Hamish Downie’s Five More Questions With Chris Rodriguez

Editor Note: Hamish has another in his series of Five Questions With…

Hamish came up with this idea because he was accumulating too much material for his Famous News Sushi column and asked if he could do these mini-interviews. Why would we say no?

Thank you, Hamish, for being such a trooper for us. We really appreciate all of your hard work.

Let us know what you think of these interviews in the comments below.

TGG: Could you reintroduce yourself to our readers?

CR: Hello! My name is Chris Rodriguez. I am an artist out of Minneapolis, Minnesota. I work as an illustrator, 3D artist, and improv performer here in the twin cities.

Here are a couple of small ones:

Hamish Downie Films’ opening title card:

Animation Demo:

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A post shared by Chris Rodriguez (@oddbear_art)

TGG: Can you tell us about your new Geeky podcast based around D&D?

CR: Yes! The podcast is called Lesser Evil. It’s set in a fantasy world where, long ago, the bad guys won. The world has continued on, and we see our heroes living their daily lives in a 90s-inspired corporate dystopia. That is until they are framed for the destruction of corporate property and find themselves navigating bureaucracy, magic, and mayhem in order to clear their names and find out what’s going on.

TGG: What’s your favourite thing about the new podcast?

CR: Queer joy! The cast is all queer, and it’s just so lovely to get together with other queer folk and find joy, laughter, and love. Plus, we’ve got some robots that are pretty cool.

TGG: What’s the secret to being good at improvising? (I feel like this
might be a big life lesson)

CR: Listening. So much of improv is listening to your partner, really absorbing what they are saying, and reacting to it. If we don’t live in the moment and instead get stuck in our own heads planning our next move, everything becomes stilted. We have to let ourselves live in the moment. Also, let yourself have fun. At some point in our lives, we stopped letting ourselves play and be goofy. That’s kid stuff, after all. But, once you can let that go and be a big goof in front of other adults, you can find a kind of joy that you haven’t felt since you were a kid.

Star Trek Improv Show: