Danz Newz FAQs
(for the, soon to be formerly, uninformed)
Q. What games are you playing/have you played/are you going to play on stream?
A. For the lists of current, completed, and upcoming playthroughs on stream check out the stream info page.
Q. Who do you keep up with from the old days?
A. Ze, Sp00n, Gassy, Sly, Chilled, Junkyard, and I did a minecraft stream series in 2020 of us reuniting in Minecraft like the good old days. In early 2024 we got together with the same group, plus Kevin, and played some Lethal Company together, which was a blast! There was a big group chat with everyone in it that got started for the Lethal Company session to see who could all make it and everyone responded which was awesome to see, even if not everyone could make it.
I’ve done work for Dex’s video game Flappatron, doing voice work and gameplay graphics and we’re up with each other now and then. ‘Artist’ Joe and I have been friends since we were kids and still see each other whenever we can and text tag. ‘Chicken’ Joe’s been really sweet to me, reaching out on occasion, he’s a daddy now which is so awesome! <3 I’ve been up with Spencer now and again through texting and met up with him before I moved from Colorado back home to North Carolina in 2019. Alex Delia and I text tag and hop in a call every so often and I went to his 2018 Xmas party and had a blast. I’ve had the rare text tag with Seamus (fyi the Mr. Meowgi portrait from the Sarcasm with Seamus set made it home safe and sound). I had been up with James immediately after his announcement of him leaving Cow Chop, just me sending a text of support to him. Other than that I tend to keep to myself, everyone’s doing their own thing, we’re all adults- we all have one way or another to contact each other and it happens when it happens and it’s nice.
Q. Where’s the final Creature send off video? Are you working on it?
A. The last month of the Hub existing as it existed was like a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode for me. I had been juggling so many balls for so long trying to scrape by mentally as well as financially. Then I was taken to lunch and told that the Hub was done. At a time where I thought we were just taking a step back to reconfigure it back to something that was more how we started out, something smaller and more manageable for us to focus on creative projects and playing fun games, but nope it was over. Then we had to go to RTX and act like nothing was wrong or… I don’t even know what any of that was. It was all just a depressing and laughable blur to me. Seeing fans always warms my heart and connects me so much to what I love doing, which is making dumb videos for people to hopefully get a chuckle. Seeing those people and not being able to say anything and feeling like such a failure, it wasn’t good for me. I was a fool for how I handled it all the way around, going along with whatever was happening, with everyone just talking empty talk.
I agreed to work on the final video at a time when I could hardly even take care of myself. I tried as hard as I could to look back through the folders of footage of the last 6 years of my life, at a giant gaping wound and now I had to make some sort of last big hoorah to all of it. Coordinate and summate my own spectacular failure in a fun video featuring everyone who had moved on from me. I shut down and shriveled inward with no real friends there for me in real life other than my fiancé Liz. Everything I had known for those years, that wonderful gift that we all worked on tooth and nail, slowly soured into a series of bad decisions and lack of connection to what made it special in the first place. My relationship to it all made it impossible for me to simply start going through old footage without getting extremely anxious, even typing all of this out has been half an hour with my heart pumping like I’m working out; it’s not particularly healthy to intentionally put myself into this state where I’m increasingly anxious and sad. I had attempted to communicate that I couldn’t do the video through a text and tried to relay that someone else would have to make it, but that text was misunderstood and time went on and now, I guess, there’s no one to make it. Trying to build up to it sends me down a dark path mentally and I can’t put myself in that position again. I got into a bad headspace about life at this time… I’d hit myself and everyday thought of suicide. If you’re ever in this position, please seek help.
I’m the only one who answers questions about the video (as complicated as my feelings are about it), so if I’m the only one who even acknowledges it, I’d imagine that video will never get made. I needed distance from it all and it’s been good for me to have that distance.
I don’t mind chatting about the old days on stream when people bring it up and I have a million fond memories from my time spent and the part I had in creating what The Creatures was, but it was so tough to fight out all of the negativity that began to plague everything towards the end. I will always be eternally grateful that I had the opportunity to experience everything I did with the group, that all the supporters of The Creatures made happen, but everyone seems to be happy enough moving on and doing their own thing. I’m sorry if I disappointed you at any point during my time with the group. The one thing I always felt throughout my entire time with The Creatures was that I couldn’t give up on it, because of what it meant to me and to so many people, and I tried my hardest to always give it my all… and then it was just over when I wasn’t done with it. So I’m moving forward and that’s not to say that I don’t look back, but it’s better for me to let it all go for now and make my own art and rediscover my creative voice. I know someday you’ll see all of us together again for something, at least I hope so in my heart… those guys and you all changed my life and I will never forget that. <3
Q. What have you been doing since the Hub ended?
A. I’ve been streaming on Twitch regularly since Feb 2017 and have been doing that as my main gig. I also still do YouTube sporadically and produce a monthly podcast on Patreon. But, I have also worked on other projects with some old friends. I created the visual effects and art for the gameplay elements in Dex’s very first video game Flappatron. I voiced in two How It Should Have Ended shorts in 2018. I was Admiral Ackbar in How Star Wars: The Last Jedi Should Have Ended , The Flash in How Justice League Should Have Ended, and How The Flash Should Have Ended. Kind of crazy to think that I’ve voiced in HISHE for over a decade (my first being John Blake in How The Dark Knight Rises Should Have Ended, along with Max as Lucious Fox in 2012).
My brother, filmmaker Thomas Gidlow, has been developing a project called Camisado: The Event Series for years and at the beginning of 2020 we started production on it. I’m involved as cinematographer, camera operator, and editor for the series. We filmed 75% of the first season up to March of 2020, but shut down production for the safety of our cast and crew. I’m still working on editing the episodes with the existing footage we have and hope to be able to finish the project whenever it’s safe and practical to do so, which probably won’t be until sometime next year.
I myself have been developing a small handful of personal projects that span multiple mediums. Animations, shorts, films, a comic... we’ll see what escapes into the wild over time. Hopefully I’ll be able to work up to a scrappy first feature length project within the next year or two (when it’s safe to do so). I will always stream and produce content that I want to for YouTube, but to try to keep it as regular as possible I started a Patreon for those interested in supporting the kind of content I want to create. I’m working on more reviews, game stuff, podcasts, and creative stuff for YT and fun streaming events.
Q. How far did you guys get into making TR4PVILLE and what happened?
A. I wrote the entire first season based on stories and episode arcs a handful of us within the group collaborated on, which consisted of 7 episodes, with about a 10 page average in length script (roughly translating to a minute per page on screen). We recorded everyone in the group’s dialogue for the entire season, there were only a few random roles that needed to be filled. Outside of featuring the voice of every member of The Creatures, we had YT animation veteran HISHE’s Daniel Baxter as a regular character throughout the series, and Lyle Burress as our big bad we were building up to for the final episode. Jordan built Trapville, the town itself, from the ground up in Unreal as well as the other sets and locations required throughout the first season. He and a couple of animators, that we met through them being fans of the Hub, animated roughly most of the base character animations to cut up dialogue for the first at least 4 episodes. Leaving the final 3 episodes uncompleted, beyond writing and most voice work being done.
Only one episode beyond the released Pilot Episode was fully produced and it acts as a continuation from the pilot, with the gang returning from the skag hunt and telling the story of how Trapville came to be over a skag oil fire. Flashbacks telling the story of Trapville’s founding were 2D animated segments from Lemur, an animator who we were working with on concept art/storyboarding for the series and had also done animations for us in the past. The first episode was edited, scored, and mostly completed at little over 8 minutes. We only ever showed it once live at our PAX East 2014 panel. Throughout our entire production of the series, we had reached out to Gearbox and 2K about the show in regards to the Borderlands franchise, moreso looking for their blessing or if they were interested in having a hand in it in any way. There was some back and forth, but ultimately the series license is owned by 2 different companies and they have their own interests. We were told we wouldn’t have been able to monetize any of the work we did and we had already invested so much time and our own money into the project. We reached a point that we just had to drop it.
It was a passion project that was a bit too ambitious, but we shot for the sky and put a lot of thought and work into everything we did with Trapville. It’s tough to tackle a full blown animated fan movie set in a video game universe using the game’s engine and that’s essentially what producing a 70 minute season of a show is like. We also had projected stories/arcs and ideas planned that would’ve spanned 2 more seasons at least. It sucks it ended the way it did with it just fizzling out after such an amazing reaction to the pilot and everything we had teased regarding the series. We spent a LOT of time on making that something as special as possible for fans of us and of Borderlands, but we just couldn’t afford to produce it to the vision we had for it. I have no idea how people would’ve reacted to the series because it’s definitely one of the largest projects we had ever taken on, but I’m really proud of the incredible effort everyone put in on it and the experience we all gained from it.