ENA is a weird trippy techno experience youtube show that is hard to explain especially while watching. It is filled with vivid 3D imagery of a virtual world. The show is a sonnet to the digital worlds we all imagined when watching cyber chase, looking at 3d screensavers and listening to vaporware. It isn’t afraid of its love of anime, glitch imagery, and odd games like LSD: Dream Emulator. Evan has several talents from programming, shaders, and 3D art all of which are used heavily within the project. ENA has millions of views on youtube.
“Well, Luke Mirman and I saw JoelG’s Extinction Party when it was released on Youtube. It was a strange, avant-garde, half-game, half-animation experience. It was enthralling! We decided to take those feelings and craft them into our Game Design 1 project, Somnium. As we began this I reached out directly to JoelG through Patreon/discord to show him what we were up to (and to make sure we weren’t crossing any IP lines). He loved what he saw! I was glad to hear his response and suggested that if he ever needed help on his other projects I would be happy to be an artist/programmer. I gave him the link to my portfolio: EvanNave.com for him to check out and he came back in a few minutes asking me to join! It was very exciting. I then became the team’s Technical Director and a 3D Artist+Animator.”
“It is very strange! It’s a very close and interpersonal team. Ideas flow openly and everyone has a unique view to add. The artistry of each member of the team is also unmatched. It’s a wonderful creative mixing pot from all over the world. Temptation Stairway took 6 months to create from initial ideas/pre-production to release. It was a crazy endeavor from start to end! There were many challenges and unique problems to solve that arise when dealing with a game/animation mixed format. My job as Technical Director and Programmer also allowed me to use my knowledge of shaders and graphics to implement some of the more exciting in-engine visuals. Such as the infinite mannequin labyrinth that is revealed to be just a small box. Or the god-entity Runas exploding into thousands of triangles when entering the portal at the end of the maze ENA runs at the beginning.
JoelG has said on his Twitter that Dream BBQ is likely to be longer than Temptation Stairway and has a considerable amount of interesting characters. He’s also hinted that it may be surprised how different the episode is. All I can say from the inside is that it is a huge undertaking and we all hope people enjoy it! It will definitely need some time to get the full vision out there. If I hadn’t had my existing portfolio of projects, both successful and not, it’s likely I wouldn’t have had the experience needed to be a lead on Joel’s team, if to be on it at all. Doing passion projects and loading up one’s visual library of what’s possible is so incredibly important. We all have more time than we think we do, don’t be afraid to watch tutorials for fun or explore an idea you have on a whim. Things like that give the most experience. (And if you’re stuck doing class projects, have the most fun you can, make a game out of it or slap some art in there)”
Evan has always been a really talented artist and will only go farther ENA BBQ comes out soon. I’ve listed the first part of the series for those that want to catch up.