Andy Minton · Hangry Animals

[0:00]You better call.

[0:08]It's good to be back for another better call Is all Yap episode. How we doing today? Hang Andy. Good man. Yeah. Happy Sunday. It's uh, happy Sunday for sure. Yeah. Nice to be, uh, chatting across the pond a million percent. We were, uh, we were chatting with the COC in, in the space last night, and it was, it was cool to hear the different, um, things about English and, uh, American, uh, foods and different things that they were talking about, um, and sharing.

[0:39]So, yeah, it's great to have you here. It's early in the morning here, but morning the afternoon. Um, it's always great to be able to. Chat with people from all, all over the world. And I think that's kind of the power of the COC and Web3 as a whole. So, um, it's wonderful to have you here. I'd love for you to give just an intro who is Andy?

[0:57]Um, and, and yeah, I would love to get your, get your buyout. Sure man. Um, thanks for having me. And, uh, yeah, everybody I. Andy called myself hangry. Andy, I may, I would say probably a bit of a veteran in the creative space. Um, you know, it'd be 27 years maybe. I know, I know this face looks fresh, but underneath, inside I'm haggard, you know, just been, been doing this for a while.

[1:28]Um, but yeah, 27 years I've been a creative director. I've been a developer. Um, I've run studios. I've owned an animation studio, sold that, um, was a leader, sort of creative lead in a creative agency for 15, 15 years of my life, and decided that that were, for me, it was not the thing that brought me joy, so I jumped ship and, uh, joined smaller creative agencies and didn't quite like that either.

[2:00]So I started my own with a group of people. Um, back in 2019, just as the pandemic was about to hit, you know, when you start something and then crap hits the fan. It was one of those moments, but, um, we did that for four years. Um, but in the midst of doing all that, I discovered what three and I discovered the community and everything that comes with it.

[2:26]You know, build with a community and, uh. I suppose that's where a bit of a transition happened for me because 15 years in agency when my core being is all about creativity, it's all about building, um, ideas and articulating those maybe a. Maybe it's, it comes from myself. So I'm, I'm on the tool, so I'm able, I'm able to share and sharing that vision with other people who believe in the same thing and we build together.

[2:57]Um, but when you're a leader in a creative agency, you don't really get enough time to be on the tools. And I think that was a massive part for me of jumping away from that, um, and finding my feet, re finding illustration again, doing live streams. Enjoying the process of creating for myself. And that's, that's where the doors open for, for Web3 and, and everything that we now know, really between us and the community of communities and everything.

[3:29]Um, so heart of hearts, I'm, I'm just a pure creative who gets too obsessed at times and wants to roll his sleeves up and dig deep into anything and get his hands on. I love that. I, I love that a lot. I think, uh, both, uh. My fiance and I talk about, uh, Bo uh. The process of going more into science or engineering.

[3:55]And as you get deeper and deeper into your career, you do actually less and less of the thing. And it's the same, like you said, of the creative side, is if you're going in a creative studio at a certain point, you're just doing less and less of that actual creative creativity part, and you're more managing other creatives.

[4:09]And while that can. Great and powerful. It, it gets you away from sometimes a thing that you love. So it's really cool to hear that kind of like full, full circle moment for you and being able to hear how it kind of just timed itself while you say she hits the fan. At the same time, it kind of worked itself good because you were able to be at a point where you were accepting of something like Web3 in a point where you are at a small agency and able to learn more about it and actually dive into it.

[4:38]And I think then. The, the community part, like you said at the very end there. Uh, it's super powerful to have the community build in public. Like those two things, uh, I think are community and even more so when you're trying to create a game, especially in Web3, which has been its own challenge because everyone in that space has either, um, putting themselves out, going to early.

[4:59]Or not, uh, not had enough, uh, planning to go long term. Right. And I think that's been a really powerful thing that I've seen with you and you guys, where you guys have been really in it for that long term. Trying to build a platform and ecosystem where people can get involved early and see the process as it goes before you get to that finished final product, which I think is super powerful in being, uh, a fan of an ecosystem.

[5:23]And I would love for you to touch a little bit on that. Yeah. Yeah, sure man. Thank, thank you. And I think there's a danger really, especially in Web3, where, you know, you show too much too early. Right? And I, and I think a lot of projects that are now kind of dead in the water really have either, as you said, blown out.

[5:43]They've blown a budget, there's no finances left to continue trying to build the thing they want to build. Um. Or the technology's not quite there, you know, because, uh, the age, the age old adage we're, we're really early, we're super early. And from a technology standpoint, I don't think anybody has figured out the right formula to utilize that kind of on chain kind of mechanisms for, for gaming, especially high octane.

[6:15]RPGs or, you know, live service style games with, with a Web3 component. They're really tricky to, to get right. You know? Um, but for us, I think. Staying. The course of time has been pure resilience, being able to pivot, trying to understand the needs of players, gamers, and a unique proposition that we, we we're toying with and we are playing with, right, is the charitable component.

[6:44]Now, when you add the charitable component in the mix with Web3, that becomes even more of a conversation because charities. Shy away from, uh, unpredictability, from financial kind of mechanisms and stuff. So we have to figure out ways to which to understand when you build a game or you build a platform for games that have a Web3 component, how do you in ensue trust in the charity partners that.

[7:18]Web3 or a token or some form of reward mechanism within that system is viable, is trustworthy. Has none of the negativity that comes with Web3 and. And that's kind of where we are, you know, at the moment is, is figuring out how much of a component do we place into the platform? Does Web3 play, um, you know, it can't be the be all and end all.

[7:41]It can't be the entire solution. It's a technology stack. Right. It's a, it's a layer of technology that we need to understand. Boom. Couldn't say that better myself right there. Right, right. That, that is such a, a, well, well, well. Placed way of saying it, right? Yeah. And I think especially in gaming, right? I think even more with in crypto in general, but then like in gaming, you see a lot of other people trying to tout that as a product as opposed to building something that's fun and that you can and want to play that has an extra component that adds, that is a extra flavor, right?

[8:16]Yeah. Not the, you know, the whole thing, the whole meal. A hundred percent. And I, and I think that's where we are, right? So the proposition as it stands is Angry Animals is a gaming for good platform where the subscription service model and the games that we offer to, uh, our audience have a component for donation mechanisms, potentially as part of that subscription service.

[8:43]So it doesn't sit inside each of the games, but. Offering the community the opportunity to articulate to us what charities they wish to support from a list of charities that we provide, whether they be animal welfare, mental health awareness, um, food poverty. All of those facilities and systems are something that we want to embed into into the experience.

[9:13]But as you said, we have to build things that people wanna play. So it's all about following the fun and beyond that With community help comes growth progression, and then more partnerships, more charitable relationships with charitable causes. So it, it all ties in quite nicely. Um, but yeah. Awesome. Well, we're talking a lot about hangry animals.

[9:39]Do you wanna give me a little summary? How did the idea come up? Where did, uh, what's the origin? Where did, uh, hangry animals start? Sure. Um, myself and a another member in the community were aware of each other in the Web3 space I was doing, helping out on some pretty, pretty. Uh, innovative projects at the very beginning of the, the second kind of ball run, I guess 20 20 18.

[10:13]2019 into 2020. Um. I was working with a project called RFI or Reflect, and it was the first reflective token, so it distributed a percentage to every holder from each purchase and every transaction. And I think from that, um, safe moon, uh, took the code and then went to the moon, and then went to jail, uh, for, for financial fraud.

[10:41]So, but in, in that space, we, I, I, I grew. Relationships with a lot of people and you know, they loved what I was doing creatively. And it just so happened that I connected with one of the, the other members in the community and said, we, we should do something together. We should do a project. I dunno what it is yet, but we should try and figure out what that project could be.

[11:04]Um, and at the very same time, I was starting to want to illustrate for my wellbeing, for mental health and wellbeing, I wanted to. Get back to me. You know, the, the thing when you're trying to hold onto your soul, trying to find your essence again. And I, and I, I found that through illustration. So there was this moment really where there was a gel of an idea we started riffing about with thoughts, and he had ideas about.

[11:36]Doing Hungry Hippos, but calling it Angry Hippos. And I was like, yeah, that's a bit restrictive. You know, it can, it means we, we are only focusing on hippos and it was purely an NFT collection. Nothing else at the time. So I made a suggestion. I said, well, why don't we call it Angry Animals? And we can then spin that out.

[11:58]Let's start with five different characters. Um, and I started doing live streams. There was no project at that point. I just started simply doing live streams of me illustrating characters on Twitch. And people would show up and I'd say, what, what character should I draw next? So we ended up with a hippo, a moose, a zebra, a bear, and a gorilla.

[12:18]As one of one illustrations and this sort of dawned on us then and said, oh, that would be a really interesting collection as an NFT collection. And this was like end of 20, 20, 20 21. So I, I just started working on that and in the same breath, ETH was, I think ETH was starting to climb and he was getting up to the three and a half, 4K USD, um.

[12:46]And we were like, we should do this. We should do an NFT collection. But it took, I'm, I'm slow. I'm very slow, but I don't care. I'm slow for a reason. I want to get things right. I want to perfect things. Um, and it takes me a while to get going, but once I'm going, I'm, I'm like a machine hyper focus. Forget to do all the usual things.

[13:08]Eat, sleep, this, whatever. Um, so I decided to just take our time. Build a collection and enjoy that journey and enjoy that process, and we simply started building the community around that. And people liked what I was doing and sharing stuff in discord and enjoying just ideating and coming up with what this would be.

[13:36]And the first origins of what Hungry Animals was going to be was an animated series, an animated series raising awareness about animal welfare and habitat, uh, destruction, um, but small minds, big ideas, not very little finance to be thinking about that stuff. At the time it was, it's a long shot to be going.

[14:01]Traditional mainstream commercial mindset to be trying to raise finances for an animated series with a team that nobody knew, you know, backgrounds or, uh, legacy of work that created in the past. So it became a thing where we were like, we should put that piece on the back burner and start to consider actually what we really want to build.

[14:23]And for me, that's when the stuff around impact came in. How can we use. Games, merchandise, the selling of goods, comics, all of those pieces that come with building an ip. How can we utilize the sale of those items to benefit, uh, a good cause, charities at home and, and further afield? And that's where we, we stumbled upon the idea of building a series of games and each of those games were.

[14:56]Trying to introduce an element of behavior change without it being thrown in people's faces with cool characters, rather than it being the tear jerker, pluck the heartstrings opportunity with narrative based games that just fall into that really odd category of being. Interesting, but boring. So I think the opportunity was there and that's where we've been chipping away at for the last couple of years, really, is trying to find our feet, understanding the audience, understanding what the unique selling point is, and then move, move forward from there.

[15:33]And that's where we are today. Just building. It's a prototype for one, one of the games for the platform, um, which is a sort of delivery, food delivery, racist style game. Um, and, uh, yeah, we trademarked, so that's what we had one. We, um, about a year and a half ago, we filed for a trademark in the US PTO in three categories.

[15:59]So we have merchandise, we have downloadable game. Solutions and, uh, entertainment content. It's good to get that. And it's good to get that in the US purely because most of the online platforms, uh, social platforms. Are registered in the US and they have a base in the US So any opportunity where people wanna capitalize and maybe try and use our ip, uh, it's easier to issue take down requests from US entities via the U-S-B-T-O.

[16:29]So that was one strategy. Um, but yeah, every, everything stems from that really. You know, we've got comics, so I've been illustrating series of comics and that's awesome. So we got these. Um, I actually haven't seen those before, so that's really cool. They're available on, uh, crypto comics.com. Oh, please, please send me the link 'cause I'll add it to the description for sure.

[16:57]Um, that's looks awesome. I'm super excited because, uh, you know, we're both sharing that, uh, front cover on that. COC ca, the COC book, uh, as well, which is super exciting. That's, uh, it was really cool to meet you and c uh, at least from my angle, the part of the process and watching it through and through.

[17:16]And for me, um, a having the C C's blessings a, a huge thing. So it was always cool to just like, be like, okay, cool. Like, what's Andy doing? And not like trying to figure out like more of the background, which I think really helps, um, because other projects you have to like dive into like, okay, like what is this person doing?

[17:33]But then the other thing. I saw that was like, okay, like I was also coming in and post a bear market of NFTs. So, um, most NFT projects that were still around were like doing x, y, Z thing. And the reason I saw saw you guys as like, not necessarily another NFT project, was the idea behind the, you know, not just putting trades, uh.

[17:56]NFTs out there with traits, but then kind of creating and ideating around a, uh, a traits shop where you can change and switch around traits and think thinking through, okay, like we're doing this NFT launch, but then like, what are some of these next things that can actually make it more powerful? And then, you know it coming now.

[18:15]Really full circle because you're making a game and then that to be actually physically playable and changeable so you can really customize the character to what you like, not just like what you randomly meant, which I think can be really cool because you might be able to find free to play upgrades just by like really playing the game a ton or pay to win if like that's the type of person you want.

[18:34]And that's like some of the games like that I grew up with a little bit, which is pretty cool. Um, and I really like that concept of it. So, um, yeah, I would love for, if you wanna. Papa share screen, uh, to to share a little bit, um, of Hungry Animals, where you guys are at. If you wanna share a little bit of, uh, where you guys are kind of going and what you kind of, uh, planning on putting out there and wanting to share with the community over the next little bit and, uh, and where you're going with it.

[19:04]Sure, man. Um, just shared my screen now. So we use, um, unity as a, as a development tool, um, and. At the moment, I'm in the middle of setting up, uh, several different enemy types. And this enemy type is what we call a unibo. Um, each of the characters of the, sort of the games and the, the ecosystem that we're building, each of these characters has a, um, a space in the universe, but they'll also have a.

[19:39]Sh smaller NFT collection backed with them. So these will have custom traits. These will have custom utility in that. But this is a, a unibo character that, um, in the delivery game, we have a unibo who's changed allegiances. He's no longer an enemy. He's your, he's your best friend and he's a, he's a, he's a delivery.

[20:03]Uh, strategy guide. So he'll tell you where the best deliveries are, how efficient and how optimized your Yeah, he helps you follow the game. Helps, yeah. The plot. So he's your that's cool. He's your guide. He's your, yeah. Um, so this is, this is what it, what it looks like, and we're going for this tune shaded look.

[20:22]Um, I dunno if you, if you're from that era, but I, um, I've only recently reconnected with a game on the Dreamcast called Jet Set Radio. I have never played that. No. Check it out, man. Jet Set Radio is, you're a, uh, you're part of a, uh, inline skater gang who goes around tagging the city with your graffiti and you, you battle other inline skate gangs to dominate the, the city streets.

[20:50]And, um, it's just awesome. But it's got the lineage and the continuation of those projects or those games go Jet Set Radio, jet set Radio futures on the Xbox. Um, and then. Hi-Fi Rush, which is a, a more recent game that is PlayStation. Um, I think it was a steam release as well, but it's that tune shaded look that I was so intrigued by, and it just gets you away from these high definition, high rise render experiences that I, I, I wasn't really a massive fan of, but.

[21:25]This just gives a distinctive little look to what we're after. Especially I love, love that. Yeah. You know, when you, you look at these, these, these are 2D characters. I do love my 2D cartoons, you know, and especially if we're targeting an audience that is in the tweens, you know, so you're 11 to 15, 16, right.

[21:45]Then that audience is more interested and is, and is more appealed by. 2D, then they are 3D. You look at Xang 97 or um, invincible, those kind of ips where they, they go for a 2D look, but they may have some 3D elements in them. And I think our games will lean into that, where we, we definitely have this aesthetic, um, I think, think it's gonna look cool, but, so this is one of the robots.

[22:16]These can, these can attack you with. Different things. They're only at the moment. These, these, uh, attacks are what we call blockouts. So I'm purely doing some blockout tests with 'em at the moment. Um, and if you can, if you can see my screen, then we pop hop on over the blender. Yep. So I'm a bit of a, I'm a bit of an ambivert, so I multitask.

[22:42]I have a DHD, so I can, I can do it with ease. Um, but it, it means I, I pick up new tools and new skills quite quickly, and two of which is, you know, develop an unity and then, um, building characters and then animating them in, uh, in blender. So this is an animation track, and you can see. That's, that's the robot, one of the robot attacks, and then they land to the ground and stuff.

[23:13]So, but, and it's great because all of this starts building a portfolio of. Characters movement, IP that transfer and translate from games into animated series if we so wish. Right. All of these mm-hmm. All of these characters are rigged, you know, they're, they're ready. Yeah. You're creating all the primitives for whatever you need to do with the IP of the characters.

[23:38]Yeah. That's very cool. So, because gaming is kind of the, the Mac, you need everything. Right. Uh, yeah, you, um, you know, sound or audio, um, background loops of, uh, spot effects, bed of music for the actual levels themselves. They have to loop at certain points, you know, to, and they ramp up in intensity. As you get progression through the level, you've gotta think of a lot of, a lot of things.

[24:12]Yeah.

[24:15]Just a very short test that I'm playing with at the moment. Awesome. And no, I love it. This is in relation to gameplay. You, you won't see much polished stuff, so. Everything in pink is un textured or has no material attached to it because I, I broke something earlier that's been heavy. You stuff every five fricking minutes.

[24:38]I love it. So when I, when I, in this test level, when I traverse over this gray sphere, it tells me. I need to go and pick up one donut and deliver it to a town hall. So I, from the top of my head, I know where the donuts are because I placed them on the level. But yeah, you can do a lot of stuff. You can jump in the air, you can spin around, do you know all of the, the magical stuff.

[25:05]Um, and just spin back so I face the right way. There you go. So there's my, there's my pack of donuts, and then if I, I can accelerate, I can jump and spin in the air, and that's super cool. And then the arrow signposts me to where the delivery point is. Yeah, disappears. We have a character that slides in and animates and communicates how happy they are that their delivery is alive on time.

[25:32]And then we're off to the next delivery. There's three deliveries in this round, so I've got a, you can't see it. Read it very well there. There's three sushi, three sushi, and three pizzas. I mean, this is a demanding order right now, so I gotta go on. Let me get rid of that 'cause that's jelly. I don't want jelly.

[25:51]Uh, sushi and pizzas. So I'm gonna go and grab my, uh, that's cool. So I've got all of the, the stacks and everything we need animate into them. That's super cool. So you can see all the, the physics that Yeah. Jump up. Yeah, I can do a little jump in the air and it'll just bounce. So lots of like. Physics that I've been playing with for, for a while happening.

[26:18]Um, if you accidentally pick up a bomb, you pick up a bomb and this explodes in five seconds and it will remove everything off your stack. So I don't want that. So you can drop things, you can drop things. You just press the X key and you can drop things. I. The, the important thing there is that there's, there's obviously going to be a, uh, a measure of accuracy.

[26:39]So if you deliver more items than you, should you get punished or penalized financially? Um, if you deliver the exact And when you drop 'em, can you re pick 'em up? You could. Yes, you can. You can pick stuff. I see. So, um. Then, and is there a maximum amount of things, like also that then it'll fall over. Yeah. So the more the, the higher things go, the more unstable you stack becomes.

[27:03]Oh yeah. I love that. That's cool. So I, I can go and grab quite a few things over here. Um, let's see if there's any, um, because the level is set up to only spawn enough items. For a delivery with a little bit of peppering and extras and stuff. You can see now how, uh, I've got some enemies chasing me. Yeah, there's a drone in, there's a drone in the air that if it gets close enough, there's going to steal items off the back of the bike.

[27:34]Wow. Um, I've got some stuff where I can freeze time if I, if I pick that up so I can top left on the corner. You can, I can freeze time. Okay. Um. So, yeah, it, the, the world is against you is what I'm, what I'm getting at. Yeah. Um, and then this is just a sample of how to climb up, um, up steps, which is really difficult to do in game dev, actually, is to figure out how can I get the character to go up the steps.

[28:02]Um, yeah. But the jiggling about is something that I'm super happy with. But yeah, so lots of stuff to do, but I think. The mechanics and the, what we call the core game loop. I think it's, um, it's there. I've just gotta tweak lots of stuff like speed, what your pickups look like, um, reward systems, how happy your, the customer is, where their delivery.

[28:31]So if you've dropped stuff and then picked them back up. Uh, how that affects your customer's attitude towards you, and that, that affects, that affects your score as well. Um, but yeah, so lots of time spent on the stacking, stacking mechanics. Um, and then there's a, after you've delivered three rounds of deliveries, you may be offered the opportunity to deliver like a big bowl of soup.

[29:01]Unless it gets stolen by a drone. So there's now there's a drone that has stolen the soup and it keeps nicking other stuff from me. Uh, so yeah, lot, lots of things happening. Lots of stuff to figure out, out That's balance. Yeah. And all that. But, uh, yeah, we're, we're getting. Get into a good, good place with it.

[29:25]Well, I was, because I'd figured out that main loop. I was focusing more on the, the uni bots and then the uh mm-hmm. The crawler, um, creatures who, who I can, I think if this is a crawler Yeah. These crawler creatures are what you saw in the level, but I thought. Do you know what? It'd be great if they could climb walls.

[29:55]Oh, my climb walls. And if they could leap at you. So it, it, it is broken at the moment, but essentially, yeah. Oh yeah. There you go. It is. It is climbing over the dome. Yeah. That's cool. And that jumps off. It could jump off it at you. So you know all of this. Driven by, driven by AI movement. Not, not ai, as in what we all know it has today, but yeah, in artificial intelligence, brain of the game.

[30:27]Yeah. Would know that you are close to a building and then set you climbing the walls of that building. And then the spider could potentially jump off that building towards your, uh, towards your plate character. Yeah. So that's super cool. I love it. Andy, thank you so much for showing us the demo. Like this was really, uh, great to see a little bit more of like the, the back end of what you've been doing building.

[30:55]Sharing a little bit more with us. Uh, and uh, it is really great to have some of the COC pull up as well. Do you wanna share where people can, uh, find you and, uh, rest of the hang animals? Yeah, man. Um, follow us on, um, Instagram X. There's a telegram group, pan community. Um, I spend a lot of time posting stuff in Discord, so, um, if you, if you go to.

[31:24]Any of our social channels, you'll be able to pick up a link tree, and there's a link tree with all of the channels in there. I think if I, um, if I paste it, where can I paste it? Um, you can put it in the chat here and it should be able to do it, but, um, if not, I can always send it and put it in the, uh, description with that, uh, comic as well.

[31:49]So, yeah. Yeah. What do I. If I do, if I do H Yes, I'll put the link tree here. Perfect.

[32:05]I think it's that. Let me just double check.

[32:10]You don't, I dunno whether there's an at sign or not with tre it there isn't. So there I just put it in our private chat. I don't seem to be able to post on that. Amazing. No, no worries. I'll pop it up here and we'll put it, yeah, put it up on the screen. The, the best way to stay in. Stay up to speed with what we're doing really is to sign up to the newsletter.

[32:34]We do a biweekly newsletter and share the vibes of what we're, what we're building, um, any updates, any events and conferences we've been to, and that there should be one in the next week with some pretty. Exciting updates of what we've been up to. Um, from a, a conference perspective, we just come back from London Games Festival about a week or so ago, and we attended a day called Games for Change, which is right above street.

[33:04]It was literally all about, you know, impact games with impact. Um, and we had an amazing time, met some amazing people, uh, and, uh, we'll definitely have a sway in what we do. In that space, in, in the near future as well. So yeah, lots of stuff happening. I, I may not be as prolific and as frequent posting on Discord because we also have a creative agency that we, um, we've set up called Hang Studio basically off the back of people seeing what we were building with angry animals and one in the same.

[33:41]So, so we've ended up actually providing services to other customers. In web two space with ties, lots, lots of product, lots of brand, um, apps and experiences to, uh. It's to finance the progress and the growth of what we do in Hungarian was really, so it's a fine balance. Um, but yeah, loving it. Awesome. No, I love it.

[34:11]I'm super excited. I always catch a. Uh, a newsletter and quickly go through and see like a little summary of what's going on. But I'll, I've been for quite some time, me meaning to catch up with you. So I was really glad this week when you reached out and you're like, let's catch up. And I, I'm super glad I got a chance to see and share, uh, a little bit of a demo, um, with everyone here.

[34:34]Uh, of what you guys are doing because it's awesome. It's great to like have your energy in our communities and, uh, we appreciate you for, for everything you do. Thank you for popping on today, um, taking time outta your day and, uh, pleasure. Yeah, we'll catch you all soon. Thank you everyone for joining in Peace Cheer.

[34:52]Cheers.