Nic:
Hi, I'm Nic Steenhout, and this is The Work Between. Before I get into what the show is, I want to say whose land it's made on. This podcast is recorded on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Stó:lō Coast Salish people. The people of the river, whose presence in the Fraser Valley stretches back thousands of years. I named this territory because it belongs with what this show is about. The ways we decide whose lives are valued, whose work is taken seriously, and whose experiences are treated as problems to be managed. Those decisions shape everything. This show sits inside that. This is, was, and always will be First Nations land. That's not a formality. It's consistent with everything I and this show stand for. My guest today is Mia Seljubac, and we just discussed how to pronounce the name, and I know I fluffed it up, but my apologies. Mia is a games lawyer, turned game developer and co-founder of Serial Mug Games. She's currently working on a cozy narrative game called I Am the Cat, where all the animation and textures are completely hand-painted in watercolor. Mia works in a variety of mediums, including ink, watercolors, and acrylics, and she sells hand-painted jackets at her local tattoo parlor. Hi, Mia, thanks for joining me for this talk about creativity. How are you?

Mia:
I'm good. Thank you, thank you for having me.

Nic:
So there's a lot to talk about here, but my first question really is how does one go from being a lawyer to being a game developer?

Mia:
It's kind of an interesting story. It's not like one happened and then the other happened. Like, um, all the way back to the beginning. So I grew up playing video games, always loved them. Um, I liked a lot of fighting games like Street Fighter and Dead or Alive, and that led me down a path of learning martial arts, and then my first job was actually as a martial arts instructor, and I taught kung fu classes. And I had to learn a little bit about business and being self-employed. And then COVID happened, and you can't have people punching each other when there's a pandemic, so I was like, okay, I'm going to retrain. I find the kind of contract negotiation stuff interesting. I'd done volunteering with a few organizations that worked with lawyers, so I went and retrained as a lawyer. And then I found out that video game lawyer is a job that exists. So I kind of do law within the games industry for the love of it, uh, and it's an industry that I know quite well, having just been immersed in it from like as long as I can remember. Yeah. I was part of a weird generation of lawyers that were told that if you don't learn how to code, the machines are going to take your job. And I actually went and did it, and I'm like, well, why can't I try and use these skills to make a game myself and give it a go and see how that pans out? And, uh, it's panning out well, and having a lot of fun.

Nic:
Fantastic. I want to explore that game thing a little bit more, but, um, I had no idea you were a martial artist, and I find it interesting because I starting at age six, I did 18 years of judo, and the only reason I didn't end up getting my black belt is because, uh, the only way I had access to do it is on points and competition, and people are just vicious in competitions. I was not interested. And then I, um, I didn't do kung fu, but I did, uh, Taoist Tai Chi for about six years, so very, very different.

Mia:
yeah, no. Um, so my style of kung fu that I specialize in is Wing Chun, and it has a lot in common with Tai Chi, right? And, uh, one of my Wing Chun instructors is also a Tai Chi instructor, so I've learned both styles from him, and, yeah, no, Tai Chi is awesome.

Nic:
that's kind of neat. Uh, a bit of commonality that was not expected. So we'll speak about, um, game development, but because your game is rooted in watercolors, I'd love to learn more about your watercolors. Tell me about that. How, what is it you do? Obviously, watercolors, but what style? How do you work with watercolor?

Mia:
so I'm very inspired by like really old illustrated children's books like Books and the Paddington books. I try and wanted to, I wanted to make the game feel like it was in a storybook, um, and that's the kind of style that I've tried to adopt. It's very loose, uh, the line work is very kind of sketchy and rough, and I wanted it to just kind of feel like, you know, I feel like a drawing that was alive, if that makes sense.

Nic:
So a lot looser than strict. And, you know, quite

Mia:
yeah. It's interesting because when you're animating in watercolor, like, it's all completely hand-painted, like, using a light box, so I have to trace animation frames on top of each other, and when you're doing that, the paint kind of behaves the way that it wants to. Like, you can control watercolor to an extent.

Nic:
Yeah.

Mia:
so for some of the animations that are in the game, I completely embrace that. I let the watercolor do what it wants, and I like the feel of like the moving in weird ways that animation doesn't tend to, but when you've got characters that you're looking at all the time, like the cat that you play as, um, I have to take it into a program and kind of normalize some of that out, like add some filters to it so that it doesn't look too jarring or too tiring on the eye to look at all the time.

Nic:
How many illustrations, how many watercolors do you have to do for, I don't know, a segment of one minute of gameplay?

Mia:
So it's all done in loops. So the cat, at the moment, the walking animation is about 16 frames moving in different directions. Um, but there are lots of different little animations for interacting with things. I think I've drawn like, I think I've drawn about 120 versions of this cat at this point. Um, but other NPCs have, like, the other characters that walk around the world, the walking animations are quite like low frame rate, so some of them have like four frames in each direction walking, but they'll have more complex and detailed animations. Like, I decided to animate a character who's a barista, like making a coffee, like taking the portafilter out of the machine and tamping it and putting it back in the machine, and all of those little movements take a lot of individual drawings. Um, so some characters have a lot more than others.

Nic:
That's amazing. How did you learn watercolors?

Mia:
so my mom was always really artsy, so whenever we'd go anywhere, uh, she'd kind of encourage me to take a little sketchbook and like draw what I see. And it's really cheap and easy to get your kid, like, one of those little, like, they have these little red tins that you can pick up, and like, we used to be able to grab them in like an and they cost like under a fiver, and you could get one of these little tins and just learn.

Nic:
Yeah.

Mia:
So that's how I picked it up initially. But I only kind of decided to get serious about it much later. Like, I got myself a nice set of watercolors on sale and just got stuck in, watched a bunch of tutorials.

Nic:
So you're self-taught rather than having someone teaching you how to do it beyond your mom encouraging you, obviously.

Mia:
Yeah, so she taught me how to use paints and how to mix colors. She's a professional artist. She went from fashion design, where a lot of the illustrated in color. She uses watercolor and color pencils for that, and then she moved into stained glass, so she's got like quite an artsy background, and she went to college for ceramics and stained glass as well. So I had quite a good set of knowledge in my household to like draw off of.

Nic:
Is your mother an influence in your art? I mean, obviously she taught you, but is her style of work an influence in your style of work? And if not, or if yes, do you have other influences?

Mia:
Yes and no. Like, her art is very classically inspired. Like, she draws a lot of inspiration from artists like Leonardo da Vinci, and, uh, she used to take us to different exhibits at like the V&A and at different museums around London, and take inspiration from lots of different places. Um, my main inspirations for the game are like I mentioned, the Paddington Bear book, that's a big one, and like the illustrations. Um, in terms of other influences, it's hard to pin down because it's such a huge mix of things. Like, I have lots of artists that I really love and I'll like borrow little bits from here and there. Um, like, I initially learned how to paint with inks, which is a little bit different, and I was really inspired by, like, uh, a video game artist like Yoshitaka Amano, who's the illustrator for like the Final Fantasy concept art, and his illustrations are extremely beautiful, and like they have that loose, flowy movement style that's got like a lot of fashion design influences. Yeah.

Nic:
Painting with ink, that's, uh, just, do you do ink washes, adding water to the ink, or just pure ink? Or how do you do that?

Mia:
So I got like one of those old dip pens, like, from a craft shop when I was a kid, uh, so I'll like dip that directly into my little inkwell and sketch. Uh, but then when I go to color, I'll do different washes. Like, usually I'll stick to like one or two colors and just get the variation by adding water.

Nic:
Right. Are you an artist or an artisan?

Mia:
What is the difference?

Nic:
I think for me, an artist is, there's room to fail, there's room to be wrong. Uh, an artisan has to be able to replicate what they're doing. And I guess in this context the idea of artist versus artisan is important, because as a watercolorist you can be an artist, but as a games maker where you're relying on your painting, you don't, I mean, yeah, okay, watercolor has a mind of its own, but you don't have that much room for error.

Mia:
It's interesting because I found, when I'll do like a character concept, it will be very loose and free-flowing in terms of my process, and I'll let the paint do what it wants to. I'll let my mind wander and do what it wants to. And then you kind of, even if you're not trying to, when you go through the process of drawing each frame over and over and over, you get more precise and you get a lot cleaner, and you kind of have to almost fight back against that. And, like, I, it was this process when I first started animating characters with watercolor, to kind of embrace the chaos a little bit, because I had to make a decision of whether or not I wanted to try and replicate what I did the first time for every single frame, or lean into the differences. And I hope that it kind of gives the game a little bit of a unique feeling, the fact that I've gone with the latter approach, and just embraced the fact that all of the frames aren't going to look perfect. Like, if I was animating digitally,

Nic:
I really need to grab the game and try it. I'm very curious about what that actually looks like. What keeps you coming back to this? What's the motivation between, you know, doing the watercolor and doing it over and over for that game? Is the game, having a completed game, the motivation itself? Is the watercolor why do you keep going and doing

Mia:
it? One of the things that's so amazing about game development is you really do have to learn to love every single bit of the process. Um, and there's a lot to it. Like, it's not just the watercolor animation. It's also the programming and the writing. There's a lot of elements that need to come together. So one thing that keeps me going with it is the fact that if I'm getting tired of animating, if I'm getting a bit, like, my brain is getting tired or my hands are getting tired, I can switch to something else. I can think about what the characters are saying to each other, and it allows you to kind of, you know, pick up where your energy

Nic:
is. Yeah.

Mia:
I am very motivated by finishing the game because a lot of people who I've shown it to have said that they're really keen to see the finished product, and that's terrifying, but it's also like, okay, people are waiting for this to come out. I actually have to finish it. But it's one of those things, a lot of people pick up game development and they don't finish their game because they've got a lot of ambition, but sitting down and actually doing it becomes a bit of a chore.

Nic:
Yep.

Mia:
So yeah, learning to enjoy every bit of the process. Like, you get into a bit of a flow state when you're animating a bunch of frames, and you're painting them one by one, and then it all comes together, and you see you see the cat walk in a little circle or curl up and go to sleep, and it's just like, it's just a really nice feeling.

Nic:
Yeah. I bet. What do you make that you don't show anyone else?

Mia:
I have a sketchbook that's just for me. Um, and I feel like I need that to let the mind wander and keep it as something that I enjoy. Like, I studied English literature at university, and I always had a book going that wasn't part of my syllabus, to remind myself I enjoy reading.

Nic:
Yeah.

Mia:
And I feel like, you know, my own sketchbooks that I don't show people are kind of that, because when you're doing art for a product, it kind of can start to feel like you're doing it for other people. And you need that little bit of, you know, that little bit of privacy to explore and grow, and kill the perfectionist. And,

Nic:
yeah, so, draw things other than cats, right?

Mia:
Draw things other than cats. Yeah. I've been really inspired by fashion illustration lately. I've been looking up like drawings of clothing and trying to copy those in ink, and trying to put a little bit of my own flair on it, and because it's a completely new style that I've never done before, it doesn't look great. So, or it doesn't look great all the time. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. And you're not going to get good at something unless you just do it, and you do it badly at first.

Nic:
Is it about ending up with a good-looking drawing or painting, or is it about the journey to getting there?

Mia:
I think it needs to be about the journey, and like, being able to draw something without the pressure of how it's going to turn out is really, really freeing. Um, so like, as much as it's really rewarding to see the skills develop and to see it build, and to see that finished product starting to look better and better each time, like, it's about just being able to do something that relaxes me and brings me joy.

Nic:
Yeah. So when it doesn't bring you joy, when you're stuck, what does that feel like? And how do you get unstuck?

Mia:
That is the million-dollar question. Different things get me unstuck. Usually, if I'm feeling stuck, um, you either have to power through or change pace. Like, if I'm doing animation frames, it's something that I've done, I know that I'm good at. I can do it and I can kind of almost zone out and just do it, and that can kind of get the hands moving in a way that feels familiar. And it's just like, oh yeah, I can draw. And it doesn't feel like you're trying to overcome a creative block because you're not really doing anything new. You're doing like something that you're used to. It's like breathing. Uh, but when you're trying to, like, you know, oh, I need to design this new environment for the game, and you're actually trying to exercise those creative muscles a little bit, that can be really frustrating. I find the things that get me out of those blocks are turning to other artists. Like, I recently played a game called Sorry We're Closed, which has just the most incredible visual style, like, all of the environments, all of the character art is just so gorgeous, and it's one of the most unique-looking games that I've played in a really long time. And like, I was going through a little bit of a creative rut when I picked it up, and then it's like, you just, you just get all of these ideas. It's like, okay, all right, I'm motivated to draw. I'm gonna go and I'm gonna try and make some things.

Nic:
What's the most useful criticism you got

Mia:
on, like, my work? Or

Nic:
yeah, on your work? Not personally, but has there been anyone that said, hey, you know, this part of your work it's no good, and make it better, or whatever?

Mia:
I, it's, useful criticisms, that's kind of hard because I feel like a lot of people, if they have thoughts, if they have something that they don't like about a piece of art, people tend to, you know, keep that to themselves.

Nic:
Yeah.

Mia:
yeah. And I went through what I'm sure a lot of people have gone through, where you do art at school and you're trying to do something that's a little bit different, or a little bit like not the syllabus, and art teachers have kind of tried to like shut you down and go, no, you need to know this exactly how we say it. And that kind of, I was always like a little bit of a rebel growing up, so it'd be like, I knew that you have to play the game to get the good grade. So I would try and like balance that criticism. I didn't ignore it. I understand the importance of learning the fundamentals and why we're told to, you know, do still life and, you know, not jump straight into stylism. But it also kind of made me value exploring those different styles that my teachers were telling me not to do. Yeah. I don't know if that makes sense. I'm kind of,

Nic:
what I'm hearing is being basically told to conform to what is there and what you have to do and what you have to learn, but those limits also being, um, a motivation to go outside of the bounds of the trail and to explore what's out there as a way to grow.

Mia:
Yeah. Like, um, I think that if you get very good at doing art in school, if you're one of the kids that gets the good grades, you kind of almost are encouraged to become a little bit of a human photocopier. If you're a kid that doesn't like doing that, you just get very bored. You're like, yeah, but it doesn't, I'm not saying anything, I'm not doing anything new. This picture already exists. I've just copied it. Is

Nic:
saying something important to you?

Mia:
I think that's, saying something is everything.

Nic:
What do you want to say?

Mia:
So if we bring it back to the game, like, the thing that motivated me to make the game was, I was working in a corporate job in London and I was incredibly lonely. And I, like, there was this, there was a cat that lived on my street that everybody knew by name. Nobody knew who she belonged to, and like, people would constantly be sitting with her and like just spilling their guts. And I would do this too. I'd go get a coffee from the coffee shop, and I'd just sit on the bench, and this cat would come and climb on my lap, and it'd just be like, and I just imagine, like, what are the stories that this cat must hear from people who are just, you know, really stressed and really lonely and don't really have anyone to talk to? So I kind of wanted to say something about community and about loneliness and about how human it is to seek out that connection. And like, it feels really silly, like, spilling your guts to a cat, telling a cat your deepest, most vulnerable feelings. But it's also something that's really human and something that we all do. Yeah. So I wanted to treat the idea with a lot of sincerity. Um, like, I want people to feel a little bit seen.

Nic:
Yeah. I like that. So this podcast is about creativity and identity and disability. What's your relationship with disability?

Mia:
so I'm diagnosed with ADHD. I was diagnosed as an adult. But, um, I think a lot of people knew quite early on. I was one of those kids that got put in detention quite a lot for like drawing on the tables and forgetting my homework and, you know, all of the classic, you know, bright kid who just can't quite get it together, you know, that a lot of people experience. Um. And I also suffered a spinal injury when I was 19, in a gymnastics accident, that has like inhibited my mobility. Um, which is huge because, like, martial arts has always been a really big part of my life. I also got very into dance for a little while. Right before the injury, I was competing in and, uh, that's something that's been, like, you know, something that I've had to grapple with a lot. And it's something that's, you know, contributed to those really lonely feelings. Like, particularly when I was working in these oppressive corporate jobs, you know, can I have an extra work-from-home day because I will literally destroy my body doing this commute? And being told, well, everybody else is doing

Nic:
it.

Mia:
It's just like, you know. But it's it's a little bit different

Nic:
in terms of identity being so focused on body movement, on martial arts, on kung fu, which is a lot of internal, not just external. A spinal injury would really have thrown you for a loop, I would imagine.

Mia:
yeah. Um, there was a period very shortly after the injury where I couldn't, I could barely walk. I, the doctor told me that I could leave the hospital as soon as I could walk out myself, so I walked with the help of about four people who helped, like, kind of assisted-walk me to a car. I was dropped off at my flat, and I could do very, very little for a good few weeks. And then when I was finally able to like walk by myself again, I went back to kung fu, and they were like, hey, where have you been? I was like, ah, I've not been able to sit up for like three weeks. it's a really, it's an interesting thing with spinal injuries in specific, because it was damage to the nerve, and you have to very slowly reintroduce new movements, and every time you do something that your body isn't used to, it hurts like a bitch, pardon my French. Yeah. And, uh, you have to kind of build up a lot of courage to experiment with movement again, and to like make yourself do these movements that you haven't done in a long time, knowing that your back could just go nope at any minute, and you're just going to be flat on your back on the floor again, and you don't know when you're going to be able to get up. Uh, so that's hard, and that was life for quite a long time.

Nic:
How does that tie into your watercolor illustrations and your game development?

Mia:
So, when you can't sit up, you can still draw and you can still write. Um, it's something that kind of gets me out of myself a little bit, something that feels very internal and very personal, that I can still do and still do comfortably when my body isn't listening to me. Some, like, it's really hard to keep that, to not just become very depressed by all, and to not just kind of shrink back into yourself and go, I'm just gonna sit and stare at the ceiling and just, you know, be sad. And sometimes you need to be sad, but it's hard to keep yourself from going too far down that dark hole.

Nic:
Yeah.

Mia:
and allowing myself some kind of a creative outlet really helps me to just maintain a bit of a positive attitude and be like, hey, you know, this is temporary. It's a part of life.

Nic:
Yeah.

Mia:
And, uh, it'll pass, and I'll be up again. And you have to, you kind of have to tell yourself that.

Nic:
Do you think of yourself as a disabled person who makes things, or as a maker who is disabled?

Mia:
I'd say that I'm a maker who is disabled. I prefer that. That feels more fitting to me. Um, because I've been creating forever. Like, it's always been something that's brought me joy, and it's something that continues to bring me joy. I've always had ADHD, even if I haven't always known it. But I haven't always, you know, had a physical disability.

Nic:
ADHD, a lot of the people that I know that have ADHD tend to be serial hobbyists.

Mia:
Yeah.

Nic:
Have you, um, have you gone down that path? And if yes, what has, why have you settled on watercolor and directed that towards game making?

Mia:
I think that making games is something that really like scratches that serial hobbyist itch, that it lets you lean into that impulse, because, like I said, there are so many different elements to it. Like, you can swap between coding and writing and drawing and whatever else the game needs. Um, so, like, my game is a narrative game where there's not a huge amount of like mechanical gameplay. But if you're making a game that's really mechanics-heavy, that's another way that you can let your brain wander and let yourself be creative. I mean, I'm also selling jackets at the tattoo parlor, like, and I'm doing martial arts in the evenings, like, you know, the things don't end. Yeah. I struggle to say that I've settled on anything at any given point because there's always something on the horizon. I do see myself doing game dev for a long time, because it is something that, you know, allows me to lean into that, you know, impulse to do lots of things.

Nic:
Yeah. Yeah. I do watercolor and sketching, and I do quilting, and I do photography, and I've tried so many different things, and I've kind of settled on those, you know, sketching and quilting and photography. But that's what I'm doing now. Who knows what I'm going to be doing two years down the road? In terms of creative thinking, um, there's this idea that navigating the world when you're disabled, and the world isn't really built for you, for example, your teachers saying, hey, you have to do these things and don't get out of there, um, people say it produces a kind of creative thinking that is more, or different. Do you find that connects to how you work?

Mia:
Growing up with ADHD, you're always finding your own way of doing things, and you're building coping strategies upon coping strategies. And I think, I don't know if this is relatable to a lot of people with ADHD, but sometimes your coping strategies will work brilliantly for like nine months, a year, two years, and then just stop. So you kind of have to focus and refocus and change tack, like, quite a lot. And you need to rotate through your toolkit and see what's working for you one day, what's not working the next day. And I think that kind of keeps your brain active in a really creative way.

Nic:
You mentioned loneliness earlier. Do you work better when you work alone, or do you work better as part of community?

Mia:
So I love working in teams. Um, the industry that I've chosen, like the legal industry, isn't very inclined towards disabled and neurodivergent people. Um, you kind of have these really oppressive hierarchical structures at play, and if you don't fit into the mold, you'll just kind of be hung out to dry. So I've chosen like a self-employed path because it allows me to use my skills in a way that, you know, I know works for me, and that isn't, you know, restricted by these structures. But I think that the thing that I like about this job, and where I found balance, is that it is very social still. Like, I'm working with lots of different clients. I'm working with a lot of creatives, and I get to bounce ideas off of other people on the daily, and I never feel like I'm alone in it. I also have really good mentors. Like, there are so many games lawyers around. I didn't know there were, like, so many of us. But there are plenty of game lawyers running around, and they're all just such cool people. So I always feel like I have people that I go to if I have questions or if I need support. I feel a lot less lonely as a self-employed person than I did when I was working in corporate and surrounded by people every day.

Nic:
So if we were to apply that same question to your game development and your watercolor, does the same thing hold?

Mia:
I can be a little bit of a control freak when it comes to my work. I am collaborating with other creatives on the game. I'm working with a 3D artist at the, to try and bring some of those 2D drawings into a 3D world, and like, somebody who's just very good at blending those two worlds and can see the vision and is on board with it. And that's really easy. Uh, I'm also working with composers, and I know nothing about music. Like, I did singing as a kid, and, you know, my husband's really into jazz and knows a lot of music theory, and, you know, there's a lot of putting chords together. And like, I know some of the basic vocabulary, but like, it sometimes can be hard to just let creatives do their thing, because I know they're going to make their best work if I just take my hands away. Yeah. Um, I can get quite anxious about that collaborative process, but I've been, I like to think I'd be quite good at letting my team do the things that they're good at, and things are working out really well, and I'm really happy with it. But yeah, I definitely have that tendency in me.

Nic:
What have you made that you regret making?

Mia:
I don't think I regret making anything. Like, I've made things that haven't always turned out the way that I wanted. Um, I've worked like as part of creative teams where we weren't aligned and it was kind of messy, and the product as a result wasn't good. But all of it is learning, and learning how to hone your own craft and your own skills, and learning how to work with other people, and sometimes learning when to walk away from a project. Um, so I don't regret making anything. I think even those projects that kind of get left on the cutting room floor, there's value to be gained there.

Nic:
When do you decide to leave something? When, if there is one, what's the trigger to say, oh, all right, this isn't gonna work? And let's move on.

Mia:
when people in the team don't respect each other. Um, like I said, I had that control freak tendency in me.

Nic:
Yeah.

Mia:
I know that I can't do better than what my composers are doing, because that is their craft and they know it a lot better than I do. If I was being very critical of them and critical of their skills, uh, they should leave. Like, you know, it's, like, there's constructive ways to say, oh, you know, can you tweak this? Or we're going for more of this kind of a feeling. But if it gets to the point where it's like, somebody isn't respecting your ability to create,

Nic:
yeah,

Mia:
not respecting what you bring to the table, that's when I say it's time to walk away from the project. Um, yeah, because I think when you're working collaboratively on something creative, like, trust is everything, respect is everything. And you need to be able to, you know, pull things apart and critique things and build something cohesive, build something together. And you can't, you have to have respect for your fellow creators. Otherwise that just that just doesn't work.

Nic:
Yeah. Respect is so important. Are there things you feel you can't make, subjects or forms that you feel are off

Mia:
I mean, I don't have all of the skills in the world. Um, I've tried to dip my toe into 3D modeling and it did not go well. Uh, the original vision for my game didn't involve watercolor illustration. I opened up Blender and I opened up Unreal Engine, which at the time I kind of naively thought was, it's got a bit of a reputation for being the engine that you use when you want to make games that are really pretty and really visually stunning. Um, so I picked that up and I made something that looked like an absolute trash fire. And I spent about three months on it, and I sat back from it after three months and went, so I like coding and I like drawing and I haven't done either in the whole process of making this game for three months.

Nic:
Right.

Mia:
Let's pivot. So, like, I don't think that 3D modeling is off limits. It's definitely something I can't do now. I have so much respect for people who can do it. Maybe I'll give it a go and try and pick it up again when I've got like the and the time and the mental energy to try and tackle it again. Uh, but right now I'm happy leaving that to the 3D artists.

Nic:
Your game hasn't released yet. Um, but I imagine you've shared your progress with other people. Have you noticed a gap between what you intend people to take from what you're doing and what they're actually feeding back to you?

Mia:
so when I first started sharing the build, it was very, very rough. Like, some of the writing had been done. I'd written, I think I'd written a couple of storylines completely, but the characters were like little outline stick The cat was four frames of like a walking animation, but it was just an outline with no color, and everyone was just a box. Like, it was just like a gray box moving around a 3D space with a picture of a cat on the front. And I was surprised when I was showing that around to people, being like, hey, I got the box to move, how much the vision was already starting to come across. Like, people were getting the vibe from the dialogue and what I was trying to do. And then as it started to come together, like, the art being added on top, like, actually finished and painted, it felt like I was successfully communicating an idea to people. I think still, like, points in which people misunderstand, like, my game is completely narrative. You can't really affect the story. You're a cat. Like, you're just there to experience the story through the characters who are talking to you. You can meow at people. Um, you cannot meow at people, uh, but you can't like talk back to them or say anything that's going to materially change their lives, aside from them feeling comfort in your presence. Um, I've had people not quite get that aspect. Some people, like, oh, do the people give you quests? Do they ask you to do things? Can you change the outcome of the story by doing different things? It's like, no, you're a cat. Like, yeah, that's the main thing that I think that some people don't really vibe with, with the game. But plenty of people like a linear narrative story where you're just kind of vibing out and experiencing it. So, you know, my game is for the people that get it, and I'm finding that a lot of people get it and a lot of people are excited for

Nic:
it. I think there's something to be said about storytelling in a different way, rather than you have to be FPS, kill everything in sight and interact with everything, and, oh, is this loot? I think different paces is important for different people at different times.

Mia:
Yeah. And I grew up playing a lot of FPSs and shooting things and picking up loot. And it's a different kind of experience. But the thing that I've always loved about games, whether you're shooting things and picking up loot, or, you know, talking to characters and getting a story that way, is that the story is always kind of told through the world, through interacting with the world, whether it's, you know, shooting at the world or talking to the world. And that's something that a lot of games have in common, and that's something that I really wanted to lean into. Um, I like games that feel very mundane and make you feel really small. Like, my favorite, one of my favorite Legend of Zelda games is Wind Waker, like, you're just a kid and the world is flooded, and you sail around, and it feels really peaceful, but you also feel really tiny because you spend ages on the sea sailing from place to place. And that's something that I really enjoy.

Nic:
Is there a game that you wish you'd made? And why that one?

Mia:
I wish I'd made. I would have, if I could have been on the team for Sorry We're Closed, that would have just made my entire life. I'd be like, I could die happy. This is like one of the coolest, most unique pieces of art that exists in the gaming space. Um, like, I make most of the game by myself, as a solo project. Uh, I don't see any games out there that I'm like, I could have made this, or I would have wanted to have made this, because I think with solo devs it's very kind of personal, it's a very unique creative vision. But I've seen games that I'm like, man, I would have loved to have been like a character artist in this game, or I would have loved to have been a writer in this game. And I think, like, Sorry We're Closed is one. Um, one of like one of my more rogue influences is a game called Deadly Premonition, which is just absolutely insane. It's heavily inspired by Twin Peaks, and it's a game where you're solving a murder in a small town. And you think this has nothing to do with the game where you're playing as a cat. But one of the things that I really like about it is, you can go into people's houses and see how life is moving on in the wake of this tragedy. And like, you can see people comforting each other and bonding with each other, and you really get like an insight into the fact that these are real people dealing with grief. And that's a huge influence in my game. So like, looking at these projects, these are projects that I'm not like, oh, I wish I'd made this. But I'm really very inspired by it, and like, I think about the team and all the people who are responsible for injecting it with these little details. And it's just like, art to have been part of that. That would have been cool.

Nic:
So eventually, this game is going to be finished. What are you going to be doing after that? Or what would you be doing now if you weren't doing game development?

Mia:
If I wasn't doing this game, there are other ideas cooking. I've already thought about, like, I'm not necessarily, the next title that I'm make, but at least the next idea that I'm gonna workshop, because it is such a process, when it comes to game development, of, like, you know, finding the fun and finding the idea that works, and what people are vibing with. If I wasn't doing game development, um, I really want to get good at oil painting. It's something that I've been afraid of for a long time. Uh, I'd probably be leaning into that and giving that a go. Um, yeah, I'm addicted to picking up a hundred different hobbies and constantly trying new things. So I'd be just scouting around for, yeah, what the next thing is, to keep that impulse.

Nic:
I probably would not recommend trying to do frame-by-frame animation with oil painting unless you have the patience.

Mia:
Absolutely not.

Nic:
Has your creative practice ever changed something you thought about yourself or believed about yourself?

Mia:
I think that happens constantly. I think when it comes to doing something like game development, where it's a piece of art that's like the process is drawn out over many, many months, you spend ages working on the same thing, uh, sometimes you step back from something and you're really, like, you don't realize the amount of time that you've put into something until you're stepping back from it, like, months later, going like, whoa, I built this.

Nic:
Yeah.

Mia:
Like, it's made me feel a lot more confident in my ability to pick things up and put things together. Uh, another thing is, I've always been kind of self-critical about my art and about showing it to people. But like, drawing game assets, they kind of take on a life of their own. And like, you see the thing that you drew in its own little world doing its own little thing, and you know, that something about that just feels really special. Like, if you draw a piece of art in your sketchbook and then you take it out and you frame it and you put it on your wall, and it's like, now part of a space, and it's, you know, giving that space an energy, it just feels different to letting it just exist in its sketchbook. And like, game development's a little bit like that. Like, I've drawn this cat a hundred times, each individual frame doesn't really have a purpose on its own. But it's part of something that's like a little bit bigger than itself, and that's made me feel a lot more confident in my own art and in showing people my art and feeling like people are understanding what I'm trying to do.

Nic:
Yeah. Technical question for you, which isn't so technical, but I'm curious about it. What is your favorite brand of watercolors, and what paper do you like to use? And what's your, uh, your ink of choice?

Mia:
Um, so I missed that last bit. Was the last part, the last

Nic:
bit, what is your ink of choice?

Mia:
Okay. So, favorite watercolors, I use Winsor Newton. Um, I use the pan ones, not the,

Nic:
yep,

Mia:
like, if I use the tubes, I like, let it dry out into a pan, use it like that. Um, I use the little Winsor Newton field kit. They don't do it with the professional colors anymore. They now do it with the Cotman colors. Um, but you can get the set and fill it with whatever colors you want from whichever range you want. I also use Winsor Newton ink. I'm a bit of a Winsor Newton purist. Um, when I was learning watercolors, I just picked up the cheapest notebook that I could find. It wasn't even watercolor paper. And you paint on it, and the paint just kind of sits on top of the paper and it's very unforgiving. Yeah, colors down and then it's down. Uh, I recently bought my sister-in-law a sketchbook, like a nice Moleskine sketchbook, uh, for Christmas. And whenever I gift somebody a sketchbook, I always do the first page, because I think the first page is a little bit intimidating. And it's also just kind of nice, like, hey, remember I got this for you? And, oh my god, painting on that paper, which is like, it just took the paint and it just looked amazing, and it was so much easier. I was like, um, this is a nice experience.

Nic:
Yeah,

Mia:
I've been using the Faber-Castell watercolor pads for the animation for the game. I haven't been punishing myself by using regular notepaper. It's not quite as nice as the Moleskine sketchbook paper, though.

Nic:
I will suggest that if you want to up your game in the sketchbook world for watercolors, you might want to try the Hahnemühle 100% cotton sketchbook, because it is as much better from the Moleskine than the Moleskine is from cartridge paper. It is a world of difference. But anyway, that's just me geeking out. over

Mia:
I want to try the 100% cotton paper eventually, but I feel like I need to build up to that level.

Nic:
Well, that's the thing. At least for me, is that I was intimidated by using good, expensive paper. But when I started, I realized, oh my god, I'm so much better than I thought I was, and the results are a lot more pleasing, so it's less of a struggle.

Mia:
That makes a lot of sense. I think with me, this is something that I've learned to do. Um, like with ADHD and picking up hobbies perpetually, it's very easy to spend an awful lot of money. So I've put like parameters on myself, like, if I'm sticking with a hobby for x amount of time, I'm allowed to invest in some nice things for myself, like x amount of materials. I'm trying to resist the urge to go out and make a lot of purchases unless I know that I'm really in this for the long haul.

Nic:
That makes sense.

Mia:
yeah. And I wouldn't switch to different paper now for the game, because you need a level of consistency there. Maybe once the game is out I'll treat myself to a nice 100% cotton sketchbook.

Nic:
Yeah. Or for your private sketchbook that you show nobody else.

Mia:
Yeah. Maybe,

Nic:
yeah. What does your art and game making give you that nothing else does?

Mia:
I think that with the game making in particular, it gives you an amazing community. Like, I started getting into the games industry professionally by going to playtest parties and like seeing people's work in progress. And like, I think with game development in particular, it really gets you out of your comfort zone. And especially, it kind of forces you to kill any perfectionist tendencies that I think a lot of artists have, because you need to test if a game is viable before you invest potentially years into making it. If you want to sell it. If you're making something just for you and you don't plan on showing it to anyone, that's a completely different thing.

Nic:
Yeah.

Mia:
but I wanted to kind of test myself to see if I could make a game that I could release on Steam. And that forces you to go out and show people the gray box, just a graphite pencil where everything is, you know, blocky and looks a bit weird. Like, it forces you to show people that version of the game to see if you're onto something. And I think that's really, really helpful, because you're getting early feedback, you're kind of getting out of your own ego in terms of, like, I can't show this yet, it's not quite ready. And you're getting into the habit of talking about your process and your creative work with other people who are also doing the same thing. And it gives you confidence as well, because you get to see other people's work in progress. And it's like, okay, I can show this, because, you know, nobody is being, you know, oh, but that's not good enough, or that doesn't look right. Yeah. Everybody understands that it's a process.

Nic:
Yeah. Second-to-last question for you. Is there something we haven't discussed that you would like to discuss, as it relates to disability, creativity, game making?

Mia:
I think that the games industry in particular has got a lot of participation by an extremely, like, diverse kind of groups of people. Um, you get a lot of people with disabilities in the games industry. Um, you get a lot of people of, like, marginalized genders in the games industry. And I think everybody is very accepting, and people connect over being, like, a little bit weird. Because I think creatives are all a little bit weird. I feel like you have to be. Um, and just being a little bit of a rebel and a little bit of an outcast. And I think that it's a very, like, safe environment to kind of put yourself into, because I think there's a lot of stereotypes. You know, people think of gamers, they think of, like, 14-year-olds on Xbox Live playing Halo and like yelling slurs at each other. But if you go to like a playtest party in London, uh, the community is so vibrant and full of all different kinds of people, and is so welcoming and is so nice. And I think that that's been really, really good for me, because it's allowed me to connect with people who I can relate to, and in ways that I couldn't relate to people when I was working in corporate law.

Nic:
Thank you. Last question for you. Where can people find you? Where can people find your work? Uh, because I assume people are going to be as interested to discover this game that you're making and seeing your illustrations as I am.

Mia:
So, um, I post a lot about my game development on LinkedIn, so that's just me as Seljubac on LinkedIn. I'm really easy to find. Um, I'll post, I post about, you know, the work I do with other creatives as a lawyer, uh, on there. But I also will post about my game and the creative process and how things are going. Uh, I have an itch.io where there is an extremely early build of the game. It looks a lot better now than the version in there. But if you want to get like an insight into that super early process and what the game looked like six months in when I was first starting, uh, you can play that now. Uh, my itch.io profile is called S-A-L-Y-U-M-A-N-D-E-R, so like a salamander, but right, Salyumander. Um, and you can follow I Am the Cat on Steam, and you can wish-list it, and you'll be updated when the demo is out and when the final game is out.

Nic:
Thank you. This has been a great chat.

Mia:
Thank you very much.

Nic:
That's it. I'm Nic Steenhout. This is The Work Between. If this sounds like your kind of conversation, subscribe and I'll see you in the next episode.

Mia:
Bye.

Hi. I'm Nic Steenhout, and this is The Work Between.

Before I get into what the show is, I want to say whose land it's made on. This podcast is recorded on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Stó:lō Coast Salish peoples: The People of the River, whose presence in the Fraser Valley stretches back thousands of years. I name this territory because it belongs with what this show is about. The ways we decide whose lives are valued, whose work is taken seriously, and whose experiences are treated as problems to be managed. Those decisions shape everything. This show sits inside that. This is, was, and always will be First Nations land. That's not a formality. It's consistent with everything I and this show stand for.

So. What this show is, and what it is not.

A lot of shows about artists follow a familiar shape. Someone faces hardship. The hardship changes them. The change makes the work better. You come away feeling inspired. It's a satisfying arc. It's also a version that tends to flatten the work, and tidy up lives that aren't typically tidy.

The question I keep coming back to is this: how does your life and your creative practice shape each other? Both in motion. Pushing, pulling, sometimes in conflict, neither one staying still long enough to be a fixed point. That's The Work Between.

And understanding that means getting into the actual work. If someone's a sculptor, we're talking about materials, form, and process. If they're a musician, we're getting into sound and structure. If they paint or quilt or cook, I want to understand how they actually do it; the decisions, the constraints, the techniques. The craft isn't background. It's half the conversation. And it’s often where these questions about identity and experience show up most clearly.

These are long-form conversations. Unhurried, sometimes a bit uncomfortable, and specific. I'll ask questions, I'll follow threads, and I'll leave space when it matters. Not everything needs to resolve cleanly.

I'm not interested in turning people's lives into neat narratives, or using difficulty as a way to make the work more palatable. And I'm not interested in presenting disability — or anything else — as something to be admired from a safe distance. What matters here is what people actually think, and how they actually work.

I make things. I sketch and paint in watercolor. I quilt. I photograph birds and wildlife. I spent years working as a professional chef before changing direction entirely. I tried several other creative endeavours. Some of it stuck. Some of it didn't. But I've been asking myself the questions I'm bringing to this show for a long time.

I've also spent nearly three decades working in web accessibility. My other podcast, A11y Rules, has been running since 2017, with over 160 interviews across two series. What that work taught me — slowly, and sometimes the hard way — is that the most useful thing you can do is listen to someone's actual experience rather than your assumptions about it. That's the discipline I'm trying to bring to every conversation here.

This show is for people who make things, and for people who want to understand how creative work actually happens — especially when it doesn't fit a clean story. A lot of these conversations sit at the intersection of creativity and disability — but you don’t have to be disabled yourself for the work to resonate.

I'm talking to painters, sculptors, fiber artists, musicians, photographers, writers, and chefs. People who work with their hands, their bodies, their materials. People making things that didn't exist before they made them. The work might be visual, physical, edible, wearable, or something that lives in sound. What connects them is that they're all trying to make something that matters to them.

Some guests will have a clear sense of how their disability shaped their work. Some will push back on the question. Some won't have worked it out yet. And that's all right.

They get to be complicated. They don't have to arrive with a lesson. They don't have to leave you feeling uplifted. They just have to be honest about what they actually think.

Every episode has a full, human-edited transcript. That's not a nice-to-have. That's just how the show works. I'll also provide extensive show notes.

Episodes will be released every 2 or 3 weeks.

I'm Nic Steenhout. This is The Work Between. If this sounds like your kind of conversation, subscribe — and I'll see you in the next episode.