An Interview with the Creators of Homestar Runner

It's a flash based web cartoon, uh network. Really, when you think about it's not just a series or lots of different little offshoots that came out of it that premiered in the late nineties early two thousand's, and anyone who was around on the Internet of those days probably as at least encountered some sort of reference to the

Homestar Runner universe. And uh, Mike and Matt Chapman, the Brothers Chaps, came into the studio and we got to talk a lot about how they got into this and how it evolved over time and where it's going in the future. So sit back, relax, and enjoy this interview with the Brothers Chaps. I am overjoyed to be joined in the studio by Matt and Mike Chapman, also known as the Brothers Chaps. The creators of Homestar Runner as well as many other projects. And uh, it's a bit

of a fanning out, geek out moment for me. I've been a fan of Homestar Runner since before I was working at How Stuff Works. And really it's great to have two people here who they there work preceded the age of YouTube web series because YouTube didn't exist when

you guys launched Homestar Runner. And anyone who has been on the Internet for any length of time has at least encountered Homestar Runner references if they're not deeply familiar with the incredible lore and mythology, the the the deep legends of Homestar Runner that have found their way into all sorts of other mythos. I mean, you're part of the Buffy verse, guys, Yeah, that was somehow We're responsible for the Doge meme, even though we didn't really have

anything to do with that. Yeah. Well, and you have a you have an incredible couple of bonus tracks on Guitar Hero two which have confounded me on numerous occasions. So, I mean, you're the influence just keeps on going. But for people who have never seen a Homestar Runner cartoon. They they're not familiar with it. I can't wait. Don't bother at this point, you missed the boat. Sorry, guys. Just go go to know your meme dot com and

dope find stuff. No, I want to hear from you guys, because I'm really curious to hear your elevator pitch for what is Homestar Runner. Homestar Runner, I like the Mattsford brow right now. It struggles with This is a series of animated shorts following the exploits of non humanoid, ageless h organisms that have uh that interact with one another in meaningful and humorous ways to the delight of several of literally dozens of people. Uh. That's the elevator pitch.

And that's why we just did this ourselves. That any I mean, I'm starting to get get a glean of the the marketing brilliance exactly that has been part of

home Start Runners since the very beginning. So I know you guys have talked about this in other interviews, but I would love it if you could kind of walk people through the origin of where this all came from, because it's all I mean, I know, it's kind of a mishmash story because home Star Runner itself ends up being a reference to a weird joke that kind of

came up of a local Atlanta ad spot. Right. Yeah, So our friend Jamie Huggins was nicking a Kroger or Win Dixie ad that Mark Lemke was on and probably or something. Jamie doesn't know a lot about sports. So instead of saying all Star second Basement for the Braves, Mark Limpy, he was trying to parody this commercial and said, and now Homestar running for the Braves, Mark Lemki. And

we're also like, Jamie, what is the Homestar Runner? And so then a couple of years later, um, we kept using that phrase and decided to use it as a you know, the name of a character when we were born one day and made a story involving the Homestar Runner. This is great because you know, it's it's the sort of thing. I think it's an inspirational story, honestly, because

I know I've got lots of friends. We goof off and we make you know, you'll make a joke, and every now and then a joke is just it's sticky. It's something that that for some reason resonates beyond just the moment of making UH an offhand absurd reference, and then it kind of snowballs from there and it can grow. And to me, that's sort of what Homestar Runner sounds like. It was something that Begans just sort of this one off, little goof, but it ended up inspiring UH a huge

number of shorts. So after the the little joking about a local ad spot and by the way, if you ever really need to mind for comedy gold, you just have to find some some great Atlanta local Atlanta UH commercials. I've seen so many amazing ones, including people I know have showed up in them, like Chris Blair of Dad's Garage character. But if you guys, UH then went on and started looking at things like a children's books and seeing how terrible children's books can be, and thought, we

can do a terrible children's book. UH, and Homestar Runner had a spot in that. But beyond that, we get into the you know, late nineties, early two thousand's, and the Worldwide Web was really just starting to get some really serious traction at that point, right we're s's seeing kind of the the end phase of what people later on would call the web one point oh era where

everything was very static, nothing was interactive. You would probably have a web page and it wouldn't change from one month to the next, so there's no reason to ever go back. You go once and that's it. You made a new web page. You didn't update your webpage. Right, here's my new webpage, and you would have to have the little under construction at the very top, right, because it's never finished, except for the fact that it's always

kind of finished. So you got interested in in UH in flash animation and flash in general, and UH this is interesting to me because it gave an opportunity to have a more dynamic experience on the web, something that was totally new at that time. Today we take it for granted. You know, every website is dynamic in some way or another, or it has some sort of dynamic element worked into it. But at that time, it was

pretty new. And the concept of creating UH episodic content that you could very easily see, you know, the next episode, that was new as well. There weren't a whole lot of examples of that before you get into say the mid two thousand's, when UH stuff like YouTube started to show up. So from what I understand is it true that essentially the reason why Homestar Runner exists as a cartoon is that it was kind of a way to uh, to practice with Flash. Like you were, you needed to

animate something, so why not use this character. We're really learning web development stuff like that's why we were learning Flash and graphic design and stuff like that was like for job type stuff, and we just used the Homestar characters as like, how are we gonna learn this new software Flash? And well and more so than we need to animate something, it was like we need to make something.

I mean, I graduated from film school and moved back to Atlanta from Tallahassee, Florida, and uh, you know, they weren't shooting Avengers movies and or whenever that would have been. Um, they weren't really shooting much of anything other than fantastic Local Dixie. Uh and so I you know, there wasn't a whole lot to do, and like there was you were not ever going to try and put video on the web at that point, Like there was just I mean,

lots of people still had dial upe modems. It was just not um something that you could afford the bandwidth for either. So I mean we just wanted to make stuff. Mike moved back from he dropped out of grad school and moved back and anytime we've always we've been together, from when your kids, we've made stuff together. And so we were like, all right, well what are we making?

And Flash was away that was like, oh wait, we don't need you know, a budget, we don't need a crew, we don't need you know, to go Rento camera, we don't need film sc or whatever. We can start making content. Um. And so it was like, all right, well, I guess we're gonna learn how to animate because and we had done stop motion stuff we were kids, and we're fans of animation. Obviously Maria Mario pained for the Supernintendo, but we never um, that wasn't what either of us were

like schooled in UM. We were always artists and creators of something, but never specifically animation. So we didn't look at it. Initially I was like, oh, we are we can't wait to start animating. It was more like, this is a way to tell stories, So what is the best thing we have for that medium? And it was like, oh, what if we turned that homestyle run our character and his friends into a cartoon? UM? And so that was

kind of what it was born out of. Um and the same reason that we would, you know, leave each other dumb answering machine messages, voicemail messages. It's like, oh, wait, here's some content. I have a medium to produce something on. It's the thirty seconds before the beat happens. Here, Mike, here's my little narrative I'm gonna give you when I'm asking you if you remember to get some high life at the publix or whatever. So anyways, so flash was kind of the next one of those, you know, was

the next. And flash was also easy. I mean it was easy enough for people that weren't animators to you know, stumble their way through and produce something that was, you know, halfway decent. So two guys in their apartment with like a couple of keyboards could like make something that sounded

you know, as good as the like. At that time, you know, there're were these studios making flash things that had like you'd watched the credits of a thirty second flash cartoon and it had like thirty people involved, um one for each second of the cartoon, right right. And this is so interesting to me because it parallels so nicely with the rise of computer games. I did a an episode recently about Sierra Games, which I know you guys love. Yeah, I got to talk to Ken Williams

and he actually came on. He tried to get Roberta. Now, he tried to, but she she was busy trying to figure out how to work their cable box. So uh, yeah, all of that is actually in the episode too, So it's great, but uh and I was very thankful for him to participate. But it was so interesting because the whole reason why Sierra Games got started was that he was programming. Roberta had started to encounter games, and a lot of those games were being written by people who

were teaching themselves how to code. So games were great because it was something that had structure, right, you had an idea, you didn't have to learn how to bring that idea to fruition, and so the game was really the the tool they were using in order to educate themselves on how to code. And then eventually a whole industry kind of grew out of that. And it's very similar to what you guys are saying, like necessity is the mother of invention. You had this this tool there

you need to learn how to use the tool. You had certain limitations placed on you, but those limitations ended up just shaping the direction, didn't hold you back neces sterile um, And in fact, I could argue that without those limitations, you could end up being paralyzed by choice. Right. You have so many options open to you don't even know what to tackle next. That's why Homestar cartoons are still five fifty four because that was the default and

Flash and still animated at twelve frames a second. Limitations are still seventeen years later. Wow. Yeah, And it's it's interesting now because we're in an era that sort of the post Flash era as well, where we're starting to see Flash being you know, pushed further and further away,

and there's not really any development development on that. And I know that has posed something of a challenge or Homestar Runner as well, because you know, that whole archive it's all in Flash, so I'm sure there's the the Some of it has been poured it over to YouTube, obviously, which is great because you know, that's a fantastic way

for people to find it. Although I think you guys ended up following a strategy that I've heard several creators say, is uh incredibly important you it was necessary, which was that you create your own space where stuff would go and live in that homestar runners own domain. Uh. The Bernie Burns of Rooster Teeth has talked about the same thing, that you need to have a space that's your own, because if you start depending upon someone else's platform and

that platform changes, you're at their mercy. So you were actually ahead of the game, but only because really because that was that was the only way forward pioneers, because what else was there to do? But ended up being again like that that inspired Bernie Burns over at Rooster Teeth to do the same sort of thing. He he knew he didn't want to put everything just on another platform like at that time it would have been like my Space or YouTube. Um, so it's it's something that

has since gone on to inspire others. So uh, you go in, you start making this cartoon and uh, you're having a good time, and what at what point during the process did you start to feel like this was gonna be something bigger than just a fun project to do occasionally, uh, and become something a little more serious than that. So we're we're what early two thousands here,

We've been doing it for a couple of years. Maybe two thousand, two thousand one was sort of when we were just uh, that was the sort of early years. And I think it was sometime in two thousand one when we started doing strong bad emails every yeah, every week. Yeah,

I think that was a turning point. Um, And it certainly didn't feel like it at the time, but I think looking back, having giving the fans a week like something to look forward to every week, and knowing, Okay, I'm gonna check back on Monday morning, gonna check back on Monday morning, that sort of snowballed into sort of where we I don't know, yeah, and then we sort of think of the point where we realize, like, oh wait, I think lots of people are watching this, and more

than maybe maybe we thought was when for the first couple of years we were just on like a Yahoo shared hosting account. It was supposed to be like the thirty bucks a month and you've got like five gigs of bandwidth or something, and I don't know how many cartoons would have been on the website at that point, but um, I remember printing out this thing and I think we got kind of a tip off, right from somebody at Yahoo that was just like, hey, I'm a fan of what you guys are doing. You're gonna have

to find another solution. And he was like, I've been looking the other way for a while now. And so I get onto our accountant download the like you know whatever, just bandwidth chart thing, and we've done like thirteen terabytes of transfer or something on our thirty or five games whatever. So there's we always just pictured this UM server in the back of some Yahoo data centers, like smoking sparking

in the back. Yeah, and that's when it, uh, we've got shut down at some point, right, that's when the system is down. So the site was actually down for a day or two. Yeah, um and uh, but that was kind of when we were like, oh, wow, okay, you know, we've gotten some emails and people. We knew that there were some, you know, but we just sort of assumed it was like, oh, these few people that know about flash animation on the web have found our stuff,

and that's awesome, and we thought that was great. Um. I think that was when that was kind of the moment where were like, oh, wait, maybe this is something we could do we could continue to do and because at the time we still had regular day jobs and I think that was probably about the same time we decided to sell some merch and and then a year or so into that was when our dad, who was was a c p a um like basically told his two screw up artists sons to quit their jobs. He

was like, this is dumb. You quit your jobs and make these cartoons for living, would you? Which is We've always feel like it's the probably the best moment you could you could ask for from a father's son. Oh yeah, when you got a churn public account and saying, hey, guys, no you know that that regular steady gig you have quit it? What that's amazing? Make cartoons with your brother in the basement? Good grief. That's like, yeah, dream come

true moment, right there? Tons and tons of short that you guys have made, lots of wonderful characters, not to mention all the alternate versions of those characters. Was always the most fun was to sort of world build and do other Yeah, yeah, I was enjoying. I love the old timey ones. Always like people that like that. That's my favorite too. So well, there's a sort of polarizing. It's no I to me, it's just the level of

absurdity coupled with the Transatlantic accent. My favorite. There's a there's a video that that we did here at How

Stuff Works about the Transatlantic accent. They got me to be the one to do it, and I have to say, like, there's certain certain influences that went into the absolute nonsense that I was spouting off randomly at the end of the video, just to kind of give examples of Transatlantic accent and the old timey homestar runner ones were way up there, and it's like, I know what I'm saying

has no meaning, but it doesn't matter. So and also, it's just fun to do until somebody really tells you to knock it off, and then it's actually fun to do for about another five minutes. Yeah, you gotta, Yeah, you gotta get past that point, right. It's the whole thing where you you tell a joke until it's being funny, and you keep telling it gets funny again. Yeah, repetition get louder to remember the I always think of the side show Bob Stepping on the Rakes and the Simpsons.

It's like it's like quak, he's gonna do it again. It's like happened so many times and it's like, whoa, we did it one more time. So it was wow. I didn't you know, I thought they were going to draw the line of nineteen. Uh. Well, out of all that massive amount of stuff that you guys have done, are there any things that just stand out in particular in your in your minds as things like when you

came up with it or when you first animated it. Uh, it brought you, guys just just genuine joy and whether whether or not it went on to have a life

of its own afterward. I'm always interested to hear the kind of stuff that when someone writes it and I know this gets self indulgent, but when you write it and you just think that's great, that's just a great little moment there, you know, even if even if you have to associate yourself with it a little bit, Is there anything like that stands out in your mind for me and it Maybe I don't know if it's the

same for Matt. You mentioned Sierra Games. We did a Peasant's Quest, which was a riff on King's Quest sort of in the Drug Door universe, and to me, making that whole game was probably the most fun thing we ever did. And Homestar related, um, just making the graphics for it, making the puzzles, do I mean just an implement it may being able to make a game that was not only it wasn't a parody of those games.

It was an homage to those games, and it was those games, you know, like it was functional, it wasn't just a joke. Yeah. I feel like when we made there's a emails at one eighteen What's virus one nineteen where he gets a computer virus and all this kind of crazy stuff happens and it gets a little like meta and uh, and it ends up with him getting a new computer in the next one because he asked to sacrifice this computer. But I remember that was one where we we stayed up all night we did. Uh.

Is that another one where we messed with the frame? Yeah, we re sized the size of the movie, but the viewer wouldn't know because we still always have this black border around it. But then at some point in it, that like border moves until like kind of messes with

your head in the cartoon. And then we there's a part where pop up ads start showing up in the cartoon and then we made a real pop up ad like we did some like I forget what it was action script like made one cap and in your browser too, so it was this broke broke the fourth wall, you know, outside of your normal computer realm. And um, I just remember finishing that one up, like I'm pretty sure we

stayed up all night for that one. And uh. And then the next day, um, we went to what Steak and Shake because I want would always like we'd like finish it up and be like, yeah, that's good and

kind of good feeling. And we didn't even like go look because we we tried not to be we always want to know, stay in touch with the fans, but never like tried to you know, we didn't like dissect every comment or every at the time it would have been like live journal page or something like there weren't just like message boards, uh or comments sections like there are now. But um, I don't even I think we

didn't even look at like anything. We're just like we just they're all gonna love it because everybody's gonna love this one, and we love this one. We had a really good time when then let's go get take and shake that. I don't know, that sort of moment where you're like confident enough in yourself to be like I think, I think we did a home run here, and then you know, and then you went back and it was like, oh,

I think people did like it. Like I remember always thinking along those lines when you would make a good one, it was like, okay, we did a good one. People liked it. And then that my thinking was that, okay, that just buys us three or four bad ones now the five for bad ones every game. When you do it's like, okay, I've got a little more currency to mess up. Well, you know. That also brings me There

was a recent piece I read that was interesting. It was about um uh people who are in the creative industry. They were specifically focusing on YouTubers, but to me, it really would be anyone from twitch streamers to podcasters to cartoonists, really, any any creative endeavor, especially a creative endeavor where you're trying to deliver consistent um content on on like a schedule. That one of the dangers is always this fear of burnout.

That's not just it's not just the idea of writer's block, which is something that we all deal with at one time or another where you're just you're staring at the empty page and there's just nothing coming to you. But just that that pressure of delivering, especially when you've built up a reputation of certain kind of material. Was that ever anything that was threatening you guys while you were working on it? Yeah, I mean it definitely made things.

You know, early on we made cartoons because they were fun, and then you know, there was definitely a period where Saturday Sunday came around and we're like, we don't have no ideas for this strong bade email, we have to make one, and then you just kind of have to power through. Yeah, um, which is it wasn't really that big of a deal. But like, if it wasn't for the expectation that was there, you wouldn't have on it,

you know. Yeah, I mean it's tough when you're trying, when your goal is to entertain someone and it feels like you know you're gonna have to push through it. Then that adds that extra layer, right, like you're like, it's not just that I need to do it, I need to do it and make someone laugh and I'm not having I don't want to be doing Yeah, yeah, um, but I mean that's I think working in that the way we worked where most of the stuff we did we made in the forty eight hours or so before

it was you know, thrown out into the world. You know, we made most everything from Friday to Sunday. Um, So it was a double edged short. I mean sometimes it was terrible. You know, probably the results were terrible. But other times you use that same energy and it's like if you sit there for two weeks and overthink things, you're you're gonna talk yourself out of something that's some

dumb idea that you know could have. You know, drog door for instance, is probably something that you think about it long, and I was like, I don't know, maybe we can just maybe he shouldn't have this beefy arm sticking out his back that when you gout, you know, fifteen minutes before you're gonna put it, let's leave it in, let's do it. It's a design choice. At this point. Uh, we also had the I feel like we had the luxury of being able to do kind of whatever we wanted.

And so even if there are those times where we were like out of ideas, for a strong bad email or something. That's when we'd be like, well, let's do an old time what do we want to do. Let's do an old timing cartoon this week, Let's do uh, you know, we invented like eighties hair metal band for the Homestar Universe. We invented a like indie rock band because that's kind of where we were in high school and college, and so it's just sort of like, I

just want to make it like indie rock song. This week. It's was like, all right, let's invent a band and put it in a cartoon and then that's you know, so we it was kind of nice where we just have to stop thinking of like we're delivering this formula everybody and a lot of you know, especially if it wasn't in the form of a strong bad email. I'm sure there were fans that were disappointed, but it was like, all right, well that's what you gotta put up with.

For like I, I didn't get burned out and hated the thing that you like that I do because I got like re energized by taking a little flight of and see or whatever and doing something kind of um out of our normal wheelhouse or whatever, um, and so I think that we would um employ that I think a good bit too, kind of helped stave off any sort of burnout where it was just like, all right, I should have shut up, because like, not only do I get to make cartoons for a living, but I

got to like blow off making cartoons and go do you know, makeup game like eighties hair metal song this week? So but yeah, and you guys also had stuff on the site that went beyond like you like the games are a good example. There were various interactive elements on the website. Besides games and little sound boards and things like that. You had the live action Troug Door uh trailer,

which is one of my favorites. And partly because I know some of the people were, I was like, se so fun and uh, that's the beauty of living in Atlanta. And you guys got to to work with some great Atlanta talent, which I I imagine is is just exploding at this point because we've got so many things happening in Atlanta. I'm sure that opens up a lot of

different opportunities as well, um, which is fantastic. But I also want to thank you guys for this idea of being able to branch out and try different things and and open up different universes, because I like to imagine that it was one of those weeks where we got blessed with Teen Girl Squad, which is probably my favorite of all of the variations that have come out. It's one my wife and I still quote consistently, so we're

always happy whenever we get a teen Girl Squad. Uh. So, you know, the popularity of Homestar grew and grew and and it's really interesting that you guys were you know,

you weren't really focused on the analytics. It's not like you were, you know, watching those counts, like you know, there are people who are are obsessed over that, whether it was back in the old web days where you had the little visitor counter that would go up by one little digit counter to go up every time, or now it's obviously like YouTube views and subscriptions, that kind

of thing. It seems like that was never really, uh, something that you guys were terribly focused on or concerned with. You were just you know, looking at the content and creating that. Yeah, and we didn't want we sort of actively didn't look at that because we didn't want you know, if we did something that we liked that it maybe didn't get the views. That's something else, like we didn't want that to affect like Okay, let's just make another

trout door or make another stinco man or something. So we would actively sort of try to distance ourselves from knowing what was hitting and what wasn't, just so that we could so it wouldn't mess with the creative process. Yeah. We talked to uh YouTube a couple of younger YouTube guys a few years ago, and uh they were talking about how like, you know, they used the live thing. There's like a live analytics thing on YouTube, like you can upload your video and then right then it's showing you.

It's just like any other you know, Google analytics thing where you can see who is watching it right now and if they and you know, if they commented. I don't know if you know exactly who did what comment. You know, they're interacting with the comments or liked or they did the thumbs down or whatever, or the moment they stopped watching. Yeah. Yeah, and so he said it was like it's like he's immediately watching this like focus group, but this is not. He didn't he's not testing this.

This is he this guy just made this thing and uploaded into the world, and now he's having to like watch this judgment happen like user and time. And I was just like, how can you do that? He's like, I know it's terrifying, but I can't, like I can't look away, Like I just like embraved as part of the process. And I'm happy that we didn't even we

were just for a long time. It was um, I mean it was this will sound like a humble brag or whatever, but it was like we actually were doing crazy enough amounts of traffic that are I don't know if it was just that our web hosting guy was like lazy and didn't want to like compile these logs. So we could see that, like because we occasionally we would ask were like, so what can we give us our actual numbers and stuff like what are we doing?

Um and uh, and he'd always be like, it's gonna take like a couple of days because it's all these like log files and it kind of like chokes on them. And so we just never had those numbers. So I kind of feel fortunate that we didn't, because I think we could have obsessed over that stuff, and now it's carried into even though we are you know, we're putting stuff on YouTube now and have a Twitter account and

stuff like that, but like we just don't care. I like it kind of helps inform, uh, those decisions now where I don't think we'll be affected by it, even though it seems like that is the way that if you're gonna make money on this stuff, you need to like get a million viewers, and you need to have ad revenue and all that stuff. But it's kind of like, I'm glad that I'm not sweating that even if it's not sure, it's not like crushing if we put up

a new cartoon and it doesn't hit well. Yeah, I mean, like again going back to the example of not not putting all your eggs in one basket. With the YouTube example, we've just seen YouTube change their policies that in my mind, really hurt people who who specialize in short form content because a lot of the metrics that they're using is the number of collective hours watched per given amount of time,

like per month or whatever. And obviously, if you're producing short form content, you need to have way more people watching your stuff. To get that collective number of hours up. And it's not it's not a comment on the quality of the content so much is just the quantity of it, which seems kind of backwards to me. Yes, and now if you just I didn't realize that that's I knew there was a change recently. Yeah, it was something along

the lines of life. I think. It's like, in order to even be considered for monetization at this point, your videos need to have achieved something like four thousand hours worth of viewing time, which obviously, if you're doing short form and even if you have an engaged, dedicated audience, you've got to write a whole bunch of different episodes

or or instances in order to achieve that. Whereas if you are someone who maybe you you record a two hour or three hour gaming session and you upload it and there's you know, there's a proven audience for that content because it's three hours, and because a lot of those people will watch the entire three hours and material you rack those alums video and you're set, you right, just watch it yourself. It's just wow, Like I remember when that little black spot was an orange and uh,

now here we are and then it's just desiccated into nothing. Um, this isn't good, but it's consistent. Uh yeah, it's it's it's well again. A great reason why why going into any one platform is a bit of a you know, a danger, because you might you might end up having a policy change that you have no control over. And it's not that your stuff isn't great or that it

doesn't have an audience. It's just that because the rules changed above you, you suddenly have a door closed in your face, which seems kind of unfair for anyone who's not like a big time content creator, like one of the one of the superstars. Um. And obviously YouTube has gone through numerous changes over it's it's history. I did a three part series about YouTube recently and really talked about how it's changed dramatically. So there's no guarantee that's

going to keep that policy. Maybe if there's enough resistance, they'll change it again, but it's one that draws concern from people who maybe they want to get a start. They have an idea and they want to indulge in that idea and they hope that it brings delight to others and maybe one day they can make a living out of it. But it's it. Not only is discovery difficult now, but when the rules change like that, it's difficult to even get to the point where you can

start monetizing it. You guys, however, had this monetized your your stuff through mostly through merchandise and without advertising. Uh. That was also interesting to me because like I own some homestar runner stuff, but it was the sort of thing that I went and searched for, as opposed to you know, watching a cartoon where halfway through it tells me, hey, by the way, if you want a shirt that has that funny thing that's strong bad just said you need to click the sleeks here or even at the end

where they wouldn't have really been obtrusive in anyway. Our dad always wanted us to do that, and we were always to our street cred was too valuable. Yes, yeah, we kind of shot ourselves in the foot. We admit that now. Amazed that people found because it's almost like the store was this easter egg that you had. If you really searched for a hung Star shirt, you could you could find it. It. Like we were very reluctant to well it's funny in like two thousand one or two. Uh,

we were approached by someone from Hot Topic. And this wasn't like they walked up to us, was like a contract for like, hey, we want to join you know, your your characters into T shirts and make millions of dollars. But they weren't starting a conversation that could have led to any you know, any different variation of that scenario.

And we just wanted nothing, you know, we didn't want to do it, and we we kind of pitched him like, oh what if we did these other kind of weirder like jokes from our website that weren't like the characters, like they want to do Team Girl squad shirts and this other stuff, and and we ultimately said no. And I forget who I was talking to, but it was got small, not like an audience I was talking to, but there's a lot younger kids, and I like I

said it thinking that. Uh. I was like yeah, Then we got approached by hot Topic and like, you know, so of course we said no to that. And then they were all just like stared at me, just like why did you say no to that? And I was like it was hot hoppic. Hot Topic came to us. I was like you like that would have just killed us instantly, Like it's like, yeah, maybe a bunch of kids would have bought stuff and whatever, and they're like yeah,

and you would have like made a million dollars. Well I don't know that, and uh and then I probably would have hated what I did after that, And they're just like, that was a bad decision. You made a bad decision, and you should have put your stuff in hot topics good to have life life lessons. It comes. I don't know, I get I like to think that the homestar runner is therefore responsible for they shut up

and take my money. Mean, but but I mean that I appreciate that too, because again, it was that sort

of uh philosophy, that sort of it. While it wasn't something that was being overtly stated, it was something that a lot of fans appreciate it, and you know, taking the effort to try and find a way of supporting was great because it was it was a show early on that you know, I think a lot of stories about internet content focus on the negatives, like the idea of people who don't want to pay for content, so they find work around so that they can get it

for free. But the opposite is also true, where you'll find people who are encountering content that is seemingly being presented. I mean there's no there there's no advertising, you know, there was there's nothing where there was like a donate button or anything. It was like there's a store and you could go there and you could purchase things. And they said, you know, I want to support the content

creators that I love and the stuff I love. I want them to keep making the stuff because I'm enjoying it. And it tells you that there's there's really a place for that too. And of course now we see platforms like Patreon that have come out to do more direct supportive artists that have proven that point that there are people who are willing to do that if you give them the opportunity. Right. We've had people tell us like, yeah, about ten Homestar Runner shirts I never wear, didn't after

the second one. I didn't need anymore to support you. Yeah, Well, and people will say like, you know, I have I've purchased enough merch Like I'm not. It's not that I don't love you, but I don't need any more T shirts. Uh, can you please start a Patreon or something, so I can give you some money every once in a while when I want to. I just don't need another homes uh. And so that's that's good to hear that people are

willing to do that. Every kid at my local elementary school now has a homestore Runner exactly the thrift store my stuck. But that's a that's a great I mean, that's a great story because it tells you that what you have created has actually had a meaningful impact on people. And I know it sounds weird to call it a meaningful impact when you're talking about a world that has a character called the poop Smith, But it's true and and it's it's great because it's again, I think it

illustrates that positive side of the internet. We so well so quickly focus on that negative side, and it's good to have something you can point out and say, well, you know, look at this. It shows that if you have the structure in place, and if you have the right content in place, people flocked to it and people want to support it. And you guys have also you know, I mentioned you know, you were incorporated into the Buffy verse in an episode um You've got you had lots

of references in various types of pop culture. What was that like seeing the thing that you had created start to get referenced by by other like like pop culture icons, everything from and they might be giants, I mean, you know, making music for you. That one was pretty amazing because I was we were huge. They might be giant fans giants fans growing up. So when they emailed us, that was pretty mind blowing. Yeah. Um, yeah, we heard from the Buffy thing I think was like somebody in Fox

was like, hey, don't see us. We they don't like, nobody here knows what you guys are, but don't we We put a drop door reference in this upcoming episode. Josh is a big fan and they sent us there or no, it was it was it an entertainment weekly. There was some picture that they referenced there was he had a strong bad shirt on and like on set of something he was shooting. Um, and so that was really cool. Uh but yeah, that was at the time.

That was that was pretty mind blowing, just to know that it's like, Okay, so people outside of you know, whatever weird world we thought we existed in as far as fan bases go, people were finding that stuff, and we've since found out things like UMU. At that time when it was a friend of ours worked with Damon Lindelof and said that he it was like me and jose Weeden would get in trouble. I was supposed to be writing Lost episodes and we'd been quoting strong backing

each other something. I was like, holy crap, watching when you were wasting time watching when I was making that's amazing. Um So that kind of stuff has been super cool. What was the show those that show the Magicians that's on now? This was It was nice because it felt like a little a nice little like a bookend to the like Buffy thing where I guess they referenced Trong Door and I think it's the season to finale or something,

and I actually haven't even seen it. I just people everybody told me what the SENDI little clips of it or whatever, which that's always so it's it's always cool

to see that stuff. Yeah, and then that actually led to other things like collaborations where you guys did uh the animations for um uh for They Might Be Giants video, which is fantastic, And and you've appeared on well, yeah, we've done several collaborations with them, the characters have appeared on stage where they might be giants, because I've been to some of those shows and the variety of playoffs, and that was always a joy, uh to the point where you I would imagine that was part of the

inspiration for them to come up out with their band, the Them band, the sock Puppets. They where they would wow when I would see that come out, and it's like, this is this is mind boy, this is happening right now. Um and uh and seeing seeing Home Star and Strong Bad in Uh in person is always a big thrill for for me. Despite it's so weird to say that out loud to the people who actually made that, but

it's absolutely true. So you you go through, You're you're doing the the series it's got you know, it's got some some not just just fan support, but it's also blossoming in various areas of pop culture. We see trock Door get into Guitar Hero two, which is still another amazing thing when that when I found out that that was a bonus track, I was so thrilled Immediately, I was like, this is my quest to master Door. That's solo by the way impossible, and you want to know something,

this is what. We didn't find this out until later, or I think we knew it, but we didn't realize it. So we played as Limousine, the band that plays other ones live, and so the we play with these guys that are in this band yacht Rock in another band called Saved by the band um and are uh. They learned the song and um And so our friend that does that plays the guitar for us, Chris Harris, and he learned the song. He's like, those really knows this

stuff as far as like squeally wanky guitar. It's all like he's that's amazing. You can do the tapping. He can do all this stuff and it's incredible. And so he learned tron door and then we came into practice and he played it and he's like, nails that solo.

And then one of the other guys was like, you know when we originally recorded that, because he wasn't on that song, he was like, that's like that's keyboard was just like played four notes yeah, and he was like wait what and he was like yeah, no one can play that fast. And he's like, oh, I learned it so yeah, but so it doesn't. It didn't surprise me

when I learned that. I think we kind of told the Harmonics people that at the time and they're like, that's fine, we'll just make it the guitar solo and there. And I've watched YouTube videos of people who have done the perfect run on that on the hardest setting, and it's just mind blowing. I can't I can't even I can't see as fast as they're playing, which is the

craziest thing. But then we get up to about and it was then when you guys were starting to get other opportunities that that also we're pulling you away from Home Star. And as I understand it, it it was getting to a situation where it wasn't that you wanted to

to leave the series. It was that you were having, you know, other demands on your time, whether it was family or it was other other gigs that were coming up, and it just became one of those things where, uh, week after week it just wasn't you just didn't have the time to dedicate to making more content for Homestar Runner. Uh. Is that is that more or less accurate for how things turned out? Yeah, I mean, we had no idea how long it was going to be either when we

matt second daughter was born. I think that was basically when we when we stopped doing stuff and we didn't know if it was going to be out. Let's take a break for two months, yeah, four years. Well, and that's the thing is that, you know, you you take those breaks, and then there are things come up and and obviously you've got all these commitments on your time. Uh, and and then you're you're thinking, well, how how do

I how do I communicate this to a fan base? Yeah, and then at some point it was like, wait, we've waited too long, or like is it weird to try to say something when we don't know what we're saying? We don't know, you know, like if we're gonna say, hey, we'll do some Homestar stuff in a year, we you know, Yeah,

there was no definitive answer. And then at that time we didn't know we had like a development deal at Disney and a development deal at Nickelodeon, and we were gonna make some Yo Gabba Gabba episodes and these things that were just like that doesn't mean anything to a Homestar fan, and maybe we undervalue that maybe they would have been excited to hear that stuff, but then it was like that Nickelodeon thing went nowhere and that Disney thing went nowhere, and so that would have been like

after the fact would have been like depressing, and I was like, oh, they were like, oh yeah, so they're Disney thing didn't work Outdan thing didn't work out, and that like Nyo Gabba Christmas episode they directed it was horrible and like, I don't know, so it just felt weird, especially because we never aside from being like we intimated that, like we'd had babies and so we're gonna take some time off. That's kind of the only time Mike and I ever sort of inserted are like creator lives ensure

the fans heads. I mean, we always intentionally aside from some like fake things on a DVD where we're like spoofing how we make things, Um, we wanted us to

be separate from it. We never wanted to have the like creator blog side of it, and definitely not the like the way that most of the like YouTube personalities are like even if their content is not that they're like always after the facts, like hey, I'm the star of the YouTube thing you just watched Remember to go to the store and buy the new merch and blah blah blah. It's always just like we didn't want to

be the face of any of it, you know. UM. So it felt weird to then have that conversation, after like never really talking to the fans as Mike and Matt Um at least through the website, to like give a weird half ass explanation of like, I don't know, we don't know that was, you know, And then that just felt like I would be super unsatisfied if I just gotta we don't know what's going on from the creator of my thing that I liked, So I don't know. We always apologize I we didn't to handle it right.

We didn't know how to handle it right, and we like there was it was so funny. The day before we put up UM the first cartoon we made in Forever, which was this April Fool's cartoon in UM, I got a somebody found my like personal email address a fan. It sent this like pages long thing like tearing us apart and saying that it's like radio silent yeah and four and just being like, here's this what this meant

to me here like every week like it was. It was like the first half was like super awesome fans, in the second half was like and here's why I hate you. Will never support anything you've ever done ever again. And uh and like literally we're finishing up this cartoon to send like to upload it like midnight. I get this at like I don't know, seven pm the day before,

and I think I just I forget. I think I wrote back and I just said like, hey, I'm so sorry, thanks for being a fan, and just kept it vague and sort of hoping that then that maybe that cartoon would happen and that they would be like, wait they listen to me an amazing turn the last half an

hour they made this cartoon. Um so yeah, So that was the main reason we never we just the explanation was never like exciting enough to like to like feel like to like peel behind the curtain and be like, hey, look behind here, we're making a new project, because none of those projects ever really happened. Um so yeah. Oh sorry, I was gonna say we actually made a strong, bad sort of addressing talking to the fans about it. I

forget when that was. That was maybe six months or so after we had stopped doing stuff and we made this thing and then never ended up putting it up because we were just like, this is weird. We showed it one time at a conference we were at last year. I went over kind of weird. Yeah, I think we made the right call. I think I think my favorite.

I'm also fortunate in that because Lincoln live in Atlanta. Um, I'm I'm a frequent patron of Dad's Garage Theater, so I actually got to see the Special Strong Bad Email theater because I've I've been supporting them since two thousand's so I was there their old theater and when they went to uh move into seven Stages for a while, and now they have their new theater, and they that was one of the things they showed one night, and the crowd reaction when that came on was pretty phenomenal.

They showed that the Fox Theater. They had a special event, a special fundraiser at the Fox Theater, and it was kind of a variety show of giving an example of the sort of material that they would do, and they showed the Strong Bad Special Email to Dad's Garage and hearing the Fox Theater erupt an applause at a Strong Bad Email was something really special. I think that was the second cartoon. I think that was the next thing we made after that April Fools in two thousand fourteen.

Was that, Yeah, strong Bad Email. So it had been four or five years since we had made a strong Bad Email. Was the reaction to that that April first, two thousand and fourteen video? Was that something that uh was really gratifying for you guys because I know, at least in my own personal circle of friends, when people found out that there was a new home Star Runner cartoon up, Uh, it went nuts on my Facebook page and like it was like it was like what half

of my friends were sharing. UM, so I imagined like when you you know, you've been you've been kind of away from it for four years. Uh. Was it surprising to you to see a reaction has gotten I think Gizmoto and some of the blogs and you know linked to it. So that was surprising, and you know, yeah, we didn't know. We just sort of assumed that the few people that sadly still check Homestar runner dot com entered this u r L into their um the yellow

keys of their mechanical because it was strong. But I didn't have a Twitter yet or anything, right, I mean, there's really no I guess we had a YouTube page, but we didn't, so there was really no way to communicate to the fans that hey, we've got this new cartoon up and you went to the site, know if anyone would really see it, and then if if then people did stumble across it, if they would you know, be excited about it or pass it on or whatever.

So that was that was cool, and that definitely led to it just sort of coincided with the fact that I was I was living in l A at the time when we made that actually and then we u I but I knew my family was moving back to the Atlanta area, and so the fact that Mike and now we're going to be back in the same town again, and that like it was like, oh, it seems like people don't hate us and maybe want to see more things.

That just kind of was like, all, right, well, we're back in the same town again, we shouldt least start doing stuff as you know often as we can, um between whatever other gig we were doing. Yeah, so since then we've been doing home Star stuff, you know, every few months, or you know, depending on what the other stuff we're working on is. So sure, So what other stuff are you working on? Since uh, you know, we

know that Homestar Runner is in good hands. It's going to continue coming out and and and keeping opal ives so that when we do that that jumped Home Star Runner, there's a there's a good chance there's gonna be something new there. But what else are you guys working on? Um, we're just talking to for the first time ever, we've been talking with adults whom locally here, which is and

so we'll see. We have no idea if that will go anywhere not, but we uh, we've known people that have worked on shows there, have known you know, creators of shows there and stuff before, but it never actually spoken with them. And it's actually it's it's great because there's a hilarious I think it's been debunked enough now.

But for a very long time, if we would ever talk to people were not that we do so many interviews, but it would come up to be like and I heard that you guys stormed out of an adult swim meeting to them, and we're like, no, I mean, I don't know there was ever an overture either way, and we love that. We love that channel and you probably heard the hot topic story exactly. Um. But so so that's exciting. So for the first we were just like, yeah,

they're down the street. It kind of makes sense, like I moved to l A even though there was like an entire cartoon network you know here as well. Yeah, everyone assume when they find out we're from Atlanta, like, oh you guys, must you know, work with cartoon networking Adult swim And it's like, now we do stuff with this. Um. But so that's exciting. So we'll see where that goes, um and uh and what else And let's just we

haven't been doing other homestar stuff. You have a couple of homestar like sort of top secrety things that will be revealing soon that will be exciting that we've been spending a lot of that take a lot of sort of build up time, secret time, secret time. Fantastic And I've been, um, speaking of Sierra Games. There's a park down at the end of my street, and so I've been making King's Quest style graphics of a couple of little parts of the park waterfall, and so I made

this little King's Quest looking waterfall. Oh Man, does Roy Roy Roy Moss Senior Memorial Garden. It's called the garden and it is not a garden. Yeah, runoff retention. I guess that doesn't have quite the same ring to it. But it's actually it's featured. It's heavily featured in The Peasants Quest Live. Actually Janka Cave, Yeah, oh man and uh. I also have to give you guys props for two more X because I've been Yeah, so that was we did that with Disney for two years. We ended last

you know, summers or so. Um, but so that was really good. That was great. We made ninety shorts little shorts for Disney. Nice. That was our that was the last five we did. Yeah, that was our most fun. We did that with our daughters. Um so, our three daughters voices and so that was Yeah, glad you liked that. That was that was certainly fun to make. That was good to know too. We we actually get we get that back so we can actually try and take give

Panda practice some more life. A bunch of the stuff we made for Disney like this they owned. Sure, we can sure anything else with but Panda Bractice is one of those few that's like, especially like meging cartoons with your kids, there's nothing better than that. So maybe maybe that'll find my daughters. Yeah, she's not gonna want to do that with you anymore. Now, it's just are going

to be changing it. We're not gonna be able to I recommend to my listeners if you have not seen the series two More Eggs, go to YouTube, and especially the Panda Bractice episodes. They are they are amazing. Uh and and they will make you want to play drums on people's faces. As as a local Atlanta too, did you did you get our lowest? Yes? As I was watching it, I was like, this is so clearly a beautiful homage to the Atlanta treasure of Lois rights us.

I've been hearing that voice forever and uh and yeah, it's not meant in any sort of insulting. Well, I hope I do it. I hope I it's respectful. I I could tell as I was listening, like this is this is someone who has genuine affection for that voice. It's not making fun of that voice. And she's also a friend of dad's garage theater. So sometimes you hear that voice if you go to see a show there,

which is amazing. So again, that's the other thing I love about about watching your content is that it gives me another connection to my home, so it's always fun. And to occasionally explain to people where certain little things come from is always kind of fun too, because it gives them a chance to go down that rabbit hole. Uh the Internet was really created for. Ultimately, that's what the Internet is, right, It's just just one giant black hole of information. Um. One of the series we did

for two more exits called Truncoles. It's this fake British show and so there's a part with some of the background drawings of buildings and structures in this town of Truncoles are local buildings like around Decators wonderful. Keep your eyes open for the library at Decatur High School, which is this weird sort of that's face that appears. Yeah, I know, I know it. Well oh man, Well, thank you guys so much for coming on tech stuff and

spending this time. I really appreciate. It's been a thrill for me and anyone out there who's not familiar with with your work, they need to go out and seek it out because it's that level of of surreal absurdity that just the first time I think anyone watches anything, they might just be confused. And then and then after they watched the same thing a second time, they're like, Okay, I'm starting to get it. And then next thing you know,

they've watched the same thing fifteen times. When you say, you realize, there's nine right that you that you can watch and and in sequence or out of sequence if you prefer. You can really just jump around if you like. But it's great. I can't wait to make um more references with my friends. I really hope that we can get that giant trog door uh portrait with the cutouts over to the Georgia Renaissance Festival. I really think I'll

talk to the entertainment director. I know him, so we'll see if we can go hitting somewhere like off like in some forests somewhere we have to like I know exactly where it should go. It's like it's like like listen, I know it's a big hill, and I know it looks like there's not much up there. You will find treasure, right, like, trust me. Thank you so much for joining the show. I really appreciate. Thank you. Yeah, so that's it Tex Stuff,

Thank you tuning in. Well, my guests were a small piece of potato that has been sitting in Saturday Transistor radio since the nineteen seventies. Thank you for being on potato. Yes, that's that's that's nice potato, all right, and so join me next week when my guests will be apparent. It will be the same piece of potato next week. Thank you very much. Don't forget to support this podcast if you like what you're listening to next week. I hope

they and maybe the sixteen dollars. I'd like to thank Mike and Matt and Strong Bad for coming on the show and telling me all about the stuff that I was enjoying years and years ago before I ever became part of the house Stuff Works family. It was a real special moment for me. And if you are not familiar with their work, I highly recommend you seek it out and find out if that brand of silliness is up your wacky avenue, because I find endless hours of

enjoyment from that work. It's I can watch an old cartoon again and find new things to laugh at, and I think laughter is something that should never be in short supply, so go check that out. If you guys have suggestions for things I should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff, whether it's a topic or a guest I should have on the show, maybe a special co host for a specific topic, let me know what you think.

Send me a message. The email for the show is tech Stuff at how stuff Works dot com, or you can drop me a line on Facebook or Twitter to handle of both of those is tech Stuff HSW. Remember we have an Instagram account now, so go check that out. Crystal does great work uploading tons of great photos, including pictures of stuff like interviews with famous internet comedy creators, so you should make sure you go and add that

account to your Instagram account. And of course I stream live frequently on Wednesdays and Fridays over at twitch dot tv slash tech Stuff. Just visit that you r l. You'll see the schedule there and you can actually watch me make magic live and in person, including the parts where I mess up. So I hope to see you at that channel. You can chat with me and and

I might even acknowledge your existence. I know it's on the bucket list, so go ahead and do it and I'll talk to you guys again really soon for more on this and thousands of other topics because it has to works. Dot com