Following is an interview that editor Michael O. Varhola did with artist, author, and impressario Andy Hopp for d-Infinity Volume #3: Children of the Night! Some of Hopp’s great illustrations also appear with the monster article “Spontaneous Generation” in d-Infinity Volume #1: The Adventure Begins. Andy Hopp is perhaps best known as an artist with a weird, lurid style suggestive of a modern-day Hieronymus Bosch. 

Following is an interview that editor Michael O. Varhola did with artist, author, and impressario Andy Hopp for d-Infinity Volume #3: Children of the Night! Some of Hopp’s great illustrations also appear with the monster article “Spontaneous Generation” in d-Infinity Volume #1: The Adventure Begins. Andy Hopp is perhaps best known as an artist with a weird, lurid style suggestive of a modern-day Hieronymus Bosch. 

But Hopp is much more than that and is also an author, web designer, graphic artist, art director, game designer, and even a convention organizer. He has illustrated dozens of published games and books, written several — most notably the critically-acclaimed Low Life, perhaps the most unique post-apocalyptic game ever created — and organized “the most fun convention on Earth,” Con on the Cob, and created the Wanderers Guild, a collaborative fantasy endeavor. He is also a husband the proud father of “the most amazingly awesome little girl ever to walk the planet.”

Some people like Andy Hopp’s work, and some people don’t. But those that like it really like it, and that is obvious from the effusive comments they make when visiting with him at conventions.

“How do you get your ideas for this stuff?” one young woman asks him while he is sitting in his booth at a recent con.

“I am so weird!” Hopp responds with a laugh. “Really, a lot it is based on just random oddness that floats out of my head; I’m not sure that it’s really based on anything. But a lot of it also based on real-life animals and stuff like that … just kind of twisted versions of ’em. Yup.”

Where Hopp gets his ideas is, in fact, one of the recurring questions that people ask him.

“Actually, I love that question, it’s a flattering question,” Hopp says. “I just don’t have an answer for it. One thing I always strive to do, not just for my own ego, because it’s just what I’m into, is to do something different from what everybody else is doing. There are so many artists who I feel are technically much more talented than I am when it comes to creating dynamic images and [working with] color and light, but in order to stand out from them I try to do something different from what they’re doing. There are so many people who are doing what is popular at the time, like dragons, and mermaids, and fairies, and that kind of stuff.”

Traditional monsters are, in any event, not likely to be found among those inhabiting the worlds that Hopp’s creative hand has touched. His own Low Life role-playing game, set in a nearly alien post-apocalyptic world, is inhabited by nine player character races, none of them likely to be found adventuring with Elves, Dwarves or Orcs. Boduls — “Being of Dubious Lineage” — are the warped and mutated descendants of humanity innumerable generations down the line; Cremefillians are a race of sponge cakes whose ancestors gained sentience as the result of nuclear fallout from ancient wars; Croaches are big bugs; Horcs are snot-covered bruisers; Oofos are the progeny of aliens who once visited the Earth; Piles are beings of magically animated waste; Smelfs are tiny people with huge noses; Tizn’ts are chimerical monsters made up of all sorts of spare parts; and Werms are … well, worms.

Prior to Hopp’s chat with d-Infinity, no one had had the impertinence to ask him which of these charming races was his own alter ego.

“That’s a good question! There’s probably a little bit of me in each of them. But I would say … I never thought of that before. I really dig the worms, and I don’t really know why. Maybe it’s because they’re so much easier to draw than everyone else, because, well, they’re worms — how hard is that? They’re also the easiest to make in balloon animal form. It’s just something about the simplicity of the worms, because I just love to add layers and layers of various clothes and gear and all kinds of stuff and I think that having that packed on this simple little worm just speaks to me. But I might have to think about that some more …

Hopp confirms that his reference to “digging” worms is not just a coincidence.

“That’s just how I think,” Hopp says. “I can’t really hear any word without thinking of stupid pun for it. The pun is the lowest form of humor, which is why it fits perfectly for Low Life.”

And Low Life is clearly a good fit for Hopp, who created it when he the opportunity to have published just about anything he created landed in his lap.

“This is fun story for me, this was really flattering. Shane Hensley, who runs Pinnacle Entertainment Group, creator of Deadlands and Savage Worlds, he’s always liked my art from he saw the first things I’d ever done for the gaming industry, and he’d been after me awhile to do a monster book or something with him. But then after he did Savage Worlds, we ran into each other at Origins and he said ‘I want you to do a book for me about anything you want.’

Hopp said he wanted to write it the book as well as illustrate it and Hensley gave him the go-ahead.

“Basically, I had complete free reign on it,” Hopp said.

While Hopp likes to talk about his work, it is pretty clear that he is most comfortable talking to nerds and makes sure to check the credentials of anyone presuming to interview him, as indicated by his response when I asked him about his favorite movies.

“I like all the geek staples; I’m all about Star Wars. But aside from the basics, I really like Fight Club, that’s a good movie — I love the whole psychological twist aspect. I like Star Trek, because I really like Darth Vader, and that Chewmacca guy, the big furry dude, and RD2-Doo, they’re really cool characters, and Dr. Spock — is he on Star Wars? — and that Dr. Who guy. He’s on Star Trek, too, right?” A hapless reporter not versed in classic nerdology is not going to be able to keep up with him.

“I don’t think I’m that interesting,” Hopp says. “So, I have to make stuff up.”

If Hopp himself is not interesting, however, he is certainly involved in a lot of interesting things (and his protestations aside, he is in fact a pretty fascinating guy).

“Most of it just kind of happened, was just being in the right place at the right time,” Hopp says. “Like, for example, with the whole the illustration career. I’ve always been a doodler, I’ve always drawn pictures, but I got laid off from a job in 2001 and I had all these pictures I’d been drawing.”

“So, I decided to go to the Origins art show and see if I could sell some of them and maybe get some work out of it. So, I was there, and the second day of the show Larry Elmore and Margaret Weiss were just standing in front of me and they said, ‘We want you to do our monster book!’ That was awesome! My first real big job was like 200 pictures for Larry and Margaret, two of the biggest names in the business. Ever since then I’ve never looked back.”

Hopp’s other current activities ultimately sprang, he says, from this initial dramatic success.

“Along with being an illustrator, there are other creative avenues — like writing and game — design that just seem to go along with it. It’s what I enjoy doing so it’s what I do. I’ve been lucky enough that I have a supporting wife and supporting parents who have always been there. It’s just worked out.”

“The convention, Con on the Cob, just came about basically because I wanted to find a way to get a bunch of my friends together and find a reason for it,” Hopp says. “There’s a big story that goes along with it. I had a friend who came to Gen Con … and wanted to show me his portfolio. I looked at it and saw that it had some good concepts in it but he really needed an education in the fundamentals, like perspective and that kind of stuff. So, I decided, to just have a little art gathering at my house, and invite like 10 people and some of my friends who are professional artists, and we’ll do some workshops, and we’ll play some games, and go to the zoo and draw animals, and stuff like that. And like 35 people showed up. And my house wasn’t really equipped for 35 extra people! But it was awesome, it was so much fun.”

“The next year my daughter was born so we didn’t do it that year. But the year after that we said, ‘Hey, let’s do that again,’ because it was so much fun, but let’s kind of put a name on it. And then ‘Con on the Cob’ just came about out of silliness. I wanted to find a name that people would remember, and a name that reflected my personality, and also a name that used the word ‘con’ in it. So that’s where the name came about. It doesn’t have anything to do with corn.”

“We decided to do it at a hotel. So, we rented a conference room at this Holiday Inn and Suites. And I did a little bit of advertising for it, just online, and told some friends about it, and like 80 people showed up for that one.”

“I told the manager of the hotel who hooked everything up with us that we wanted to have loud parties, and he said, ‘No problem!’ And I said we wanted to use the pool area and the breakfast area for playing games and he said, ‘No problem!’ Well, we got there and he had been fired for making promises like that.

“So, we got there and I said ‘Hi, I’m Andy, and we’re running Con of the Cob today!’ And they were like, ‘Who? What?’ So, they looked in their book and saw that we rented the room, but that’s it, the hotel did not know we were coming. All sorts of crazy stuff ended up happening, and we had the art show and the seminars all into this one room. We did play games out in the breakfast area, but they weren’t very happy about it. And they reserved this teenage girls’ soccer league’s rooms right across from the rooms we were having our parties in and they had to get up at like 5 in the morning to play soccer, so they were pissed. But we had a blast, it was really great fun.”