My interview with Liberty
If you’ve not heard of Liberty, this is a serialized sci-fi tale told in comic books and audio drama stories.
The community of Atrius has been closed off from mankind and gone through eons of civil war. What remains is a gleaming city and beyond the bounds of its walls, an uncivilized wilderness known as the Fringe.
Liberty features many tales from this universe such as the terrifying Fringe expedition series Critical Research and standalone horror stories of Tales from the Tower.
I had the opportunity to interview one of the creators of this sci-fi audio drama, Travis Vengroff.
What is the origin of Liberty?
Liberty actually started as a post apocalyptic Dungeons and Dragons campaign that gradually matured over the last ten years from science-fantasy to hard science fiction. It’s gone through a few dozen incarnations, each a little bit better than the previous one, and after a certain point I finally felt comfortable presenting the world to the public.
Though I’ve been working on the comic book stories for a lot longer than the podcast, that process is a lot more slow, and it’s a lot easier to create podcasts, so Kaitlin and I have been doing a lot more podcasting than we ever expected.
Why did you start Liberty?
The podcast came about because Kaitlin suggested that it might be something fun we could do together, and the stories are generally the product of us getting sudden bouts of inspiration while traveling together. It’s really great when you can work with your best friend on something creative, and in this instance it’s worked out really well for us.
Somewhere during the process people started listening, and we’re extremely grateful.
How did you create the team for Liberty?
The comic book team for Liberty was formed over a long period of time. I went through over 1000 art resumes, websites, accounts, and contacted my top pick.
Remarkably he said yes, and once he was on the project I’d show other people his work while asking if they wanted to be a part of the project. People kept saying yes and somehow we have had artists working with us on every continent.
For the podcast, it was sort of a similar experience.
We asked our friends to be voice actors, and worked up the courage to ask a few voice actors we admire to lend their talents. Somehow we’ve even become friends with some of them!
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