing that changes the feel and ambience of a room like a mural. It just totally changes the feel. Our living room in our house, we painted trees with just all these cats.

And it's just like really subtle. It's like this limited palette, maybe two or three grays and blacks. And it's just cool. It's fun. I think the important thing is, you you keep it, for me, I should say, because everybody's different in how they paint. For me, I like to keep it simpler when I'm doing murals. I like the more...

solid broad strokes. You you still got the details. It's still fun to hide things in the murals so that, you know, if you're standing there, you're like, hey, there's like, there's like a, you know, a skull or a bottle and there's something in it. There's something written on this. There's some dead robots, like just decomposing below this tree. But yeah, it's just, there's nothing quite like it. It's, and it's fun.

Just have fun with it, do it at your own house first to kind of, cause my very first mural was that one at Facebook. And I wish I had done it at my house first, just to kind of break myself in and get a feel for it.

Chris Saunders (55:07.124)
Thank

Frank (55:17.263)
Was it kind of nerve wracking?

Justin Hillgrove (55:19.48)
Well, you got all these people looking at you, or not even looking at you, like they're on their computers, they're like working and stuff. The office was beautiful, there's like food, it's crazy. I don't know, it's like being at a, like having a butler in a mansion and they're like cooking you things. I mean, there was no butler, but it's just, I'm used to working at home or some of my old jobs, you when I...

was slinging pizza at Little Caesars or whatever. But yeah, was kind of nerve wracking. And it's like, do they even like what I'm doing? And then I'd go on later and someone would comment and I'd be like, they did like it. That's nice. And it depended on like what office I was into, like the London office. You know, they were like, hey, trying to, you know, get me to try to play pool with them and stuff like that. Just really friendly and

Chris Saunders (56:04.435)
hehe

Justin Hillgrove (56:18.648)
example.

Frank (56:18.745)
That doesn't sound like a very Seattle vibe, you know?

Justin Hillgrove (56:21.346)
Yeah, you know, but I mean, don't get me wrong, everybody was cool there. They were they were really nice. It was just there wasn't very much interaction.

Frank (56:29.549)
Yeah, no, I, you know, living here, I get that. I totally understand. I kind of wanted to switch the topic. So. Wanted to talk about how you navigate with your art. Sometimes you borrow elements from intellectual property. How do you navigate that as an artist and a business?

Justin Hillgrove (56:53.72)
Yeah. you, do you mean like legally or whatever? Yeah. So I, I'll definitely come out and say that it's, it is, it's a gray area for sure. but I, I try to stick to two things and that's either having it either be parody or, or trying to follow the fair use rules, which are things like, I, I make sure it's transformative. I make sure it's very clear that it is not.

Frank (56:57.335)
Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah.

Justin Hillgrove (57:23.32)
coming from the originating company. It can't hurt them financially in any way. I don't slander them. I'm only doing IPs that I love. These are ones where I'm encouraging people like, you haven't seen this? You should go out and see it. You should go out and buy it. You should go support this. And does that make it so that I don't get sued or whatever? It's not a protection.

Chris Saunders (57:51.656)
No.

Justin Hillgrove (57:52.846)
But I don't feel bad about it. And a lot of the pieces I do are actually for gallery, like group shows. I contribute a lot of pieces to Spoke Art Gallery. They're in LA and New York. And they'll do a annual Miyazaki tribute show. So a lot of my pieces that have those elements from the Hayao Miyazaki films, those will be.

Frank (57:53.1)
It doesn't hurt.

Justin Hillgrove (58:21.618)
destined for that or, you know, I did a couple pieces called 8-bit heroes and 8-bit bosses that were the characters from some of the first video games that I played when I was a kid. It had like Mario and Link and Kirby and some other people like Samus. And that was for IM8bit Gallery's 10-year anniversary where they were celebrating, you know, the games that we

I guess, you know, the games that made us. So, yeah, that's pretty much how I navigated, I guess.

Frank (58:59.855)
Yeah, it sounds sounds like a safe way to do it. Yeah, the whole parody vein. You know, I mean, it's it's your art is. I wouldn't ever think of it as a parody, but when you say it, you know, it works and it's just one of those moments.

Justin Hillgrove (59:16.61)
Well, sometimes there's a joke, you know, like, so one of my, I don't know if it's one of my favorites, but one that makes me laugh is the Charlie Brown, you know, it's the army of darkness Charlie Brown where he's on top of the, he's on top of the, the, the little dog house. He's got the, he's got his boomstick raised above his head. He's got his shirt is torn. He's got the chainsaw hand and he's got a little curl on his, of hair on his chest that matches the curl on his forehead.

Frank (59:19.854)
Yeah.

Frank (59:28.929)
Yes.

Justin Hillgrove (59:46.348)
which is actually my favorite detail of the painting. And yeah, I mean, it's kind of a joke, but it's also, I love Army of Darkness, love it. Yeah, and I love peanuts. I love Charlie Brown. I actually did a, what do call it? Like an artist in residency at the Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa years ago. And.

Chris Saunders (59:50.558)
That's awesome.

Chris Saunders (01:00:09.954)
wow.

Justin Hillgrove (01:00:13.678)
So I was doing like painting demos and just hanging out and it was great. It's a really small gallery, a lot of fun. And I got home and was walking dead and just kind of come out and I did this other painting with Charlie Brown and the he was hiding behind the doghouse with a shotgun and holding Snoopy back. And there's all these all the other kids are like all zombie and walking by. And I remember getting an email from the guy from the gallery, like the head. I don't know what you call him.

curator or something, really nice guy. He emailed me and he said, Hey, I just saw the new peanuts piece you did. And I'm like, and he's like, I love it. And I made these like glow in the dark shirts, just like a really short run of them too. And I sent him one of the shirts and he was super excited. And he's like, you know, I love this. I probably won't wear it to the any of the parties because you know, Mrs. Schultz will be there. But, but yeah, so

Chris Saunders (01:00:50.557)
Yeah

Frank (01:00:53.159)
wow.

Chris Saunders (01:01:10.174)
This this makes me want to ask more about where for you inspiration comes from because it's it's always a thing for artists, right? As you know, I've heard from people where they are, they show up every day and they just kind of work and one some days it works better than others. And other times people have inspiration hit and they like finish a piece in one day. And it's just like like, which would you say you're more of or if you had to describe your process, how would it work?

Justin Hillgrove (01:01:39.338)
Yeah, well, know, just like there's I mentioned there's business Justin and there's art Justin really are Justin is two people I've got idea. I've got I've got idea Justin and then I've got production me. And when I'm sitting down and painting, like I'll have a I listen to audiobooks all the time. I'll have an audiobook in I don't really need my brain. I already know what I'm doing. I know exactly what the paints are going to do. I've been using the same like

eight colors to paint everything for the last 20 years. So, you when I put stuff together, I know what it's going to do. And so it's like this flow state, but I can't come up with ideas when I'm in that mode, though. A lot of times as I'm working, you know, the characters will kind of almost have conversations and something new will pop up and the piece will end up different than how I started.

but there's also times where I just feel like coming up with ideas. I'm having all these great thoughts happening at once. And so I mentioned sometimes I like to sketch in the mornings. I do a lot of my best idea work while I'm at shows when I can't paint. And what I do is I paint, I'll fill pages with just, actually, let's see. I'll fill pages with lots of little sketches.

that'll just be, you know, they're just thumbnails. And sometimes they're really stupid. I don't know if you can see that, but that says, Parasic Park. And it's a cat, you know, it's stupid. There's like a kitten and she's got like a box full of free babies. sometimes the ideas are like that. Sometimes they're great ideas. I just finished

Frank (01:03:21.196)
You

Chris Saunders (01:03:27.166)
Yeah

Justin Hillgrove (01:03:36.718)
painting I told you about, or I told you I just finished a couple paintings and one of them was, it always starts with like one of those thumbnails. And then when I actually am like, okay, what do I want to paint? I'll just look through my sketchbook. You know, I don't have to come up from zero to nothing. I have a starting point already. I'll just, I'll page through. I'll be like, okay, what do I want to work on right now? What hits the vibe that I want right now?

And sometimes those drawings are more of a seed of an idea than a fully fleshed out thing. And I might be thinking, I want to be doing, you know, something that has to do with the seasons or something that's, you know, like rainy and, you know, it's, it's, it's raining all the time right now. So I want to do something rainy. And so can find one of those things and then I make it work for what I want to do. But yeah, I'm going to show you this piece I just finished just cause I, it's, I think it's hilarious.

It's called, so it's Super Mario, you know, it's obviously Super Mario. You get the mother alien there, he's jumping on the top of a xenomorph there. You've got princesses here with the piranha plant coming out of her chest. yeah, same with poor Luigi and Toad there. You know, sometimes you're just...

Chris Saunders (01:04:37.437)
sure.

Frank (01:04:38.638)
Whoa.

Chris Saunders (01:04:40.361)
Look at that.

Chris Saunders (01:04:44.242)
he's got like an alien, right?

Chris Saunders (01:04:54.228)
That's awesome.

Frank (01:04:54.425)
Oof.

Justin Hillgrove (01:05:02.836)
watching aliens and someone says game over man and suddenly you're like my gosh game over man is that not the greatest title for a painting ever like with Mario in it so in that case it was like the the title came before a piece I'm like man I gotta do something with Mario and I even toyed with you know Ripley she's she's female you know every we love Ripley

Chris Saunders (01:05:05.332)
How did no one make that connection? That's like so great.

Frank (01:05:08.603)
Great idea!

That's so good.

Chris Saunders (01:05:17.64)
Yeah, absolutely.

Justin Hillgrove (01:05:32.13)
So maybe I put Princess in that role instead and I kind of toyed with it and I just, didn't like it as much. I just wanted to go with the iconic fire Mario. So, right.

Chris Saunders (01:05:42.343)
Yeah, the-

Frank (01:05:44.057)
What would Mario do? Yeah.

Chris Saunders (01:05:45.46)
And the iconic thing and as soon as you say the name of it, I'm like, my God, this whole thing just connects.

Frank (01:05:52.196)
Yeah, it's a good story.

Justin Hillgrove (01:05:52.886)
And sometimes it comes together like that. And sometimes I just, I sit on a piece and it's like, I don't know what the heck to call this. I almost feel like there's a little bit of pressure. Like, you know, lot of my titles are, are actually pretty clever and, and I got nothing.

Chris Saunders (01:06:11.584)
That's the one that is the thing that happens as you as you create stuff that's clever, people can come to expect a certain level of cleverness. Then you're like, I mean, I have to now be clever all the time.

Frank (01:06:18.914)
You

Justin Hillgrove (01:06:22.936)
Well, you that's one thing I've learned is that every time you sit down to paint a painting, when you first start, it's like, this has to be the greatest, most best painting ever made that I've ever made. And it's going to be amazing. And if it's not, I'm going to be sad. And you got to shed that and just go, you know what? This is what I feel like painting. It doesn't matter if anyone else likes it. I'm just going to enjoy it. And I know if I do, someone is going to appreciate it, even if it's not.

you know, entire fan base, maybe it's only gonna get hit like a little niche and that's okay.

Frank (01:06:59.161)
totally get that. I experience that often, whether I'm writing and it's for like a tabletop game or if I'm creating videos. So I do product photography and stuff. And sometimes I get a product and I'm like, I got some cool ideas. This is going to look awesome. This is going to be my best work yet. I'm going to raise the bar. And then I get into it I'm like, what the hell am I doing? This sucks. Like I am so disappointed in myself. And it is a, it is a humbling and hard journey almost every time. I mean, I don't have 20 years.

in the game of doing this kind of work. It's kind of it's kind of reassuring to hear you say that and definitely something I'm going to try to practice. How did you come to that realization? Was it just, you know, you know, good old therapy or was there a friend that said something?

Justin Hillgrove (01:07:46.415)
You know, it's, it's, goes back to that whole, I'm not my art, you know, if someone insults my art or likes my art, they're not talking about me. It's, it's a separate entity. And, just over time and, putting that into practice and not becoming so emotionally involved. I don't want to say that I don't put a lot of emotion into my art because I do, but, but it's

But like painting, you know, it's a verb, right? I do it, I did it, it was an activity, it was fun, it was great, I get to share it. But then I'm done and it's separate from me. yeah, yeah. And that's really important. It's really hard, especially for new artists to see that. You know, I've had some people say some really mean things. Mostly people are really nice. But I remember, you know, me and Mike, we would collect.

Frank (01:08:29.183)
ego. Yeah, yeah, right.

Justin Hillgrove (01:08:44.302)
those mean things. You hear people go, oh, I love your art. It's like, oh, that's cool. But then you hear someone, I had someone come into my booth and they got really close to a painting and look over at me and go, I can't imagine having to look at this every day. And I was like, oh my gosh, that is amazing. And I immediately called Mike, I'm like, you're never gonna believe what this lady said. And he's like, oh, that's the greatest thing. we were writing them, we had like a book we were writing them in.

Frank (01:08:57.017)
the fuck?

Chris Saunders (01:08:57.273)
my god.

Frank (01:09:09.081)
You

Justin Hillgrove (01:09:12.846)
I was like, that's fantastic, man.

Frank (01:09:14.713)
What a great attitude to have.

Chris Saunders (01:09:15.238)
It's yeah, well, sometimes when people are mean, it's like so mean, it's funny. Like it kind of it's like.

Justin Hillgrove (01:09:17.39)
It's so funny.

Frank (01:09:22.787)
We got that we had that once there was a Twitter storm and it was Chris had a great perspective at one point and I'm just like I'm freaking out and he's like who got godless couch fucks like what where is this coming from.

Justin Hillgrove (01:09:37.401)
wow, yeah.

Chris Saunders (01:09:38.576)
It's well, the art of the insult is in itself a weird art form that I can appreciate. Even if I happen to be the target of it, there are times when people you could tell all they're trying to do is exercise that art form to its fullest and not necessarily, you know, they're not, I don't know that it's personal. Do you know what mean? Like I feel like that people. Yeah.

Justin Hillgrove (01:09:42.958)
Yeah.

Justin Hillgrove (01:09:59.022)
Yeah, no, it's definitely not. Because a lot of times you're like, you know I'm the artist, right? I mean, sure, I've had people walk into the booth and be like, hey, do you work here? And I'm like, I guess, yeah, I guess I do. I'm that you mention it. But yeah, I mean, it could be worse, though. I mean, you could be them. I mean, imagine that being your day as you got online to insult someone. what a, I feel bad for them.

Chris Saunders (01:10:04.882)
Ha

Chris Saunders (01:10:09.364)
I mean, I own everything,

Frank (01:10:13.731)
Never thought of it that way.

Chris Saunders (01:10:18.142)
Yeah. Yeah.

Frank (01:10:23.396)
Yeah.

Chris Saunders (01:10:25.48)
Yeah, they think of that, right there and there, I'm going to go find an artist. I can say that to you. It's like, it is, it is, it is crazy how people will probably agonize and think about how they're going to best present their, their, their, insult with the most impact, but no.

Frank (01:10:41.101)
Maybe they have their own book of creative insults and ideas. you've got your sketches. That's actually, think chat GPT, we had a talk a long time ago about, you know, chat GPT for dating tips and it had an impressive amount of moral guidance throughout the way. And so I wonder if AI would be like, you know, that's not.

Justin Hillgrove (01:10:45.058)
Well, now they have, you know, chat GPT to help them like, Hey, come up with a really creative info.

Chris Saunders (01:10:48.66)
That's that's true, yeah.

Justin Hillgrove (01:11:01.442)
Mmm.

Yeah, it's like, this is against my guidelines. Yeah, I'm sorry.

Chris Saunders (01:11:04.98)
But it's not funny. I will say it's not funny though. Like it's like it's good at technical humor. Like if you love puns and you need 10,000 puns, can come. You can get a lot of puns out of a chat GBT. It can sometimes be useful for coming up with titles for things that kind of thing, but it is not necessarily. I wouldn't call it funny because it doesn't really get humor. Yeah.

Frank (01:11:08.803)
Yeah.

Justin Hillgrove (01:11:27.63)
Well, it's not fun on purpose, but we, so my, my local gaming group, we were trying to come up with a cool name for our, for our, you know, our, little mercenary team, right. And we, we put in a few things that we had done like, well, you know, the dragons have showed up several times and we've run away each time. It was our fault that one of the villages got burned. We, we do tend to run away. you know, we try to help people. We're just not very successful. We're unlucky.

Chris Saunders (01:11:39.401)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Hillgrove (01:11:55.906)
So, you we typed all that in and we're like, come up with 10 names for our group. And my gosh, I wish I could, I wish I had screenshot that because we were just cracking up so hard. It was like the charbroiled crusaders and like just all these things. that was the other thing we inputted. It's like my character, he loved to cook. And we, we, a lot of times we worked at this like local greasy spoon just in the kitchen. That was like our, I don't know, our home.

Frank (01:12:10.754)
You

Chris Saunders (01:12:10.772)
You

Chris Saunders (01:12:22.494)
day job because you

Frank (01:12:23.31)
Your bass.

Justin Hillgrove (01:12:24.524)
Yep, it was our base, Penelope, the owner, you we worked in her kitchen. And yeah, was just, man, it was so funny.

Frank (01:12:33.165)
So what'd you guys settle on for the name?

Justin Hillgrove (01:12:35.47)
You know, my character's name was Bucket, because he always wore a bucket on his head. And which there's a whole story with that that I won't make everyone listen to. But I kept shooting for Bucket Brigade and no one else would have it. You know, they're like, no, no, I don't think we want the Bucket Brigade. I don't think we ever ended up resolving our name.

Frank (01:12:42.485)
god, this is good.

Chris Saunders (01:13:03.764)
Bucket Brigade does sound pretty cool, but.

Frank (01:13:07.681)
It is kind of like Bob Seeger in the Silver Bullet Band. It's kind of just like, okay, Bob Seeger's in it. And who else?

Justin Hillgrove (01:13:14.838)
right? Well, and it's not like I'm the star of the... I mean, I was... I'm the rogue. I always play the rogue. Well, that's my usual go-to. Halfling rogue is my... If I have to, like, hey, you've got 10 minutes to make a character, then, you know, it's going to be a halfling rogue.

Chris Saunders (01:13:14.909)
Yeah.

Frank (01:13:32.003)
Yeah, out of the pocket. Out of the back pocket. You've got one ready.

Chris Saunders (01:13:35.326)
Yeah, I really like the phrase you said around I am not my art. You know, I think that there's there's. There's a lot of people that associate their identity to things outside of themselves in results, and sometimes that's in the case of business like I am how much money I make or I'm how my how successful my business is and you know, we're all in our own ways trying to create our own art, whether that's visual art or artistry happens to be.

you know, we're doing podcasting or, know, some people do music. You know, I do some music. And so for me, I'm thinking like, it's not easy to always keep that mindset, right? Is that something that for you, do you have a community around you that kind of helps with that? Or is there any part of this that you do any hacks for people who just like need to be reminded to keep the right mindset?

Justin Hillgrove (01:14:29.582)
I haven't really had a hard time with it in a really long time, and I don't know when I finally made that distinction. To be perfectly honest, if I heard more mean things than nice things, I don't know that I could so easily say that it's no big deal. But for the most part, people are nice. People are nice to me, with the occasional person who says something that's mean. But in that same regard,

I hear from people all the time like, people are always saying how great you are, how great your art is, or whatever. You probably get a big head or whatever. And it's like, in the same way that someone telling me that my art is terrible doesn't make me feel worse, someone telling me my art is good doesn't make me feel like I'm appreciative.

but I don't think I'm better because of it, if that makes sense. And having it be both ways, I think is important. If you're still like, well, if someone says something bad about me, then I'm gonna shrug that off. But if someone says something nice about me, then I'm gonna take that in. I think you almost have to choose, like, is it real or is it not? And for me, it's not, I just, I don't care.

Chris Saunders (01:15:49.991)
I know.

Justin Hillgrove (01:15:58.414)
I just, care about having a genuine experience with people, enjoying what I do and yes, making enough money to keep groceries in the fridge and paying the mortgage and still being able to do what I love.

Chris Saunders (01:16:17.94)
The the author Elizabeth Gilbert had a Ted talk where she talked about this this thing where ancient Greeks would always like in a great and brilliant performance when that happened, they would praise the gods because the gods showed up through your performance to make it as brilliant as it was. And when it was not a great performance, it was because the gods didn't show up. Right. And so it was never wholly on the artist to be

the be all end all of the production for whatever they were putting up. there is some, I think that's what you're talking about is that distinction of like, if you're gonna take credit for the good, then you're gonna have to also take credit for the bad. And in fact, it's probably not healthy to do either one in the longterm. Yeah, that's a really interesting distinction.

Frank (01:17:11.592)
I am curious, before we move into the next section, where do you see your business going?

Justin Hillgrove (01:17:19.618)
Yeah, you know, that's a good question. I enjoy what I do now. I hear all the time, you could work at Disney or something. like, why would I want to work at Disney? I get to hang out in my studio and paint whatever I want. I would like to continue what I'm doing, but I also get bored really easily. And so I want to be able to do, you know, like the puzzles I just started. I'd like to...

I'd like to forge a puzzle empire, so to speak. Or you get these exciting ideas like, I'm going to start making puzzles. When I first started making toys, like, I'm going to make toys for a while. I'm going to make games for a while. I like that there's a little bit of mystery. I don't have everything planned out. But I have enough things going on that if one thing fails, I do something else.

So yeah, I guess it's a mystery and I'm okay with that.

Frank (01:18:21.551)
Puzzles? Yeah.

Well, let's first off, thank you. That was awesome. Super insightful stuff. And we're gonna take the seriousness down a notch. We're gonna get into some less serious stuff, more fun questions. So this is what we call random rolls. You've got your D100 handy. All right, so go ahead and roll and we will match it up.

Justin Hillgrove (01:18:36.428)
All right.

Justin Hillgrove (01:18:43.49)
Now, I've got my D100. right. hear that roll. All right. 73.

Chris Saunders (01:18:54.972)
Okay, I'll do the first one here. okay. I'm curious, is there any? Is there anything that you're looking forward to be released from like a nerdy perspective? Like is there anything that hasn't been released so that you're looking forward to? It could be a summer movie or it could be a game coming out or could be anything like

Justin Hillgrove (01:19:16.312)
Well, I told you, I mostly, listen to a lot of audio books. There is a new Dungeon Crawler Carl book coming out. I don't know if you're familiar with the series, I, local guy, you guys are where I am, right? okay. Yeah, Matt Deniman, he's local. He started this series a while ago called Dungeon Crawler Carl, and it is fantastic.

Chris Saunders (01:19:30.376)
I'm in Vancouver, he's much closer to where you are.

Justin Hillgrove (01:19:41.614)
I love it. But the audio books, the book's already out, but I'm waiting for the audio book because it is probably the greatest narrator I've ever heard. So I'm enjoying the heck out of that. And then my daughter and I, you we watch anime together. So the new season of solo leveling is dropping one episode a week on, I think, Saturdays. So, you know, yay.

Chris Saunders (01:20:08.5)
Excited, yeah.

Frank (01:20:08.601)
I don't know that one. Soul leveling? I have heard of that actually, yeah. And I did recently, someone recommended Dungeon Crawler Carl, or Dungeon Crawler?

Justin Hillgrove (01:20:10.612)
Solo leveling,

Justin Hillgrove (01:20:20.386)
Dungeon Crawler Carl, is it Dungeon Crawler? No, it should be Dungeon Crawler Carl. You you'd think I would know. There's like six books out, I wanna say. And it is, you know, it's just, it's a really fun series. Good humor, just the right amount of nerdiness. It's great.

Frank (01:20:41.987)
Nice. Well, go ahead and roll one more, please.

Justin Hillgrove (01:20:44.418)
All right.

57.

Frank (01:20:53.167)
Huh, we've never had this one come up, but I remember us writing it like a couple years ago. So whenever you go shopping for dice, what do you look for when you pick the right dice?

Justin Hillgrove (01:21:04.814)
That's an interesting question. I recently had to buy new dice because I was in Idaho visiting my siblings and didn't have my dice on me. And I ended up buying these. I bought these like orange, you know, orange dice. And, know, whenever we play games where there's colored pieces or meeples or whatever, I always go for orange. And there's two reasons. One, I love the color orange. And two, nobody ever wants to be that color.

Chris Saunders (01:21:16.141)
no.

Justin Hillgrove (01:21:34.222)
So it's like, I'm orange, that's me, that's part of who I am. So I usually go for orange and I'm not opposed to some sparkles or little cloudiness, something fun.

Frank (01:21:49.753)
So are all of your dice orange?

Justin Hillgrove (01:21:52.046)
No, but I do have a couple of different orange sets and I got a metal set too when I went with the bronze, you know. So, yeah. And the other thing I would say is, you gotta be able to actually tell what you're rolling, because it's really frustrating playing with people who are using dice that they're like, oh, let's see, you what did I roll? You know, they're like picking it up and like shining their light from their phone on it. Yeah. That's no good.

Frank (01:22:12.311)
Yes.

Frank (01:22:17.327)
There's gotta be some paint in the indent.

Chris Saunders (01:22:21.854)
Yeah.

Frank (01:22:22.895)
gotta be. Go ahead and roll one more please.

Justin Hillgrove (01:22:26.254)
Alright. 55. Just two down.

Chris Saunders (01:22:31.71)
Just two down, all right. If you had to pick a favorite Star Wars movie and it couldn't be one of the original three, which one would it be?

Justin Hillgrove (01:22:40.255)
man.

See, this is where I'm gonna get into, you guys are gonna kick me off the show because I like the original three, because I grew up with them, but I'm what you might call Star Wars fatigued. Once it got to the point where you couldn't buy toilet paper that didn't have baby Yoda's face on it, I was like, I think I'm done, I'm good, yeah. So yes, do I enjoy watching four, five and six? You bet I do.

Chris Saunders (01:22:46.685)
I know, know.

Justin Hillgrove (01:23:13.85)
I don't really watch anything else. It's not completely true. I did watch the whole, you know, the whole, the whole one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. some people probably hate that I, I actually was entertained by seven, eight, nine. thought they were enjoyable. I know a lot of people, you know, don't love them. I didn't love the first three. They were boring. Sorry, everybody.

and I couldn't get into any of it.

Chris Saunders (01:23:42.932)
I think the Phantom Menace had some redeeming qualities. I think that the first time I remember maybe I was just the right age for it, but the ability to see people do fast, light saber battles was a huge upgrade. Now, when I saw the second one, I gave up on the whole franchise because the second one, Attack of the Clones is unwatchable in my opinion.

Frank (01:23:51.811)
Yeah, me too.

Justin Hillgrove (01:24:08.718)
I was confused because I watched the first one and I went to the second one. was like, wait, count Duke. Wait, what's going on? Was I supposed to read a book first? Like who are all these people showing up? Like was I, yeah, I was supposed to, and I loved the Tartovsky Clone Wars animations. Those really short ones. I don't know if you remember those. They were, well, not Clone Wars, the 3D animated, but there was like a, the guy who did

Chris Saunders (01:24:12.169)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Saunders (01:24:15.742)
What is he? Yeah, right. Like, what did we miss here? Yeah.

Frank (01:24:16.727)
Yes!

Chris Saunders (01:24:28.848)
yeah, Clone Wars is really, I've heard is really good. I never watched it. no.

Justin Hillgrove (01:24:38.232)
think he did Powerpuff Girls. There was like an old Clone Wars, like these were six minute episodes. There was like no talking really in them. It was like all action and they were amazing. I loved them. So those were very cool. I really, really liked those. I also, watched a season of Mandalorian like everyone did. And it was pretty good. I've always been a fan of IG-88.

Frank (01:24:56.579)
And what were they called?

Justin Hillgrove (01:25:06.062)
And so to have one of those robots show up, was like, all right, yeah, I dig that. Yeah. I know I didn't answer the question, but that's all right.

Chris Saunders (01:25:14.334)
Cool, cool. Not a big deal. Yeah, and we just learned about something else that I had no idea existed, this other version of Clone Wars. So that's a nice deep cut that I think was worth the journey.

Frank (01:25:17.249)
You did a very good job not answering the question.

Justin Hillgrove (01:25:21.176)
Yeah.

Frank (01:25:29.913)
I'm not going to complain about the evasiveness on that one because yeah, like Chris said, learn something. But let's roll one more.

Justin Hillgrove (01:25:40.846)
71. We're staying in the 70s.

Frank (01:25:42.423)
Wow. All right.

Frank (01:25:49.135)
OK. You're getting a lot of questions that have never really come up, and it's like where did this question come from? But here it is as written. What's a favorite homebrew solution you've created in a tabletop role playing game?

Justin Hillgrove (01:26:06.792)
interesting. Well, so my brother who usually DMs, well, on my sibling games. I'm involved in actually three different games. I have my local game group. I've got my brother who lives locally who we play Savage Worlds. And it's like a 1980s campaign with some mysticism and stuff like a gothic horror. And then I play a futuristic campaign with my

other siblings and my niece and just via Zoom about once or twice a week as well. And my brother Brent is probably the greatest GM of all time because he is constantly coming up with amazing homebrew rules and tables and just all kinds of stuff. to say that there's one thing

without really thinking about it. can't think of anything, but one of our favorite things is just how every time we get hit and we actually take damage, we roll on a table to see what kind of damage it really is, you know, like where we hit and it, you know, is there a temporary or a permanent side effect of being hit there? And it goes both ways, you know, it's the same with the, when we're fighting against things, you know, if we hit them.

Chris Saunders (01:27:17.608)
Hmm.

Justin Hillgrove (01:27:29.646)
This is usually in Savage Worlds where you're not taking as many wounds. You've only got three wounds. It's more like the old Shadow Run where if someone pulls out a gun, you hide, you duck because in D &D you could just take the bullets to your chest, run forward and body check them. But in Savage Worlds or games like that, if you get hit, you could actually die. So it's fun. You take that wound and it's like, okay, now you're...

Chris Saunders (01:27:37.086)
Mm-hmm.

Run.

Frank (01:27:46.691)
Yeah.

Justin Hillgrove (01:27:57.534)
know, your ear is missing and you have the ugly or, you know, you get plus two to intimidate. Yeah, it's fun.

Chris Saunders (01:28:06.324)
Well, that's I think that is a big sort of lacking thing that happens in D &D that I like about other systems is you can have these these character moments in battle that really matter later on for you. And it's not so much of a focus in D &D because it's so tactical. But but yeah, I love that. We when I was in high school, we played this kind of homebrew thing where my nerdy friends created a whole program.

at the time programming was like a big deal and we basically, would input our roles and it would give us the exact kind of scenario damage and where we got hit and how damaged it was. And if we had a scar or not, that kind of idea was all just be, we put in the inputs and it would come up with it, for the outputs and that's a. Yeah. It increases the character development and what, what choices you make from that point on it's pretty cool.

Justin Hillgrove (01:29:01.454)
So our local GM, or DM, because it's for D &D, Arnie, he started implementing the exploding dice rule in D &D. And that did make it actually quite a bit of fun, especially as a rogue, because I'm rolling a handful of D6s every time I'm hitting for damage. And so every one of those sixes I roll, I get to roll another dice. If it rolls another six, I do another dice.

Frank (01:29:30.745)
Justin Hillgrove (01:29:31.34)
So that if you're not familiar with exploding dice, that's what it is. If you're, you're rolling damage, if you roll the max on that die, you get to roll the die again and add it on. And it just, it kind of adds that element of swinginess where, you know, a lucky shot either from the bad guys or from you could still take out something, take out something bad. And it does add that element of danger and it's.

Frank (01:29:33.455)
Yeah.

Chris Saunders (01:29:52.468)
much bigger.

Frank (01:29:53.784)
I love that.

Justin Hillgrove (01:29:56.238)
It was always fun because everyone's like, you know, whenever there's a six, you get that. It's not like, that was a lot of damage. You actually get that whole year, your whole party just going,

Chris Saunders (01:30:00.841)
Hahaha

Frank (01:30:08.61)
Yeah.

Chris Saunders (01:30:08.669)
That's a that's a really cool rule. I like that. I've never I've never heard of exploding dice. Have you, Frank? We talk to nerds for a living and we don't.

Frank (01:30:14.358)
No, no.

Justin Hillgrove (01:30:15.15)
So it's a standard thing in Savage Worlds. It's a normal thing. And it applies to just about like skill checks. It applies to everything. And just applying that to bringing that over to D &D, I think was really fun.

Chris Saunders (01:30:21.001)
Cool.

Chris Saunders (01:30:33.844)
Yeah. I'm definitely going to incorporate that in my next like dangerous dungeon crawl. Yeah.

Frank (01:30:35.171)
Yeah.

Justin Hillgrove (01:30:36.602)
It also shortens combat because, yeah, combat gets shorter because people are taking a lot more damage.

Chris Saunders (01:30:43.142)
And doing it too. Yeah. Wow. That's cool.

Frank (01:30:45.711)
Wow. Well, thank you. That was great. We're gonna move on to rapid fire. If you thought that that wasn't silly enough, wait till these questions. boy. So these are faster questions. You will give rapid fire answers and we will tell you if you're right or if you're wrong. And.

Justin Hillgrove (01:30:52.91)
All right.

Justin Hillgrove (01:31:09.55)
Perfect knee jerk response, I'm ready.

Frank (01:31:12.461)
Yeah, all right. First one, Star Trek or Star Wars?

Justin Hillgrove (01:31:16.052)
you already know. Can I opt out of this question?

Chris Saunders (01:31:21.892)
That's just...

Frank (01:31:23.651)
Too much pressure?

Justin Hillgrove (01:31:24.952)
No, well, you know, I'll go with Star Trek, Next Generation, I guess was my jam.

Chris Saunders (01:31:29.46)
Star Trek is the correct answer anyway. We agree with that one. So, all right. What audio book are you listening to right now?

Frank (01:31:31.449)
That is the correct answer. Very good. Yes.

Justin Hillgrove (01:31:40.94)
Right now, I am listening to, you'd think I'd know what it's called. I don't remember. It's not, because I'm not enjoying it. just finished, I just finished the, the King's Dark Tidings series by Calcade, which is not complete. They just put out another book and I, it's so good, like so good.

And to jump from a book that good into one that's using the, keep losing my memory trope over and over again, it's making me crazy. I can't deal with it. That's my least favorite. Like, it was all a dream or was, yeah, yeah, I lost my memory again. I just can't deal with it. I'm going to be switching books here real soon.

Frank (01:32:16.888)
You

Chris Saunders (01:32:28.532)
Well, I'm glad we got a good book recommendation in there while we talked about a bad one.

Frank (01:32:32.439)
Yeah, that's good.

Justin Hillgrove (01:32:33.196)
Yeah, Kingsdark tidings, fantastic, love it.

Chris Saunders (01:32:36.5)
That's awesome. Who's the author on that one?

Frank (01:32:36.505)
Alright.

Justin Hillgrove (01:32:38.474)
It's Kel-Kade, spelled with a K, so K-E-L-K-A-D-E. I think there's six books in the series. It's fantastic if you like things like, you know, The Mistborn and Eli, Eli Monpress, the legend of Eli Monpress, books like that, then you'll really like this.

Frank (01:33:00.931)
Awesome. You mentioned that you play Super Smash. Who's your go-to?

Justin Hillgrove (01:33:05.294)
My go-to is usually Ganondorf. And there's a good reason. It's because my kids, like as I get older, I'm almost 50. As I get older, my reaction time is slowing. So when I get a hit in, it's got to count. So, you know, Ganondorf's already slow. know, I do pretty good with him. Yeah, it used to be Azura Sutsamis and Ike. And I still throw Ike in the mix quite a bit.

Chris Saunders (01:33:08.02)
Cool.

Chris Saunders (01:33:34.324)
What's your zombie apocalypse weapon of choice?

Frank (01:33:35.471)
nostalgia.

Justin Hillgrove (01:33:38.929)
shotgun. It's just point and click, yeah.

Chris Saunders (01:33:42.471)
Easy peasy.

Frank (01:33:45.123)
Why do you think Frodo didn't ride the Eagles all the way to Mordor? Wrong answers only.

Justin Hillgrove (01:33:51.406)
Gosh, I don't think hobbits are very smart. Like they make a lot of bad choices in general. I play halflings all the time and I'm like, well, you know, it's a halfling. It's not, it's not a hobbit.

Chris Saunders (01:34:04.916)
That's true. Yeah.

Justin Hillgrove (01:34:07.822)
Yeah, I'm always like, hey, what's Aragorn up to? Can we get back to Aragorn?

Frank (01:34:11.961)
I know. I just finished the audio books.

Justin Hillgrove (01:34:15.694)
The way the audiobooks are set up, it's like half and half. So you're like, finish all the good stuff and then you're like, we're back to the hobbits. Yay.

Frank (01:34:24.291)
That was a big surprise actually. But also what was a big surprise was how much of a journey Sam and Frodo went on that is not really talked about. Like after they split from everybody, I was like, whoa, there's so much going on that they went through that we don't really get to see. Sam is such a badass.

Chris Saunders (01:34:24.34)
I'm

Justin Hillgrove (01:34:39.736)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and they leave out all the, you know, well, you know, that's a whole different conversation, all the Tom Bombadil and everything else, but yeah.

Chris Saunders (01:34:41.651)
Yeah.

Chris Saunders (01:34:53.438)
that you frank or me? yeah, all right. So for me, how many cats is too many cats?

Frank (01:34:54.425)
No, that was me on the Frodo.

Justin Hillgrove (01:35:03.522)
Ooh, it depends on how often you clean your litter box. As long as your house doesn't smell like kitty litter and cat pee, then you can have as many cats as you want.

Chris Saunders (01:35:15.796)
It gets real tough after five to not have that happen.

Justin Hillgrove (01:35:19.051)
Yeah, we have two. have ours, Prismo, and then my daughter has a cat as well.

Frank (01:35:27.439)
Prismo, I like that. It's almost like a Pokemon.

Justin Hillgrove (01:35:28.622)
So Prismo, we named her because she's a, I can't remember what it's called. She's got like those stripey all over her. She's like brown and lots of other colors. But on her side is the perfect silhouette of Prismo, the intergalactic super being or whatever from Adventure Time. You know that shadow face that's like just a silhouette.

Chris Saunders (01:35:54.345)
Yeah, yeah.

Justin Hillgrove (01:35:55.906)
Yeah, we got her as a kitten and we're like, my gosh, there's like Prismo is on her side in a circle. There's Prismo's head. And so we named her Prismo, yeah, Prismo Pickles.

Chris Saunders (01:36:06.548)
Nice.

Frank (01:36:09.955)
What is the worst superpower to have?

Justin Hillgrove (01:36:14.082)
Hmm... I think flight.

Chris Saunders (01:36:20.724)
Why? Yeah.

Frank (01:36:21.177)
Well, you did say you were afraid of heights earlier.

Justin Hillgrove (01:36:23.962)
it's just, know, it's flights too easy. It's kind of a stupid power. it's the same reason. Like once you get the flight spell and D and D or whatever, it's like suddenly there's certain things that used to be cool, like climbing and that aren't cool anymore. Plus it, yeah, you go up high and that's terrible.

Chris Saunders (01:36:44.788)
Predator or aliens?

Justin Hillgrove (01:36:47.905)
Aliens.

Frank (01:36:52.515)
What's your favorite munchy?

Justin Hillgrove (01:36:55.31)
favorite munchie. I eat a lot of almonds. I really like almonds. Yeah.

Chris Saunders (01:37:02.356)
three favorite pizza toppings.

Justin Hillgrove (01:37:04.82)
you know, I can't eat pizza for medical, various medical reasons. So when I do make pizza, I slice up zucchini as almost like pepperonis. I put them on there. Of course I use, I do use some cheese, artichokes and pineapple. So artichokes, pineapple and.

Chris Saunders (01:37:15.593)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Saunders (01:37:29.0)
Artichokes and pineapple are delicious, so.

Justin Hillgrove (01:37:33.804)
zucchini slices on top of usually like a like a pesto or a sauce that doesn't have tomatoes or something in it.

Frank (01:37:42.563)
Nice. Yeah, pesto isn't, I think, honestly, pesto is an underrated sauce on pizza, or maybe it's not underrated, but it's not talked about enough, in my opinion. Pesto's frigging great. God, this conversation about pesto pizzas, guys. Okay, all right. Harry Potter, Hogwarts houses, which one would you want to be in, but which one would you be putting?

Justin Hillgrove (01:37:50.688)
It's pretty fantastic. I like it.

Justin Hillgrove (01:38:06.776)
think either way I would end up in Hufflepuff.

Yep, I'm all about the good vibes, hanging out with friends, you know.

Chris Saunders (01:38:17.236)
Do you collect anything?

Justin Hillgrove (01:38:20.27)
I used to collect a lot of things, but after making or designing, you know, hundreds of toys and all that and thinking, I'm going to want one of each. No, I guess I don't really. I have a nice collection of audio books. I guess I do collect playing cards because I do have a little stack. when I see one that really the art.

It just hits me just right or they just do something really different. They know, they know.

Frank (01:38:54.187)
Is it specifically one game or the other? mean, sorry, is there a specific game of trading cards?

Justin Hillgrove (01:38:54.414)
office.

Justin Hillgrove (01:39:02.404)
no, I have playing cards, like actual poker cards. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I used to play magic and stuff too, but even that, like my friend that I played with, he got a job at Wizards and then it really wasn't fair to play with him anymore.

Frank (01:39:06.465)
okay.

Frank (01:39:18.081)
I used to work there and I was more of the D &D guy anyway and so I would play and anytime I played with someone they were like, I'm gonna kick Frank's ass. Like, it's not really that fun.

Justin Hillgrove (01:39:22.542)
Yeah.

Justin Hillgrove (01:39:29.102)
We just play pre-constructed commander when we get together. It's fun and it's pretty balanced.

Chris Saunders (01:39:37.128)
Yeah, that's the best way to do it. And then you don't have to agonize over designing decks. I used to like that when it was all when I was a kid, I played and like when nobody really had access to much money, it was kind of fair because you would just have to be creatively designing whatever cards you happen to own. You would put into a deck, but that just isn't the game anymore.

Frank (01:39:37.647)
That's true.

Justin Hillgrove (01:39:50.658)
Yeah.

Justin Hillgrove (01:39:56.578)
Yeah, now people go into Card Kingdom and design their deck.

Chris Saunders (01:40:01.104)
Yeah, just exactly like, man, I can't play against anyone unless you have something completely optimized.

Justin Hillgrove (01:40:05.432)
I'm just not good at that part. But at the same time, I don't care if I lose. So it's not that big a deal.

Chris Saunders (01:40:14.246)
Yeah, that's not really the point is winning. It's really just playing or friends and getting along.

Frank (01:40:14.692)
Yeah.

Justin Hillgrove (01:40:17.698)
Yeah, it was a social thing for us too.

Frank (01:40:20.835)
Totally. So, Men in Black, you've seen the movies?

Justin Hillgrove (01:40:25.3)
Yes, it has been a while.

Frank (01:40:27.457)
Okay, if you were to have one of those memory wiping sticks, what would be your catchphrase right before you wiped their memory?

Justin Hillgrove (01:40:35.348)
gotcha suckers. I can't think of anything else.

Chris Saunders (01:40:38.142)
Hahaha

Frank (01:40:43.107)
I think that's perfect, really. Because they won't remember it, so even if it's not a great catchphrase, they're gonna forget.

Chris Saunders (01:40:43.112)
Which? Love it, love it.

Chris Saunders (01:40:50.357)
Which doctor is your doctor?

Justin Hillgrove (01:40:52.53)
A tenant. That was the I someone started me with blink because I was like, you know, Dr. Who it's, it's, I was thinking to man, it looks so cheesy. I just I don't know if I can deal with it. There's like a someone's skin face, you know, stretched out and it's talking and it's just terrible. And, and, and someone's like, No, no, no, no, watch, you know, watch this episode, you'll like it. And then I did, of course, because, know, of course, it's great.

Chris Saunders (01:40:59.412)
Mm.

Frank (01:41:13.528)
Yes.

Justin Hillgrove (01:41:21.804)
and then got really into it. I loved Matt Smith too. I thought he was fantastic. I don't remember a whole lot after that. I remember there being a kind of an angry Scottish Muppet playing one of the doctors and I kind of lost. I just kind of got distracted more than anything else. I kept jumping from like different networks to different networks and it was like, well, I don't have a subscription to that. So I guess I'm out.

Frank (01:41:35.745)
That's a good summary.

Chris Saunders (01:41:51.048)
Yeah, I'll tell it is a popular one and definitely blink. I think has done a lot for that whole franchise. I can't tell you how many people I brought into the franchise just through that one episode, so.

Justin Hillgrove (01:41:57.505)
yeah.

Justin Hillgrove (01:42:02.926)
Well, it's fantastic. We went to, my wife and I, when we were doing that mural in London, we popped up to Wales, of course, and went to the Doctor Who experience. And it was so cool just to see everything. And there's this part where you're walking through and there's like all the little statues around and it's super creepy. And you hear like the giggling baby cherub ones. it's got a great vibe.

Frank (01:42:30.329)
Who's better, Mario or Luigi?

Justin Hillgrove (01:42:32.77)
Hmm. Well Mario's better, but I like Luigi more.

Chris Saunders (01:42:39.828)
If could design any toy, what toy would it be?

Justin Hillgrove (01:42:45.774)
That's, I designed, you know, I, so one of my favorite toys I ever designed that never got made was Treebeard with like the two little, the two halflings, Mary and Pippin. And it turned out fantastic. I think it was just too expensive to make or something, but it just never got made. right now, actually, I don't think I'm allowed to say what I'm working on.

Frank (01:42:50.829)
Already done.

Justin Hillgrove (01:43:12.514)
But, well, suffice to say, I'm working on a bunch of Crunchyroll stuff right now. I, you know, as something that me and my kids watch together and enjoy together, anything that gets me the cool dad cred is definitely cool. And, you know, on that side note, I actually, my son, Calvin, he's my oldest, he's actually working for me right now, helping with toy design too. So the two of us get to work together.

Frank (01:43:13.229)
That's cool.

Justin Hillgrove (01:43:41.654)
designing choice. He's in Idaho, but we're on the phone every day pretty much.

Frank (01:43:47.563)
That's really interesting. I mean, it's pretty cool. It seems pretty rare these days to bring the kids into a family business, or at least into the business of the adults, the parents.

Justin Hillgrove (01:44:00.822)
Yeah, well, they

Chris Saunders (01:44:01.042)
If your business is toys though, feel like.

Justin Hillgrove (01:44:04.034)
We have an inordinately high number of artists in our family. Like, you know, my aunt is an artist, my grandpa was an artist, I've got three nieces that are artists. And, you know, three of my four kids are either interested in doing art full-time or it's a serious hobby for them.

Frank (01:44:24.889)
So what you're saying is we have more people to reach out to to get on the podcast. Should we need more artists? There we go.

Chris Saunders (01:44:33.092)
So what the this is probably one of my last questions, but fear the AI or embrace the AI.

Justin Hillgrove (01:44:41.154)
You know, knee-jerk reaction, initially I hated AI. I didn't, only because of the whole, it's a tired argument, but that it's not really AI at all. It's, you know, just parsing what's already out there and putting it through a sausage grinder and giving you whatever sausage you ordered. But I've recently found that, like, I had to rebuild my whole website and...

I wanted to be able to produce some story for each of my images, just a little bit of background. And it's not that I used AI to create those stories for me, but what I did do is I was able to just in an unfiltered way kind of say, this is what I was thinking. If someone were to walk up to me and say, what can you tell me about this piece? Well, I was able to answer that and then just tell AI, tell ChatGPT.

Hey, can you just fix the grammar? Fix the grammar and the punctuation for me. And it would spit it out. And I'm like, okay, no more run on sentences. No more. what a great tool.

Chris Saunders (01:45:54.036)
Well, using it in so much in aid of the stuff that we don't necessarily want to do. I think that many people are finding those great use cases for, mean, we do it for show notes and like coming up with articles or nuggets of wisdom from what we talk about sometimes so that we can create things that may be able to be more transferable for people to actually, you know, hear a quote or get a tip or whatever it is so we can spread it more, you know? I think there's real use cases for it, but.

But it's.

Justin Hillgrove (01:46:24.906)
actually, we did have another use for it. So my brother Brent, doing our Zoom game, he started using AI as a DM's assistant. So the AI listens. And when we get to a certain point, it knows what all the characters are. knows their backstories. It knows all these things. He even set up a choose your own adventure style thing, where the AI came up with the storyline so that we could do a pre-game.

kind of mini game within it. And it did this great job of creating this story as I would make choices like, okay, you see him here, what do you do kind of thing. And you could just type in and it would ever once all go, well, I'll be like, I'm gonna sneak up behind him and drain his soul or whatever, right? And they're like, well, that's against our policy guidelines. But aside from that,

Frank (01:47:18.127)
Can't confirm that.

Justin Hillgrove (01:47:22.122)
He sometimes when he just wants to be surprised, it'll be like, okay, you know, we're in this area, we're camping, we've we've rolled that there's going to be some kind of random encounter. This is what the area is like, what showed up. And it'll it'll actually go, okay. So you know, this toxic mutated dragon thing, because you're in the deadlines of deadlines of, of North America.

It sets it up, it tells the scene and he just reads it out and he's like, here's what's up. And then he sets up the combat. And so for random encounters and things like that, fantastic. And then he does the summary at the end and sends it to everyone. So when we go to do the next game, everybody reads that ahead of time. And we're like, okay, that's what happened. AI took notes for us.

Frank (01:48:13.859)
I have not thought or I haven't really figured out how to get AI to listen to my D &D games, but that's great. That I mean, just doing the summary for me, because I do the summaries and every time it is such a bane. Like I.

Justin Hillgrove (01:48:25.614)
Most software has that option now. Most paid, I should say, software has that option now.

Frank (01:48:33.933)
Yeah, because I do pay for Gemini, so I'll see if they have that. But yeah, for me, it's like, I have to do the summary, like, God, I be working on this stuff.

Justin Hillgrove (01:48:44.29)
man, it's amazing how good it is. Sometimes it'll be like, player Justin is worried, or is glad that this isn't live streaming because we would all get canceled, something like that. Because it's listening to what we're saying and then it says, this is an important note, Justin just mentioned this. so we'll laugh about stuff like that, but yeah.

Frank (01:49:11.919)
My last question is why isn't cereal a soup?

Justin Hillgrove (01:49:18.158)
Hmm.

I would say, because you don't heat it up. And if you do, that's messed up. You could stop that right now.

Chris Saunders (01:49:28.506)
Nobody should have warm milk cereal.

Justin Hillgrove (01:49:29.836)
Yeah. Well, and the cold soup thing, I've never got the cold soup thing. That's messed up too. Like both. Both is not okay. Yeah, you can do whatever you want, you know, don't, don't be, don't be bragging about that. Yeah. We don't want to hear about it. It's not, yeah. Don't put it in your Instagram stories.

Frank (01:49:35.789)
Yeah. Yeah, guess, guess spot Joe.

Frank (01:49:42.393)
Don't give it to you.

Hahaha!

Chris Saunders (01:49:45.414)
No.

Chris Saunders (01:49:49.758)
No, no.

Frank (01:49:50.617)
I up my cereal. You won't believe what happened.

Justin Hillgrove (01:49:53.794)
Yeah, get out of here. Yeah.

Chris Saunders (01:49:55.092)
So make sure to tag Justin and all your warm and all your cold soup from here on out.

Justin Hillgrove (01:49:58.968)
Yeah.

Frank (01:49:59.957)
warm cereal.

Chris Saunders (01:50:03.558)
Awesome. Awesome. Well, Justin, this has been really great chatting with you and hearing all about your story and a lot of wisdom that's come out of you running your business for 20 years. I wanted, we, usually like to finish with a question around, because we have a lot of people listening that are aspiring to do what you're doing, whether it be as an artist or as their own nerdy entrepreneur. why should people go after that?

Justin Hillgrove (01:50:29.74)
Why should they go after doing something that they're passionate about specifically?

Chris Saunders (01:50:33.778)
Yeah, that they really are passionate about or turning it into a business or, you know, yeah, what if they see it.

Justin Hillgrove (01:50:37.198)
Yeah, you know, I'm a firm believer in doing your best at whatever you're doing. I've told my kids, you know, all you gotta do to really stand out at work, no matter what job it is, all you have to do is show up and do a good job and you will stand out. Because not everybody does that, like both of those things. I think if you work at Little Caesar's Pizza, you should...

make the best pizzas that they make. You should have pride in the work that you do. And it's easier to do that if you love what you're doing. There's no point in going to school for something you don't love or just getting a job and it's not something you love. Yeah, you should be working towards getting yourself in a place where it is something that you like or you should learn to love that thing you're doing.

And even though you don't love that thing that you're doing temporarily, you should do a good job. You know? So that's what I would say.

Frank (01:51:44.793)
That's great.

Chris Saunders (01:51:46.13)
Love it, love it. Well, Justin, where can people find your art, find you, be able to support you in what you're doing?

Justin Hillgrove (01:51:55.182)
My website is impsandmonsters.com. I have a VIP monthly mailing list, is I do, I try to do it a little bit different. I try to make it feel like you really are kind of on the inside. I talk about a little bit of stuff I'm working on that's maybe not out yet. I try to include a free downloadable print that's usually like a sketch or something.

And that's probably the best way. It's monthly or whenever I send it out. So sometimes it's a couple months past. I do Instagram and Facebook whenever I feel like it. And Instagram, it's Imps and Monsters. And Facebook is Imps and Monsters page, unfortunately.

Chris Saunders (01:52:44.4)
Empty monsters, some other page took it.

Justin Hillgrove (01:52:46.53)
Well, I took it and it's my personal account and it wouldn't let me move it over to my other and you have like a limited number of people you can have on there and I don't ever look at it. So I'm sure there's a bunch of people that are like, like, Hey, you know, I've sent you a friend request and it's like, cool. think I last checked that personal account maybe in 2008. I don't, I don't really know. Yeah. It was about when I, when I

Chris Saunders (01:52:50.868)
No.

Chris Saunders (01:53:10.58)
Yeah

Justin Hillgrove (01:53:14.744)
finally logged out of MySpace, I think.

Frank (01:53:17.519)
They are right.

Chris Saunders (01:53:19.604)
There must be just such huge graveyards of in the internet of old accounts and lost social medias to the world. Yeah. Wow. Well, appreciate you so much for coming on our show, Justin. This has been awesome. yeah, thank you. Thank you. And also for all of our listeners, thanks for listening. And as always.

Justin Hillgrove (01:53:28.024)
Yeah.

Justin Hillgrove (01:53:35.278)
Yeah, it was a lot of fun. I enjoyed it.

Frank (01:53:36.963)
Yeah, thank you.

Frank (01:53:45.411)
Keep it nerdy.