(link to podcast)

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0:00:13.2 Chris Ronan: Hello, and welcome to Inside Geocaching HQ. The podcast from the Lackeys at HQ in Seattle. I am Chris Ronan. My geocaching username is Rock Chalk. And today we have a conversation with Roxxy, who is part of HQ’s Creative Studio. One of the projects that she heads up each year is the Lackey geocoin, which features representations of everyone who works at HQ. There have now been 15 Lackey coins, Roxxy has designed the last 11 of them. I personally love the Lackey coin, and I always look forward to seeing what Roxxy will come up with. And this year is really something else. The coin, if it can still be called a coin, is a little ammo can. It is super cool, and you can find it soon on Shop Geocaching. We talked about this latest coin and how she approaches this project each year. Here we go.

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0:01:18.8 CR: Roxxy, I think that even if people don’t know you, quote unquote, they probably do know you…

[chuckle]

0:01:25.2 CR: If they’re in the geocaching world because they probably have seen so much of your stuff.

0:01:30.8 Roxxy: Yeah.

0:01:31.8 CR: Let’s just start by talking about what you do day-to-day for HQ. What are some of your roles and stuff that people would be familiar with? 

0:01:38.2 Roxxy: Alright, well, I’m Roxxy. My geocaching user name is YesThatRoxxy, all one word. And the reason is, is because I work on a lot of our merchandise, so a lot of our trackables, our geocoins especially in the shop. Sometimes when I design something, they like to point out “Our very own Roxxy worked on this one”. I’m really proud about that. And I do a lot of souvenirs, I do a lot of signal designs, that kind of thing, a lot of… Some of our marketing materials for our promotions, illustration work, just a lot of… If it makes something look pretty, I probably had my hands on it.

0:02:20.9 CR: I was thinking before we started talking, that you might be closer to Signal the Frog than anyone.

0:02:26.9 Roxxy: These days, I certainly am. I was responsible for the most recent kind of design update, we did with Signal. Where he got a little bit longer legs, a little bit trimmer, a little more stretchy, a little more cartoony. I’ve been responsible for a lot of the… Pretty much all of the new illustration work for him to make him… We wanted to make him seem a little bit more active, a little more lively, and that’s been, a really fun project to work on. It’s just kind of bring… Kind of updating him to where we see geocaching these days.

0:03:01.5 CR: Kinda going back to the beginning for you… Am I right that you celebrated 10 years, pretty recently? 

0:03:07.1 Roxxy: I actually celebrated 11 years.

0:03:09.1 CR: Oh my gosh, I’m not even giving you enough credit, 11 years. So take us back to like… How did you end up at HQ? What brought you here in the first place? 

0:03:18.2 Roxxy: Yeah, it was just the wildest thing. I was actually teaching Introduction to Animation part-time at a local college. I discovered teaching is not my calling. But we had a couple of different projects going on, and on the mobile side of things. Some of them involving Signal and some of them involving like the earliest version of our souvenir program and other things like that. And so they needed some illustrators to come on to do some pitch work for some presentations that were being worked on. And I did a little bit of contract work for the then head of the mobile team, and then six months later, they said… Someone called me back and said, “Hey, so the project that you worked… Or that you were working on it isn’t gonna go ahead. But do you wanna come and work for us anyway? We love your work, we like your personality, we think you’d be a really good fit”. So, 11 and change years later, here I am. And I came on originally designing, doing some illustration work for Signal and working on the souvenirs program.

0:04:34.7 Roxxy: After souvenirs I started working on geocoins, and in… I think it was 2011? I did my… I worked on my first Lackey coin, which is the Truvian Signal coin, as I like to think of it. And from then on, they just kept giving me Lackey coins to work on.

0:04:57.6 CR: Well, that leads very well into our main topic, the Lackey coin, and this thing that’s become an annual tradition over the years. Before we get into the coin itself, of course, a big part of the coin is all of the Lackey icons that are included on the coin… And I’ve never know if that’s the right term? Is it an icon? Is it an avatar? What is it the word that…

[chuckle]

0:05:21.6 Roxxy: We’ve always sort of always called them pixel icons, even though they’re… Avatars probably does make more sense, but these days, someone says Avatar and you think big blue cat aliens riding pterodactyls.

0:05:37.0 CR: That’s true, that’s true. So we have these Lackey pixel icons that are representations of everyone who works at HQ. And when someone comes to work here, one of the first things is they get to work with you on what their pixel icon will look like. So how does that process work from your standpoint? 

0:05:56.3 Roxxy: We have an email that goes out that has sort of like our pixel icon guidelines in it, which… And it has some usage guidelines, some prompts to kind of help get those creative juices flowing, if our new hire doesn’t have something in mind already. We just ask for a list of hobbies, a selfie, or a photo where you really like the way your hair looks, or reference photos of your cat or your five cats, or your cool motorcycle or your favorite guitar, or the tree you want to be climbing to escape a crocodile.

[laughter]

0:06:32.1 Roxxy: Just…

0:06:34.3 CR: Nice throwing that in there.

0:06:37.7 Roxxy: And, we send some old artwork from a previous Lackey coin that has… So because it’s the ease… Honestly, the easiest way to see… Oftentimes I’ll include a picture from the previous year’s or year before’s Lackey coin so that way, our new hire can also see a bunch of our icons all together kind of at once, so they can get a feel for what kind of things we’re capable of doing. Or they say, “Oh somebody already has a skydiving icon, maybe I want a scuba diving icon instead.” And then they’ll email us back to the creative studio. And usually, the icons come to me, but sometimes I’m not available in the office for whatever reason. And maybe Nate might work on the icon instead. But usually, they fall on to my to do list, and I’m totally happy to work on them. I love working on them. But after we get the email, and then we go ahead and sort of make a bunch of notes, and I usually have a personal one on one follow up with our new Lackey and ask some more clarifying questions. Like they say, “Oh, if I can be riding a dinosaur in mine, that would be great.” And I come back and I say, “Okay, well, what’s your favorite dinosaur? What kind of dinosaur do you like?”

0:07:58.3 Roxxy: And they say, “Oh I like a… I like Velociraptors. Like, those are my favorite.” I’m like, “Okay, do you like the Feather Velociraptor or you want the Jurassic Park Velociraptor?” And we get really granular with some of the details that go in there. Like, someone can say, “Oh, well, I want to be dressed up in elf armor like Lord of the Rings.” And I’ll come back with five different reference photos. And I’ll say “Okay, well, which armor did you want in there?” I always say it. And it never stops surprising people. But I can fit a surprising amount of detail into 66 by 66 pixels. And I’d say I’ve gotten pretty good at it over the years.

0:08:41.3 CR: Oh, yes, I would say that that’s a fair… That’s a fair thing to say. And it’s funny that you mentioned that people are surprised by how much you can fit. I really was… I remember being very surprised, when you sent those questions, and it’s been so many years ago now. But saying, “Okay, well, here’s answering those questions that you had, and then thinking, I almost hate to tell her all of this, because it’s too much. I mean, she’s never going to be… Well, what’s she going to do with all this information?” And then what you come back with is always, “Oh, my gosh, how did that all get on there?” It’s just amazing.

0:09:15.8 Roxxy: It’s one of my favorite interactions I have with our new hires, not only does it give me a chance to actually get to know them, and talk about what interests them, but we kind of immediately get to start talking about something that’s very important to them and to me. And I love being able to get all this information, ask all these questions. Are you right handed or left handed? Can you send me references for your, for your guitar, I want to make sure I get the right colors on it. And does your cat like to stand around? Does your cat like to lay around? Is this the right chair to put you in? And then, I’m sure that the person on the other end is just shaking their head and thinking, what in the world is she working on? And then I show them their icon, and everything I have put together. And it’s almost like… I don’t want to brag, but a lot of times I have people immediately saying, “Oh, wow, I can’t believe you got all this detail in there. It’s perfect. I love it. Thank you so much.” And I say “Wait, wait, wait, no, I’m not quite done yet. I need to do a couple little tiny tweaks on it.”

0:10:31.4 Roxxy: Just having such a strong, fun, positive interaction with people right when they come into HQ is really valuable to me. And I think it’s… I hope it’s valuable to them too. But it’s honestly one of my favorite projects to work on here. Because it does kind of… It sparks joy. People really enjoy it and I enjoy working on them. The icons, not the people.

0:11:01.8 CR: That’s really cool. And eventually you get to see all these pixel icons on the annual Lackey coin each year.

0:11:11.4 Roxxy: The annual Lackey coin.

0:11:11.5 CR: The annual Lackey coin, and so let’s start, let’s talk about that process because I guess there’s around 80 or so Lackeys now.

0:11:22.3 Roxxy: At any given point in time 75 to 80.

0:11:24.9 CR: Right. So let’s talk about this process. How do you get 80 or so people onto a geocoin? 

0:11:32.0 Roxxy: I was not the best student at math when I was in school and you would not know it these days? No, I was always pretty good at geometry. And that’s kind of where the entire process starts every year is… If there’s one thing that’s consistent about the design of the Lackey coin is so that it does have all of the Lackeys on it. So I will, especially if we’ve had some new hires, right around the same date, where I start working on the coin. I’ll go to HR and get a full list of all of our current Lackeys, just to make sure I haven’t missed anybody to double check I’m spelling everyone’s name right. And I just kind of go through and I make sure that I have an icon for every person on the list. And then make sure that it has the most recent version of the icon. That’s something that doesn’t get brought up a lot because I can’t update 80 icons a year. But a lot of times people say, “Oh, I just… “Oh, I traded that guitar for a new guitar,” or, “I just got a new dog,” or, “You know, my kid who I have in my icon with me is like four now instead of four months, so they’re considerably taller.” Or someone cuts their hair, or they grow a beard, or they cut their hair and grow a beard. And so we’ll go back through and we’ll update their Lackey icon to reflect kind of like their current state, their current vibe.

0:13:06.4 Roxxy: So I like to go back and make sure that I have the most recent version of those, and once I have that all figured out then I know how big this coin is going to have to be. And that’s really like the first place I have to start every year before I start thinking of all the cool design elements that I could put on the fun side of the Lackey coin, so to speak. I have to know that I can fit everybody on the other side. So you don’t wanna leave anybody behind, you don’t wanna make everyone so tiny that you can barely see them, but I also can’t do a huge gigantic Lackey coin every year, only some years.

0:13:50.3 Roxxy: So once I get my big long list of Lackeys, and I have all of my current Lackey icons, I will bring them into usually Adobe Illustrator, or another art program and shrink them down to the smallest size I know that they can be, and then I’ll arrange them in a grid, or in a few consecutive rings, which is a lot harder than it sounds. [chuckle] And then from there I’ll be able to measure the artwork that I have available, and I can design to those specifications.

0:14:26.9 CR: What comes first, the overall theme for it, or do you first get the constraints that you have to work within and then go from there, or is there an order? 

0:14:38.0 Roxxy: Well, I would say that it kind of bounces back and forth between the two, honestly. Some years we have a specific thing that we want to incorporate, like for our 20-year, like celebrating our 20-year… 20 years of being Lackeys, 20 years of there being Lackeys at all. So the 2020 coin, we really wanted to focus on the Lackeys that make HQ possible, and so we wanted to make it very… Instead of just having it be a cool to look at coin, we wanted it to be very Lackey-centric. And that was just sort of my initial direction for it. So if there isn’t a theme provided to us, or to me, then it’s sort of carte blanche, just design something cool that fits HQ, and the world of geocaching, and the world of the Lackeys.

0:15:34.2 CR: I would love to go through every coin you’ve ever done and ask for the specific saw-it-all, but that would take up your whole day, so I’m just gonna ask about the latest one that people are going to be starting to see, and that is this 2021…

0:15:47.8 Roxxy: Laughter]

0:15:49.2 CR: I hesitate to call it a coin. [laughter]

0:15:51.8 Roxxy: Yeah, I’m not sure… It’s kind of like the pixel icons, are they icons, or are they avatars? At this point it’s, is it just the annual Lackey trackable? [laughter] It’s minted in metal. I’m gonna call it a coin.

0:16:05.7 CR: I don’t know. I mean, I think you’ve outdone yourself. When just…

[laughter]

0:16:08.2 CR: When I look at it I think, “Oh my gosh, this is just spectacular.” How did this come about? When…

[laughter]

0:16:15.2 CR: Just tell me about the inspiration for having essentially an ammo can as a geocoin, or a trackable, or whatever we’re calling it right now.

0:16:25.6 Roxxy: If I call it a geocoin I’m sure a mountain bike will forgive me. It really came down to… In 2020, we did a Dumpster Fire geocoin that turned out better, and then worse, and then better than we ever could have hoped. You may have… Do you have one? 

0:16:45.2 CR: I do have one, and…

0:16:46.1 Roxxy: Have you seen them? 

0:16:47.2 CR: I have and…

0:16:48.0 Roxxy: And the…

0:16:48.9 CR: Yeah, talk about it, because it really was spectacular how it ended up.

0:16:53.9 Roxxy: For those of you who don’t know, it’s a little metal dumpster, and the lid opens up, and it has enamel flames on the inside, and the… Like with all of our geocoins, it says… It has trackable@geocaching.com engraved somewhere on it, except for when we got these back from the mint, that tracking prompt, that wording was printed backwards, and it was just so perfect that we couldn’t bring ourselves to send them back and ask them to correct it, so we just left it as it is. [chuckle] It just seemed like a proper fitting end to just a disaster of a year. [chuckle]

0:17:36.4 CR: Absolutely.

0:17:38.8 Roxxy: Aines worked on that coin, by the way, and I worked on the original stash tribute coin, the bucket with the geocoin lid. And so between those two, working on those two really elaborate trackables, our merchandise team discovered that it’s actually not that expensive to do a 3D coin for special occasions. We’re not gonna do them all the time, but every now and then we can totally get away with something that’s not a coin and more of a small trackable sculpture, I guess. [chuckle] And so they prompted me this year. They said, “Hey, would you like to do a 3D thing of some kind for the Lackey coin?” And I said, “Of course, I wanna go play with something cool and new for the Lackey coin. I wanna do something weird every year for the Lackey coin.” Or something new, not something weird. Sometimes something weird.

0:18:38.2 Roxxy: And so, I was thinking… Part of my big art brain was saying, “What am I going to do for some kind of a 3D, dimensional element I could… There are so many possibilities, I could do this, I could do that, I could… ” And then, the geocacher part of my brain just said, “Roxxy do an ammo can.” And I had to stop and just sort of stare at my keyboard for a moment as I thought about that, and I said, “Of course I’m gonna do an ammo can. I have to do at least one ammo can I might as well do it now.” And so I started designing and sketching some stuff. My first idea was to maybe try and create an ammo can that completely unfolded, where there were hinges on all the sides, and so you could lay it flat and see all the Lackeys on the interior. And then I realized that was going to be like one, two, three, four, five hinges, maybe, and then, six magnets. And I decided I wasn’t quite ready to try and design something with five hinges and six magnets yet. Maybe next year they’ll let me get away with it. So I went for an ammo can that has the Lackeys printed on four of the sides, the tracking information is engraved on the inside of the lid, which does open, it is hinged, you can put stuff inside the ammo can. I wouldn’t advise hiding it though, it’s a very expensive little cache container.

0:20:10.1 CR: One thing I was thinking about as I was going through all the coins, and looking at all the details and stuff was, it struck me that for those of us that work at HQ, it’s almost like a little year book. You’re going back in past years and looking at the people that are on the coin and, I don’t know, it just for me it brought back a lot of memories and it just reminded me of a year book in that way.

0:20:34.4 Roxxy: I 100% agree with you on that. I really do love looking at the different coins, and that’s another thing that we don’t really talk about a whole lot, is that, we get new hires and then we also have Lackeys who leave for whatever reason. They find a new adventure somewhere else, and it really is fun to go back and see, all the different Lackeys and see how other Lackeys have changed over the years. Like some of our Lackeys like… Oh, they had their first kid in this particular year and so they want to be holding their new little baby in their icon. And then, they have another kid a couple of years later, and then they update their icon so that they’re holding a baby, but they also have their first kid, like an older kid, and then, as the years go on you kind of watch these little tiny pixel icon people grow up on the Lackey coin, and I’m one of those people. I had my son in 2018, and after I had him I added him to my Lackey icon, but now he’s getting bigger and bigger, and so, my little icon avatar isn’t holding him, he’s… Actually I think she is, she might be holding him still, but he’s bigger, he’s bigger, next year he’s probably gonna be standing next to my little… His little pixel person is gonna be standing next to my pixel person with our dogs.

0:22:03.2 Roxxy: It’s such a strange and wonderful thing, just like geocaching itself, right? It’s something that on the surface seems kind of silly, but once you actually get involved in it and once you get into it and you learn the stories behind it, and the people who put it together and influence it, it becomes a very, very sentimental kind of emotional connection. And I think that’s really important.

0:22:39.1 CR: That was Roxxy from HQ’s Creative Studio. You can read even more about the Lackey geocoin on the Geocaching Blog, and watch for the coin at Shop Geocaching, coming soon. If you have an idea for the podcast, any topic you would like us to cover, send an email to podcast@geocaching.com, that is podcast@geocaching.com, we love hearing from you. In the meantime, from me and Roxxy, and all the Lackeys at HQ, happy caching.

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