Q. Hi, would you like to introduce yourself?
Hi! I’m Ryan Storm! I’m just some guy from Boston who finds meaning in life through creative output.
Q. How would you describe Penguin Midnight for someone who hasn’t seen it?
Penguin Midnight is a caricature of hookup culture based upon the feelings I was left with after brief encounters ultimately fizzled out or didn’t become what I would’ve hoped.
This feeling of transience is depicted through two leads getting into a hookup, where one of them inflates the feeling of warmth he felt after spending one hour with this girl into an unhealthy hyperfixation.
The visuals are a mix between eastern and western cartooning sensibilities and everything moves in a fluid and stylistic way with location accurate sound & background paintings.
Q. Could you tell me a little about the main characters?
Ken is a half-Japanese and half-American living in a country that remains as 95% homogenous Japanese. He’s lived his life as an oddity and this isn’t helped at all by the fact that he’s on the autism spectrum. He’s spent most of his life fairly alone and constantly being treated as an outsider, despite Japan being his mother-country and home. In spite of this he’s been able to gradually find success due to his artistic talents working under a Senior Mangaka.
Shiro is a former escort who just recently found the will to change careers. She’s an Otaku and is very passionate about the entire Anime subculture of Japan. When meeting Ken, she saw him as a foreigner and a chance to act upon her free will with zero consequence. After years spent having been paid and told who to sleep with and when, she decides this time that she will choose to sleep with someone on her own volition as an expression of her new freedom.
Both of these characters put up masks for the sake of conforming to a society that is unkind to non-conformists. Japanese culture discourages uniqueness to the point where things like Tattoos or dyed hair are seen as career suicide to people who don’t specifically partake in subcultures. Ken, having continuously faced discrimination, initially would (ironically) dye his hair black to conform and divert from his most obvious western hereditary trait.
Shiro later changes her hair and adopts fake names through her career at a Maid cafe. As an Escort she uses burner accounts and adopts her nickname as her stage name, as to separate her work-life from her day to day. She needs to avoid predators and those who would seek to ruin her.
Q. What has the production for Penguin Midnight looked like?
The key word was speed. Penguin Midnight was completed over the course of about a year from script to final export. I wanted everything to be ready in time to submit to festivals for 2026, so I worked very quickly on animation. This is actually a slight regret of mine as I feel the final result came out messier than I would have liked.
All of our actors were recorded together in the same room with boom mics rather than the typical process of having people record in sound booths and then send in lines in total isolation. The method itself was sort of aped from films like “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” “Rango,” and “Ghost Cat Anzu.”
I’m not sure how much about the production idiosyncrasies would be of interest, but perhaps the best thing to talk about would be the level of research that went into making Japan feel like Japan. I went on location during a trip to actually photograph and record ambience for all locations. This ranged everywhere from Tokyo in key locations like Shibuya and Akihabara, as well as up in Hakodate for Ken’s time spent in Hokkaido.
This is a common technique in the works of Makoto Shinkai and many others. I like seeing the results of this on social media, with people recreating iconic shots from many anime, in the locations initially referenced. Maybe someday they’ll do the same with Penguin Midnight as well!
Ironically, the only photo not taken in Japan was the Hachiko dog statue. I didn’t consider the synchronicity of “loyally waiting for someone who will never come back” until I was home from Japan. Luckily, there’s a Hachiko statue in Rhode Island thanks to the American movie about him, so I just drove down there and used that one as a reference.
There was also a week where I took a “stay-cation” off from my actual job, to try out the same work routine as author Haruki Murakami. Murakami would wake up at 4am, work until noon, run a 10k, and then chill out or read until he fell asleep after.
I had to train to get myself able to run a 10k (5 kilometers both ways, about 3.5 miles.) However it was difficult for me to keep to the routine as my idea of relaxing was to keep working. So I’d usually get home from the run and instead of decompressing, I’d keep animating. Maybe I’d watch a movie, but even after I would still work until I was sleepy.
Q. The film takes place in and references a lot from Japan. Why is that and why couldn’t it be anywhere else?
The story itself is meant to feel universal, but Japan was chosen as the location due to the results of my previous feature, Lonely Nights in Chinatown. That film performed better in Japanese and East Asian markets than it did anywhere else so I decided to lean into this. I was presented with a lot of networking opportunities in Japan specifically thanks to that film.
As is, I already like Japan, have been studying Japanese (wouldn’t mind living there someday,) as well as finding many of my creative inspirations in the distinctive styles of East Asian cinema. It was very much a “why not, this could be really fun!” mentality all the way through.
I see it as a mirror to the “Mother” trilogy of games, which caricature American life with fantastical elements. We’re exchanging love letters through our perspectives.
The general results with friends I have from Japan, Japanese folks who’ve stumbled upon the film online, and Japanese Film Festivals have been super positive!
The general result with friends I have from Japan, Japanese folks who’ve stumbled upon the film online, and Japanese Film Festivals has been amazingly positive!
I don’t really tell my Japanese friends about my internet footprint beyond cliffnotes, so most had only seen my occasional doodle or street photograph before this. They think the style is cute!
Down to certain verbal idiosyncrasies, there’s a lot of subtleties to the more normal aspect of Japanese life and conversation that were injected in there, that many might even miss in favor of the larger “Thing Japan” -isms.
The title itself being a Penguin is sort of a code for how oddly universal Penguins are as an icon in Japan. There’s Penguin themed stuff everywhere. The IC Card, Suica, had a Penguin Mascot, which helped with the universalness. He’s recently been retired, but now that same Penguin is the Haneda Airport mascot. Japanese people really like penguins and I do too!
Q. The short film has already received over 1 million views on YouTube alone. Was that expected? How did you react to the reception?
I didn’t expect that at all!
As with many things I really have the community that formed around people showing an interest in the film to thank. Our Letterboxd & IMDB pages were both made by a fan, the Newgrounds release grew so much due to internal promotion and a strong algorithm (it got a lot of Takeover Tuesday features on the first week,) and then over on Youtube the film got up to #15 most “Hyped” in the US during its first release. That’s all people who resonated with the project trying to get more people to see it and I am forever grateful for the kindness and generosity of people who would do that.
We had one reel go viral on both Instagram and Youtube shorts (the exact same reel on both) and I have Shiro in her underwear as the thumbnail to thank for that. The dialogue and drawings got a lot of people interested in what they thought was a wholesome love story, until the actual story of the film slams them with a “brick of reality.” Shits sad.
I was hoping people would enjoy the story, but this level of exposure and overwhelmingly positive feedback wasn’t expected at all. I thought we’d max out around 10k views if I was lucky, a feeling made even more extreme by our release coinciding with two much larger Indie Animation projects (The Lovers & Pretty Please I Don’t Want to Be a Magical Girl) which are great and people should absolutely check out! Even more so considering (see next question..)
Q. Outside of the online release the film has also been screened at different film festivals. What has that process looked like and has the reception varied between in person screenings and online?
1 million views on Youtube and a best of the Month reward on Newgrounds is the polar opposite experience to that of Film Festivals.
For curators, it was either too long, too Weeaboo, or just not to their taste.
Once again, Japan came in clutch with being one of the only festivals to actually find the film interesting enough to take in. Perhaps just due to cultural things implemented within the script that resonated more accurately to the culture it’s seeking to depict.
While in Tokyo on pre-production, I had a meeting with a retired TV Producer, who I wanted to work with on getting music from local Jazz bands into the short. He himself was a Caucasian transplant and not Japanese, but had many connections with Japanese bands. He didn’t really understand anything about the project and wanted me to include things that felt like “Despicable Me” in the story, as well as redo all the art with AI generated animation.
So there’s an alternate reality out there wherein the Penguin of Penguin Midnight babbles like a Minion in an uncanny AI artstyle!
As of now the actual festival screenings are more off in the future, so I can’t speak to the experience of them, but I’m quite excited to struggle through a Q&A in Japan, speaking a language I have a grade school grasp of! Thank god for translators!
Q. How did you start with animation and what makes you interested in it as opposed to another medium?
The thing with animation that elevates it above all other mediums is that your limitations are self inflicted. If you want something to happen…can you draw it? How well? Do you know a guy who can do it? Can you pay him? How long do you have?
Live action is very fun and very social, but you incur so many expenses in terms of locations and food and you really start to just run people’s patience thin with how long things can take. The North East also has four seasons so you’re hampered by weather. If you realize you need a reshoot for a summer scene in December then you’re screwed. Fall is beautiful but it lasts like a month and a half at full lushness and the days get shorter.
Fixing something in the edit is also just a lot harder when you only have so much to work with.
It’s an AMAZING teaching tool however as so much of my directing style comes from the run and gun feel of doing documentaries and short films around Boston with friends and colleagues. Documentaries and indie work are specifically cool because what you shoot is what you have to work with. That’s it. There’s this element of a “beautiful accident” that remains as something I try to project both onto my writing and directing in animation.
Q. Most people online who might know you for animation before Penguin Midnight might have done so because of your Game Grumps animated. How do you feel about them and what effect did they have on your career as an animator?
I never went to College, so my teaching grounds were often through commissioned projects I’d do for other channels. I’d learn so much through working for those guys and reading feedback from such a wide public response for the animations. Animations that I felt were kinda amateurish (on my part.)
My initial exposure to a wider audience was via collaborations with people like the Game Grumps, H2O Delirious, Neebs Gaming, and MASHED. I will forever be grateful for them for that, and for being so cool about plugging and boosting artists who worked for them. JonnyEthco (Neebsgaming) actually wrote me a damn letter of recommendation for a White Collar job later on! All those guys have been nothing but awesome.
Q. Newgrounds and Tom Fulp is credited as a producer on the film. To what extent did they help in production?
Funding! Tom was one of the first to swing in on the Kickstarter campaign! He immediately grabbed the Producer Tier at the second highest payout of that campaign. Tom was one of three people at that time who had the budget and interest to be able to invest so much financially into the creation of that short film.
Tom and Newgrounds in general were super formative to my current career as an artist and animator. I first started posting to NG when I was around 16 and the website seemed to take a liking to my short, sophomoric, parody animations. An older series I made “Anime Amigos” in particular was popular enough that when artist, Happy Harry Partridge, was doing a BG illustration for the site and wanted to include newer characters to represent it, his girlfriend Sucho had suggested Anime Amigos as an inclusion. It also appeared on the old Picolage poster for the Pico Day of 2016 with a drawing done by the artist Dudul.
Although my Newgrounds presence waned as a result of me pushing more into commission work for Youtube channels, my induction into the animation field can be entirely sourced from making connections on Newgrounds.
Many are critical of the site, but it has one of the best and most open communities for artists to network and flourish. Quite frankly, it’s a more positive and welcoming community than anywhere else online. Hot take.
Q. You have already launched and funded a KickStarter campaign to produce a prequel for Penguin Midnight called Mother is a Stinkbug. Are you as of now planning more stories with these characters moving forward or what is your ambition with this world you’ve made?
Everything I’ve done up to this point has been fueled by the enthusiasm of the audience I’ve built, so I’d say it all depends.
People absolutely seem interested in an expansion upon the ideas presented in Penguin Midnight because there’s a lot there to expand upon. Ken and Shiro had 25 minutes to be complete human beings participating in a story which had a theme to convey first and foremost.
I’d love to do more about Ken after I finish the prequel with Shiro. I felt she had the biggest opening for narrative potential, as we don’t get to know a whole lot about her when we’re working out of Ken’s POV of her as in Penguin Midnight. Ironically she may be the most gratuitous piece of a vent or self insert character I’ve written. I do mean that both in Mother is a Stinkbug and in Penguin Midnight. Shiro is me to an annoying degree.
I have friends in Japan who are Hafus like Ken and have listened to the stories of many being minorities in homogenous communities, so I do feel like there’s a lot of story potential with him after this. Without spoiling too much, Ken is the one I will be covering next. His American mother in Japan and Japanese father will in themselves be significant characters to study and further dive into the themes of isolationism and conformity being explored throughout. Same as I’m doing with Shiro’s family in Mother is a Stinkbug.
Q. Animation takes a long time, especially indie animation. When would you expect Mother is a Stinkbug to be completed and what is already completed?
Gimme like a year. December 2027 maybe?
We’ve so far been given a more significant budget for Mother is a Stinkbug, which means I can work faster, at a higher level of quality with the hired help I can now afford.
I made about $8,000 when doing Penguin Midnight. We have double that as of right now for Mother is a Stinkbug, with that funding campaign still ongoing. Even with a 10% donation allocation, this will still be a very good budget for me. It’s way more than I’m used to having and I intend to use it well.
I cannot state enough how eternally grateful I am towards the community that’s followed me and my art. These are seriously amazing people and I wouldn’t be anything without them.
My actual 9-5 job has been busier so I’m not as far along as I’d like to be, but as of now all the audio recording is done and the storyboard process is about 4/5ths complete. I expect to be moving into BG Layout by mid-October and animation will start around November.
Q. Is there anyone else who has helped out with Penguin Midnight that you’d like to shout out? What did they do?
This is gonna read like a list of credits, but…
Shiro being likable and having believable chemistry with Ken is so make or break to the story. Ali brought that out by being incredible and professional in her performance as the character. She brought an amazing emotional edge both to Shiro’s pleasantries at the start and her kindness and empathy in the end.
Josh did ALL of the beautiful background art in Penguin Midnight! A good percentage of the atmosphere and personality this project has comes from his amazing and detailed painting work rendering all those Japan locations!
Compositing needs more love. The other percentage of that atmosphere and personality comes from how Stepan was able to tie everything together with such beautiful work with his lighting and cinematic touches to the overall look of everything!
Brandy swept in like an ANGEL towards the latter half of production and helped this thing really pick up the pace! He took care of totally cleaning and coloring like 3 whole scenes in this animation, and quite frankly his clean-up work looks better than mine!
Chase Turcotte, Aaron, & Newgrounds:
These are the MONEY GUYS! These are the guys who got that Kickstarter campaign funded! Chase actually pops up as a cameo in the cartoon in the Maid Cafe!
If it wasn’t for them and all of the wonderful people over on Kickstarter, then this thing wouldn’t exist.
Q. Where can people find and support you online?
You can find me on the following…
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@RyanStormCartoons
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanstormah/
Newgrounds: https://ryanstorm.newgrounds.com/
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/RyanStorm
And you can support the creation of Mother is a Stinkbug here on Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ryanstorm/mother-is-a-stinkbug-penguin-midnight-prequel-anime?ref=user_menu
Thank you Ivar for taking the time to interview me, and thank you the reader for taking the time to tolerate me!
Leave a Reply