Zomb: First off, where are you from and how old are you?

Mild: I am 27 yrs old and from the middle of nowhere in Alabama.

Zomb: Alabama is definitely one of the more rare locations for artists for sure, tell us a little bit about what it was like growing up down south? What were the early years like for you?

Mild: So the early years were pretty rough, I had less than pleasant parents. To save on some of the more depressing details they just weren't around at all and my mom died when I was pretty young, around 8 or so. I had amazing grandparents and great grandparents. They took me in and raised me. I grew up on a large chicken farm. My grandfather raised chickens and sold hay. So I was working a lot even at a young age really. I helped with the chickens and the hay, driving tractors and all of that kind of stuff. I definitely didn't enjoy the majority of it but I am thankful for it now looking back. I pretty much had the typical southern upbringing, farming and hunting, but I quickly figured out that wasn't my "style" I guess you could say.

Zomb: Wow first off, huge shoutout to  your grandparents that’s actually such a blessing. It’s a really good thing you take what you can from it and look back on it as a mostly positive experience. Especially when you consider the work ethic experience you can take from it. So living in Alabama was a typical southern experience, what was some of your favorite music early on? Who were some artists you remember listening to growing up at an early age?

Mild: Definitely, I owe a lot to them. The early early stuff was just whatever the grandparents would play. They loved bluegrass music, so it was mainly bluegrass and gospel. 

I remember they had a cassette of the soundtrack for the movie "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" that they played constantly, I even still listen to it every now and then. Once I finally started getting into my own music I went straight for the heavier stuff. I was into older metal for a long time, listened to a lot of Metallica and stuff like that. I really fell in love with screamo and metalcore music. The angrier sounding stuff always stood out to me. One of my most played albums of all time is Atreyu's first album. A friend of mine in middle school gave me the CD and I still have it and listen to it to this day. So I started with the classic gospel and bluegrass but quickly went more towards rock/metal/screamo, anything heavier sounding really.

Zomb: Right yeah so you totally had a wide range of sounds growing up, I feel like so many of us drifted into heavier sounds at one point in our younger years. So initially you didn’t start designing and creating early on with digital media but let’s talk about your early art projects. Everything from carving magic cards to other projects, what was your inspiration for that era and how old were you at the time?

Mild: Hmm, that's a tough one. I really have never been super artsy, at least not in my younger years. I found out pretty early I couldn't draw or anything like that so I never did much in the way of art until later in my life. I just kinda wrote it off as "art is't for me", not thinking about the many different forms of art. Like you mentioned though, I have always been into TCG cards, Magic, yugioh, all of those. It was probably my later teens when I stumbled across someone making 3d MTG card alters, where you cut the card and overlap copies of it to give it a 3d effect. That really stood out to me so I decided to give it a shot myself and I still do them from time to time now. Outside of that and my current digital stuff/photography I am doing, my current girlfriend is a very talented artist and we have done some stuff together the last couple years. Some paintings and spray paint art, it’s a lot of fun when you put no pressure on it. 

Zomb: That’s so sick, I knew there was some hidden lore there, especially with TCG’s.  You mentioned that early on you were never super artsy until dabbling in your later teens, which leads me into my next question. You’re a pretty heavy gamer and more specifically a speedrunner which didn’t come until later. What were some games you played early on when you were younger and into your teen years? 

Mild: For sure, gaming has always been one of my favorite hobbies. The very first game I remember playing was the demo disc for Resident Evil 3 I think it was. It came with dino crisis on ps1 back in the day. Scared the hell out of me as a little kid haha. Probably one of the reasons I am so into horror now though. A game I am still obsessed with to this day though is Spyro. I played so much of the original spyro trilogy. Everything about those games has a special place in my heart, from the art to the music. I pretty much only played on the playstation throughout the years, so it was a lot of Spyro, Sly Cooper, and Jak and Daxter. Those 3 really stand out for me. Living with my grandparents they were fairly strict and they followed those game ratings religiously, I didn't get into T/M rated games till much later. But when they finally loosened up a bit I got into Call of Duty pretty heavily. Specifically MW2 and Black Ops 1. Once I finally got my own PC I discovered Runescape. That's a journey all by itself there, I spent many years playing that game on and off. Same with League of Legends, but I still play League to this day. There's so so many games that I played over the years but those are the main ones that really stick out to me. Real gems, minus League of course, anyone that plays that game understands.

Zomb: This one made me crack up, definitely a stack of gems here and the League relationship is absolutely something people can relate to. So you’ve been creating in niche forms and gaming for the majority of your life, then we hit your early twenties and the more recent years. When did you initially start speedrunning and how did the platform Indie Horror Speedruns come into play? 

Mild: Speedrunning definitely came a lot later for me. I started doing runs myself 3 yrs ago. It was something that always interested me, mainly all the crazy glitches. I watched tons of speedruns on youtube and would see GDQ and stuff like that just never started doing it myself for whatever reason. Once I finally took that dive into doing runs myself though I never looked back. I started with a few smaller games before I saw a video on "Granny" and decided to give it a try, the glitches looked really interesting to me. I stayed there for a long time and kind of discovered my love for glitch hunting, I never even did a run of the game, just worked to find new tricks and time saves. I cant remember if I was browsing through Itch.io or through newer games on speedrun.com but I came across a short indie game called "The Whitetail Incident'' and saw there was a discord server linked on the leaderboard. "Indie Horror Speedruns' ', it might have had 20 people in it at the time, but it quickly became my 2nd home honestly. It was super welcoming, everyone just playing honestly pretty terrible indie horror games and doing speedruns of them. I had found some tricks in The Whitetail Incident so one of the early members of IHS asked me to look into another short horror game he had set a bounty for, I found everything he was looking for and we went back and forth lowering the time on the game. That was a really awesome early memory of IHS for me and really helped me stay there. Like I mentioned its pretty much my 2nd home now. We have added over 500 people since I first joined. Love seeing it grow like it has over the years and hope to continue to see it grow. 

Zomb: So essentially this was a newer type of passion for you and IHS just capped it off for everything. We’ve definitely worked with IHS in the past so it’s interesting to get a background story on really how that came into play. So that takes us up to more recent times and your current creative plate. You recently got into designing after speedrunning for a few years, how did that come about? You originally were taking photos IRL and editing them right? 

Mild: That's right, yea. So I have always been into darker imagery, anything that is dark, sad, horror etc. has always stood out to me.

I got a job at a Funeral Home a few years back and it takes me to all kinds of places and I see a lot of cemeteries, some super old ones and some newer ones. I started just taking pictures of them when I would go to one that looked interesting and I would edit them. It wasn't anything crazy at the time, just some simple edits. But a few people here and there would tell me they looked cool and they liked them so it became a habit when I would go out on funerals to snap a few pictures. 

Zomb: That’s such an interesting part of your come up, it almost seemed like once you posted 1 then it just flew off from there. You started to get involved with not only your own personal art along with creating track covers for artists. Eventually you started designing for the collective known as HAIRYWORLD. How did that relationship come about? 

Mild: It really did. I had finally found my spot in the art world really. The HAIRYWORLD relationship came about really naturally, its kinda crazy.

I met Zomb Slays (You) through speedrunning and IHS, and he was one of the OG supporters of my art. He was super supportive of it. 

He had shown me LordHeretic's music before and I really liked it, never had any idea I would be working with them and creating stuff for them haha.

Zomb hit me up and asked me one day if I would be down to join HAIRYWORLD with them, it was a no brainer really. It has been a really amazing opportunity.

Zomb: Aw man this come up is so pure, this is a huge reason why I wanted to have a sit down interview. I really wanted to show the community how genuine and natural your come up was and still is. Huge shoutout to HAIRYWORLD. This definitely leads me into my next question, what is your creative process like for personal pieces or covers? How long does it typically take you to cook up something?

Mild: It really depends on the piece for me. Some of them I go into already knowing kind of what I want to do with them or I want to get out of them and some I just play around with them until it feels right. Zomb and I have spoke about this before a bit, but a lot of the stuff I post on my personal accounts may not even be something a lot people understand at times, it can be a big unrecognizable mess haha. I just kind of create when I feel like it's the right time for the most part. A lot of the things I post on my personal accounts usually don't take a lot of time for me to make if I already kind of have an idea of where I am going with it. The Covers and different stuff I have done for HAIRYWORLD usually take a bit longer, I think I spent a week or more on one of them from the time I was given the title of the song to when I sent the art over. Just couldn't ever get it to feel like it was "the one". Once I am in the zone with something I usually get a bit obsessive so its sometimes hard to say exactly how long haha. I am always gathering material that I could use for something, then when the time is right for it I’ll do something with it.

Zomb: Everyone’s creative process is so different and that truly makes this part of it so beautiful, that was an excellent breakdown. Do you have any favorite pieces or art that you hold in high regard that you’ve created?

Mild: These are some of my favorites that I have worked on so far.  It really felt like everything was perfect on them, and the middle two were pictures I took myself so it made it even more special to me. The last one is a screenshot from a game I speedrun somewhat recently, but I think it shows a lot of emotion. I enjoy all of the stuff I have created but these just really stick out to me.