Interviews

Dr Fun Fun on making the Daniel Johnston-inspired Hi, How Are You

Replicating marker artwork and the Quest for True Love

Dr Fun Fun on making the Daniel Johnston-inspired Hi, How Are You
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| Hi, How Are You

Like a blank sheet of paper, the App Store enables creative people to do pretty much whatever they want - within the bounds of Apple’s approvals team, of course.

One of the quirkiest and sweetest examples of this attitude is Hi, How Are You, a game based around the music and artwork of cult singer songwriter and artist Daniel Johnston.

We caught up with Peter Franco, who before setting up as Dr Fun Fun, worked as an art director at game studios Acclaim and Midway in Austin, Texas.

(In the photo, Peter is wearing red, Daniel Johnston's in the middle, and Steve Broumley's in black.)

Pocket Gamer: How did the idea come about for a Daniel Johnston-inspired game?

Peter Franco: First off, I have been a huge fan of Daniel's ever since I moved to Austin and happened to catch one of his shows at Emo's, a local music club.

I still remember the confusion I felt when I saw the show. He was much older than the usual 20-something performers and he didn't really play guitar or sing very well, yet everyone in the crowd was mesmerised. Soon I was too.

He had a shaky nasal voice, a guitar that looked like it came from the dump, and couldn't make eye contact with the crowd. It's an act that almost defies description.

As it turns out, his performance also has had an impact on my wife, Heather Olson, has now been working with the Johnston family for five years, helping promote Daniel's art by creating art prints, T-shirts and collaborating on PR events around the Austin area.

Meanwhile, I’ve been developing games over the last 12 years. Earlier this year, timing just worked out right to finally start working on bringing his art and music to life in a video game.

What was the specific inspiration for the quirky physics-based platformer gameplay?

Steve Broumley (of Smashing Studios) and I have worked together our entire careers. He's been programming in game development for over 20 years.

In that time, he has touched basically every aspect of game programming. And in all that time I've known him, he has always had a passion for creating physics systems and working with animations and artificial intelligence. So we sought out to do a game that would capitalise on these systems.

In trying to blend Daniel's art with the physics technology, we came up with the rolling Frog Ball and the block-pushing Frog Cube.

How easy was it to match the graphic style of Daniel’s art work, as well the toon shading?

Steve's answer will be different than mine. Artistically, using toon shading with black outlines worked beautifully. Daniel's art is very vivid and he uses a lot of markers. The trickiest thing for me was trying to balance all the intense colours that you naturally get with marker art.

However, programmatically, getting the cel-shading to work on the iPhone was quite a technical challenge. That's why there hasn't really been any true cel-shaded 3D animated characters out there yet.

How involved was Daniel in the development?

We worked with the Johnston family closely in the development. They started by giving us unrestricted access to all of Daniel's thousands of pieces of art.

We had to pore through them to build our universe and in doing that we realised more and more about the mythos in Daniel's universe. Each character took a side in the battle of Good versus Evil. It was from this that the storyline in the game emerged.

We would also drop the latest work-in-progress screenshots to the Johnstons as we were progressing. Daniel's brother, Dick has been an enormous help to us throughout the process.

When Daniel got a chance to play a work in progress game, he seemed to easily pick up the games intuitive tilt controls and said he loved watching the Hero getting turned into a Frog by Satan. He said he wanted to immediately help out with some animations, but Dick quickly reminded him that he was in the middle of a cross-country tour and knew nothing about doing 3D modeling and animation.

Do you think the game will appeal beyond his existing fanbase?

Steve and I are game developers first and foremost. And though we wanted to develop a game around Daniel's psychedelic universe, we both know that the game comes first. Our focus was always to create a simple, yet fun game.

By using rendering technology that hasn't existed yet on the iPhone, a physics engine that pushes the limits of the hardware, and a deep gameplay experience with tons of re-playability, we feel we are bringing an app to the iPhone that will appeal to anyone who just likes cool games.

What's more, Daniel's message is a universal one: Good versus Evil, and the Quest for True Love. His style is something very different, but his message is something everyone can relate to.

What does Dr Fun Fun have planned next?

We are basically two indie developers who have tried their hardest to put the coolest thing they possibly could onto the iPhone.

For sure Dr Fun Fun will continue working with Smashing Studios to bring more updates to Hi, How Are You. And beyond that, we'll all have to stay tuned.

If people like what they see and there is enough support, we would be happy to do much more.

You can check out what Dr Fun Fun gets up to via its website.

Hi, How Are You is available now on the App Store. Hit the 'Buy It!' button to check it out now.
Jon Jordan
Jon Jordan
A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon can turn his hand to anything except hand turning. He is editor-at-large at PG.biz which means he can arrive anywhere in the world, acting like a slightly confused uncle looking for the way out. He likes letters, cameras, imaginary numbers and legumes.