Q. Hi, would you like to introduce yourself?
Hiya, Hiya! My name is Abey, mostly known as Mr. Tsuyo, and mildly known as the creator of X QUEST. I am a 2D/3D artist and animator stuck in the middle of Spain who loves videogames and cartoons like a psycho
Q. How would you describe X QUEST for someone who hasn’t heard of it?
X QUEST takes place inside an RPG videogame of the same name; it centers around the journey of, ARKE VENTUS, the Legendary Hero of the Cosmos, as he travels across the SKY-LANDS alongside his loyal mentor, ZUSH, to train his hidden powers and fulfil his quest to defeat the FOUR EVIL EMPERORS.
However, our beloved protagonist is far more self-aware than anybody should be in this world, to the point that his carefree curiosity leads him to question the rules of his world and accidentally break them, making his whole reality become “Glitched”
Q. Could you tell me a little about the main characters?
ARKE VENTUS: a simple folk who was destined by legends to become the Legendary Hero of the Cosmos. According to the legend the hero must be pure of heart for the prophecy to be fulfilled, but he is far too flawed to fit such legend; his biggest weakness being his curiosity, a completely innocent trait in normal conditions, but in the world Arke inhabits, it can be downright dangerous, as only he is able to cause glitches to this reality, which always ends up punishing him, erasing Arke from reality and replacing him, only for it to happen again and again.
ZUSH: a hot-headed entity in the shape of a weird bird. He holds a deep grudge against Arke, having spent his entire life training to become the one worthy of the title Legendary Hero of the Cosmos, only for a wimp to be the actual chosen one instead. Despite his resentment, he tries guiding Arke down the right path, but he always fails to do so as the novice hero doesn’t take him seriously due to his silly looks, but ironically, Zush is the wisest person in all the SKY-LANDS, as his immortality has allowed him to accumulate many centuries of knowledge and experience far beyond what any ordinary person could ever hope to possess.
Unfortunately, being wise doesn’t necessarily mean being patient, which Arke successfully breaks constantly.
Q. The show focuses a lot on games with plenty of references to different games and other shows. What are some of the most important inspirations to you?
RPGs tend to be my biggest source of inspiration, especially “Earthbound”, “Undertale”, and “OFF”, but I also get inspired by comics and cartoons, for example: “ENA”, “Adventure Time” and “Homestuck”.
However, I never tend to be inspired by just a single piece of media, almost everything I’ve enjoyed in my life has given me many ideas and concepts, and I say this because in the past, around 15 years ago, X QUEST was a fancomic about a Sonic oc recolor, with a Dragon Ball-esque story, Kingdom Hearts keyblades, Creepypasta .exe villains and with Sans Undertale as part of the main cast.
I don’t know if one day I would have the strength to put this comic out in the world to see, but it certainly is a way to start a project.
Q. How did you get into animation?
Since I was a little child, I’ve been a fan of animated media. Drawing was the very first step that got me closer to that world, and I certainly didn’t stop from there. I am pretty sure the first time I animated was around 10 years ago, I did my animations in a pretty mediocre art software on my iPad, and instead of doing it frame by frame I did it canvas by canvas, I was having so much fun back then.
Once I got my first drawing tablet, I started making fan projects, my biggest one being a Homestuck fan comic called “Welcome To Doomtlis”, it had its time and was very important for me back then, and thanks to it I had my very first footing on actual animation, I started tinkering with Flash and getting used to its tools and when I least expected it I discovered that I could work on my old fan comic project as an actual original Animated Project, leading the creation of X QUEST.
Nowadays I am studying animation at college, and I have even done work as an Animator Director for short projects. I am so happy how far I’ve been going with animation and that I can show such progress with my Indie show. Even if you start animating canvas by canvas it can lead you to become a great animator
Q. The show was first unveiled over 4 years ago. Has there been any changes as it comes to the vision for the show?
The scripts from episode 1 to 3 have stayed intact for that amount of time, but many creative choices and designs changed between the production of each episode.
Like for example:
Ep 2’s 3D enviroment was added last minute because I wanted to test the waters of an ENA-esque visual style.
Arke’s design has been constantly evolving since the pilot, almost to the point that in some episodes you can see a huge change in his model between the beginning and the ending of it.
And the storyboard of episode 3 was given a rework to take advantage of everything I’ve learned so far. X QUEST full story, despite still needing to be fully written down, has sections like the ENDINGS and ARCS planned, so important things like those won’t be changed.
Q. At the moment you are working on the episode 3. You’ve earlier mentioned that there’d be 3 episodes aside from the pilot. Is that still the plan? What will happen after season 1 is done?
The plan has always been 3 episodes; however, I am going to get into a huge insane tangent that I’ve never explained before, Season 1 is actually separated into 3 parts, Season 1-A (with the 3 main episodes), 1-B (with another 3 episodes) and 1-C (a special FINALE), 7 episodes in total, it’s my biggest goal to do a full season, and we are getting close to having 1-A finished!
And once season 1 is finally completed (if it even ends up getting finished), it shall be up to me to begin a second season. Yes, I know that I may sound insane, but X QUEST has always been planned to be a full series of 4 seasons, and each of them centers around a whole different story in the journey of Arke, with new companionships, new environments and different conflicts for the main protagonist to deal with. There is even revealed designs of Arke’s partners in each season, is just too bad we cannot see them in Season 1 because I really like ’em.
Q. How far into the production of episode 3 are you now? is it going smoothly?
The first half of the Storyboard is finished and It’s looking divine. Character designs of this episode have been finalized, and we even have some clean animation ready, if this last year of college isn’t too shaky, I can see production going much smoother than the other episodes (much more likely won’t be).
Q. How do you feel about the reception?
Truth be told, I wish it could be doing better. Newgrounds received X QUEST greatly with lots of people getting interested in the art style and story. YouTube however did AWFUL with Episode 2, not even getting to 1K viewers as of today, which really hurts me considering all the effort I gave to this one.
4 years have passed and not many know about the ARG behind the main show, I am still waiting for that summary video from a newcomer YouTuber analyzer.
BUT, this episode allowed me to win my very first award, to the “Best Editing and VFX”, I cherish that day to remind myself I am capable of great things!
Episode 3 is the closest thing to a real cartoon pilot, and it will be the last chance to see if I can get people invested in this project.
Q. Is funding anything you are thinking about as it comes to the show?
A good friend of mine convinced me to try doing it even if I fail, once episode 3 is done and out, I shall find different ways to try and make a profit out of it, I am still considering if I should open a Patreon or make a Kickstarter campaign to get budget for next episodes.
Merch is something I know I must do though. Maybe an Arke plush could exist in the future.
Q. Is anyone else working on X QUEST with you? What do they do?
Many awesome artists have helped me make X QUEST as great as it is. Last episode I finally got my college friends to help me with doing some animation and artwork, hopefully they will be there to help me one more time for this episode.
My friend Pani (@Pani_swag) is a great addition to the X QUEST aesthetic, as he makes some mouthwatering creepy pixel art that I never seen before, if only I tried squeezing more of his work into it in earlier episodes.
Of course, the music is composed by my pal LEVC (@Levc_EGM), creator of the awesome game “Tales From The Other Side”, who is always there to assist me music-wise whenever I cannot do justice to a specific theme from the episode, he will always come out with bangers every single time.
And last but not least, Paul Frevel, thanks to him all of this happened.
Q. Where can people find you online?
I can be found in almost any social media, Instagram (@HeyIamTsuyo), Twitter (@HeyIamTsuyo), Newgrounds (@TsuyoXMR).
But it’s important that you the reader, go to both Youtube and Newgrounds to check out my show “X QUEST“, and I do mean both because each site has a different post-credits scene. KEEP THAT IN MIND
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