MagicCarrot.com interviews Creative Team Alpha about their Ultimate Odyssey

Part 3

MagicCarrot.com sat down with Creative Team Alpha in April and talked about the Ultimate Odyssey, Killer Bunnies, and other games. Creative Team Alpha’s fearless leader Jeff Bellinger, Creative Director Jonathan Young, and Product Development Specialist A.J. Pfeifer answer fans’ questions and give tantalizing answers to our Odyssey questions.

If you missed them, be sure to catch Part 1 and Part 2.

MC1:How did you determine the “look” of each game, because each one has a little different look. Or was it artwork kind of evolved over time and we’re just seeing a snapshot of what it looked like at that time?

JY: In each game, or each booster deck?

MC1: Well, actually, either. We notice that Quest cards have certain similar elements. The bunnies tend to look more bunny-like, than say, the artwork we’ve seen for Jupiter or Odyssey so far, you know, the promotional artwork, it seems that they’re a little more anthropomorphized in the later games than the earlier games.

JB: What was that word? I’m looking that up right now.

AJ: Anthropomorphized.

JB: How about I’m checking my thesaurus. [Laughs] You threw me with that one there!

JY: I can answer that on an artistic level, but I’m going to pass that to Jeff answer it on a story-line level.

JY: This is not a very commonly-known fact, but I don’t shy away from it either, but I’m not the first artist to draw bunnies for Quest. I was about the third or fourth artist to come on board when Jeff was making the game out of his garage before it was sold to Playroom. There was kind of a style already developed. I helped Jeff develop the game from a graphic design standpoint using existing artwork. But there came a time where we ran out of artwork. A couple booster decks is all we got. And then I had worked with it enough that I just continued to draw in that style. And when Playroom bought the game out, I went back and redrew the majority of the cards so that they had a consistent style. And that’s where you get the bunnies that look more like bunnies instead of more like humans. There’s a mix of styles there. Some of them are very tall and human-like. Some of them are absolutely anthropomorphized.

JB: Anthropomorphysis.

JY: [Laughs] There are some that have haunches and some that are large bosomed and some that are butch and some that are short and some that are fat. You know, A good variety of styles. When we developed Jupiter, we wanted to make sure people recognized them as the Killer Bunnies. I started the game with the five bunnies that are used as bunnies and went back and forth with Jeff. The first round—that nobody’s ever seen—were very round and very bunny-like, as opposed to human-like. They had haunches and they were shorter and rounder. I’d say cuter, but I like the ones we’ve got now. We decided that these bunnies fly ships and they’re out in space so they have to have thumbs and legs and feet so that they can drive ships. And so we did go with the more human-like figure with that. The story line continues in Odyssey. They continue with that. They evolved a little bit more. They’re still very Killer Bunny-esque. I think the one big change we made in Odyssey is that they have to wear clothes.

JB: Yes, that’s true.

JY: A lot of the bunnies in Quest don’t wear clothes.

JB: They don’t wear pants.

MC1: That’s just in Walt Disney tradition!

JY: We had a comment from somebody that complained about … what was the card name?

JB: “Beauty On Duty”.

JY: … Beauty On Duty … which is a parody of “Down Periscope” and Lieutenant Lake, who is a very large-breasted actress, in a very small, tight-fitting outfit, and we drew a bunny like that. And the complaint was it was pornographic because she’s not wearing pants.

MC1: Wow.

JY: I went back and counted, and out of all the bunnies in Quest, there are about five that wear pants.

MC1: [Laughs]

JY: The majority of them don’t wear pants. But in the new games, they’re all wearing clothes. No naked bunnies. No pornography.

MC1: I do notice with the Jupiter bunnies, that it’s almost like they’re paper dolls. They’re all in the same position, and basically have an overlay of clothing on them. Can you describe the creative process by which you created the set—and by “you” I mean all of you who were involved—the set of initial bunnies that we have and how did you choose the particular TV shows that are being parodied in those?

JY: When Jeff originally developed the game, and his fascination with science fiction, he wanted to parody “Space: 1999”. Because of some copyright laws, we can’t develop a game that has too much emphasis on one parody. We can get away with all of the parodies that we do because it is small percentage of the game. So I said “Let’s do each color a different sci-fi show.” And so I developed the five bunnies and then we sat down as a team, Jeff and I, and AJ and a few other guys, and figured out which five we were going to do, and that also includes we knew what we were doing for red, which was “Red Dwarf.”

JB: That was easy.

AJ: The best!

JY: It’s not just the clothes. They’re also holding—we decided we were going to give them each a prop. Some of them were pretty easy to figure out what they were going to hold. So their hands move, based on what they’re holding. Can I tell them the fast-forward story?

JB: Sure, sure. Keep going. You’re doing fine.

JY: We sat down on two different days with the team in Jeff’s living room and we had to find props for the “Space:1999” show and the “Battlestar Galactica” show.

AJ: No.

JB: Lost in Space.

JY: Lost in Space.

JB: Right.

AJ: So that would be violet, orange and green bunnies, for everybody that doesn’t get the references.

JY: We’re all big “Star Trek” fans and “Star Trek” has a lot of cool little gadgets. The “Star Wars” yellow bunnies all have light sabers.

JB: I want to go on record here saying I totally objected to “Star Wars” bunnies.

AJ: Yeah, I had to fight to get that in there, guys, so everybody, all the bunnies fans that like “Star Wars”, you can send the emails to me in thanks that I fought to get that in there. Enough of this “Star Trek”.

JB: It’s not that I don’t like “Star Wars”... Well, I should say that I don’t dislike it. I’m not really thrilled with it. I never, ever, had it.

AJ: That’s because you don’t understand its superiority over “Star Trek”.

JB: We’ve had this debate many times.

AJ: Yes!

JB: I’m a trekkie from birth. I’m a “Lost in Space” guy from birth. And “Space:1999” from close to birth. And, of course, you know, Galactica. It’s really weird because when you think about it, [Star Trek: The] “Next Generation. We decided to go with Next Gen only because we didn’t want all of the shows to be that old. “Lost in Space” was the 60’s. “Space: 1999” was the 70’s and so was Battlestar Galactica. And so we went with Next Gen because it was the 80’s. So “Star Trek” [The Next Generation] was the most modern of all of the references.

AJ: Even Star Wars was late 70’s early 80’s.

JB: It was amazing. If we’d gone with the original “Star Trek” the problem was that all of the uniforms were different colors. So we’d decided to go with Next Gen because there was so much similarity and we could make them all the same color and still have the patterns, we needed recognition. That’s more from your end of it.

JY: Once we got the five, or the six if you count red, themes figured out, we worked on the outfits, what type of outfits were recognizable, but not the same outfit on every character. Then we sat down as a team and fast-forwarded through every single “Battlestar Galactica” episode. And every single “Space: 1999” episode. And every single “Lost in Space” episode.

JB: And you have to really pay attention when you’re watching at sixteen speed, looking for props!

AJ: Holy prop! There’s one! It’s a good one. Go back. Wait, no. They’re too far.

Everybody: [Laughs]

JY: It turns out it was a very unique experience for the team’s relationships.

AJ: I definitely recommend any types of teams out there, do this stuff for research. You’ll definitely get a bonding experience out of it. [Laughs]

MC1: Well, I look forward to that.

JB: We have the theme song to “Space: 1999” pretty memorized.

AJ: [Laughs]

MC1: Can you hum it for us?

JB: Have you seen the show?

MC1: “Space: 1999”?

JB: Yeah.

MC1: Sure. Oh, yeah, I used to watch it as a kid.

JB: [unintelligible]

JY: It’s very pornographic. It’s like a 1950’s porn show.

JB: Close your eyes and you don’t get Sci-Fi?

JY: We’re talking about the theme music.

JB: No, not Martin Landau. He’s not pornographic.

MC1: Or Barbara Bain.

JB: Or Barbara Bain. No, no.

MC1: As long as you seem to like Gerry Anderson shows, are we ever going to see his earlier live-action work, in the TV series “UFO”?

JB: Actually, I have all of “UFO” on disc. I’ve gone through it once, and this was years ago, when it first came out on disc, and I haven’t, and I don’t know that I’ll actually do it again. It was really difficult to sit through “UFO”, having never seen it as a kid. But I will say that we’ve already put a “UFO” reference in Odyssey.

MC1: Awesome! I look forward to that.

JB: It’s the car. The brown car.

MC1: Mm-hmm.

JB: With the gull-wing doors.

MC1: Mm-hmm.

JB: Yeah, that’s already in it. It’s in the card “Auto Pile Up”.

JY: I haven’t seen it yet.

JB: It hasn’t gone to the Art Director yet, but it’s a few years away. It’s in there.

JY: If you’ve read some of the comments that I’ve left on the forums, I’ve made comments that we’re just as excited when stuff comes out because we work a year ahead of schedule, so it’s a big surprise when it comes out for us. So, Jeff is on the sixth or seventh booster deck already for Odyssey...

JB: I’m on the fourteenth.

AJ: Yeah, the fourteenth.

JB: AJ and I were discussing the fourteenth booster deck earlier this afternoon.

AJ: That’s right.

JY: [Pause] I’m on the third one.

Everyone: [Laughs]

MC1: Well, I’m sure you have a lot of lead time to do all of the artwork on those. That’s quite a bit of effort. I’ve tried my hand at it a little bit and I couldn’t do, probably more than a card a day, so if you can hit more than that, I’m quite impressed.

JY: One of the things that will come out, and we haven’t started talking about it yet, is I’m not actually doing the artwork for Odyssey. I’m doing probably twenty-thirty cards per deck. But we have hired several other artists that are drawing for us. That work that you see in all of those promotions. We’ll be introducing those artists officially as the game is released.

AJ: One of them might be at GenCon.

JY: That just comes from not because I didn’t want to, but I just don’t have the time to.

MC1: Oh, of course.

JY: Because contrary to popular belief, Jeff and I and AJ have full-time jobs to provide [indistinct].

MC1: Oh yes, we know that.

JB: We don’t enjoy them, but we have them! [Laughs]

AJ: That’s right. [Laughs]

Part 4 of the CTA Interview

Celebrity Bunny - Jessica

Celebrity Bunny Jessica is a companion card (pun intended) to Celebrity Bunny Roger.