Interview of a JetPunker #18 - overtired

Hello dear JetPunkers!

As promised in the last interview, you now won't have to wait three months between each interview, thanks to the Stewart's restrictions which calmed down the situation on the blog section. That's why I'm not late with this interview.

And today, I'm honoured to welcome one of the most popular quizmaker of the whole website: the creative and famous overtired! I hope you will enjoy what I consider as one of the best interview of the whole series, of one of my favourite JetPunkers. Enjoy your reading!

baptistegorce: Hi overtired! I have one thing to ask to you: would you like to be my new victim interviewee?

overtired: Thanks for asking about the interview, not sure I deserve it but nice of you to think of me.

baptistegorce: If you don't deserve it, I don't know who does. So let’s start this interview! First, could you present yourself on JetPunk quickly for our readers who don’t know you (if it’s possible…)?

overtired: Hi, I'm overtired. 80s child, Eurasian mongrel, Brit, former EU citizen. I found Jetpunk in 2019 via the Countries of the World quiz. I'd looked for quiz sites a few times over the years but found most of them pretty lacking, in content or design. Jetpunk was different and I quickly became a fan. Don't know how I missed it before!

baptistegorce: You’re one of the most popular and featured users in the last few months. Are you proud of it?

overtired: More surprised by it really. I'd had one quiz featured about a year after I made it, and then it was about another year until the next so I wasn't expecting to have quite a few featured close together. It's always nice if people take and enjoy a quiz you've made and I've had many kind comments which has been encouraging so I'm very appreciative of that and the features. I love the site and I'm really happy to contribute to it.

baptistegorce: How could you explain this success?

overtired: Not sure I'm the right person to ask! I guess I like to try my hand at various types of quizzes and look for a twist to make something a little bit different if I can. And I try to make the presentation as good as I can, though art isn't my strong side. Getting into Inkscape and CSS obviously helped. I remember looking into making SVGs in the early days and it seemed way beyond me, but Stewart's amazing guides along with help from the man himself and others on Discord made it possible to get to grips with it and start experimenting a bit.

baptistegorce: You have created many popular quizzes, and you will probably create many others, but we can say your two most famous series are “Guess the … Being Drawn” and “Mouse Hunt!”. How did you get your inspiration to create these quizzes?

overtired: Both came about when I was working on ideas for other quizzes and thought "Wait, this is JetPunk... why am I not applying this to countries?" So for example, I had wanted to make the journey lines animate on my Indiana Jones Countries Visited quiz to mimic the map scenes in the movies and I'd found the CSS to do it, but while experimenting with that it occurred to me that I could use the same technique to draw country outlines. The idea was the easy part really as that just popped into my head. Getting it to function correctly was the real challenge, but I learned a lot from trial and error, and error, and error...

baptistegorce: You are sometimes compared to dug28, in comments. What do you think about this JetPunker? Is he an example?

overtired:  Dug is an amazing quizmaker! It's always an event when he releases a new quiz - the obvious thought and craft he puts into all of his quizzes is exemplary. And yep, his work has been a big inspiration. His Cartoon Versions of Countries and Country Shapes Under the Sea quizzes definitely opened my eyes to the types of quizzes that could be made visually. I just wish I had his talent as an artist!

baptistegorce: What is your own quiz you are the proudest of?

overtired: Well, the one that I was most happy to have featured was probably Pick a Picture - Animal Relations. I find the subject fascinating and had been trying to make a quiz out of it for ages. The first version was kind of a matching pairs thing using the picture quiz format but it didn't work well. When the new picture multiple choice format came out it offered a much better solution. I still thought it might be too hard or obscure to get many takes though so I was pleased when it was featured, and the comments from people saying they learned something from it have been very nice to read.

baptistegorce: Do you have big projects of quizzes in preparation?

overtired: I always seem to have a lot of unfinished quizzes from months or even years ago that I need to finish. I've got a few bigger ideas I want to see if I can make work, but I don't know if they will be any good. Some will take a lot of effort so I've been putting off even starting them. And I've been enjoying getting back to text quizzes for a while. I think they can sometimes be overshadowed by visual quizzes but they are the backbone of the site and I'm really a trivia/word person first.

baptistegorce: What is the most important event in your own life of JetPunker?

overtired: Dunno about a specific event, but I'd say finding the site in general and having it as a positive distraction during lockdown when I was in poor health for a long time. There's a lot of negativity on the internet and JetPunk has always seemed overwhelmingly positive to me, barring the odd heated debate about Cyprus :)

baptistegorce: If you had to resume your JetPunk adventure in one word, what would it be?

overtired: Edutainment. Yeah, I cheated. Seriously though, I've learnt a lot both from taking and making quizzes and it's been a lot of fun.

baptistegorce: Haha! Nice one! Would you change something to tour JetPunk adventure, if it was possible?

overtired: Maybe just to have discovered the site earlier. Both for the learning, particularly in geography which I never liked at school, and also to have been around when new formats and ideas that are now well established were just being thought up and released. Having said that I'm happy to have found it when I did.

baptistegorce: If you had to choose just three JetPunker for their quizzes, who will it be?

overtired: That's really hard. There are so many great quizmakers, who bring their own talents and interests to each quiz. For sake of variety I'll look outside the quizmakers with the very highest takes who are all brilliant and those who I've mentioned already. So, off the top of my head...

Interopia - I'm gradually running out of quizzes of Interopia's to take but since I finished most of JetPunk's featured quizzes this has been my go to quizmaker. I always feel like playing Interopia's quizzes feels like playing through another featured list. Really solid, interesting, well made quizzes with great variety.

Elboy - I'm a big fan of both Elboy's text and SVG quizzes. Original creative ideas and always beautifully presented. US timeline, mystery routes, the burger, classic 80s film quizzes... all great. I feel like our sensibilities overlap somewhat too e.g. his rebus quizzes and my cartoon riddles. I just wish I spoke French! I'm looking forward to seeing what new ideas he comes up with going forward.

Malbaby - The long running series of Challenges are brilliantly devious and creative headscratchers. They are something different to anything else I've seen on JetPunk and I'm always eager to click whenever a new one is released, and when someone finds the solution.

baptistegorce: And for their blogs?

overtired: I haven't read enough blogs to make a fair judgement but this interview series is great and I very much enjoyed Fuse's Worcestershire blog.

baptistegorce: What are your passions in life, except JetPunk?

overtired: Film and film scores, playing and writing music, travelling, scuba diving, musicals, games of any sort, and quizzes of course.

baptistegorce: You are on the JetPunk Discord server, and we can say you are a bit active. What do you think about this server?

overtired: Yeah, I drop in and out. It's a nice atmosphere of people who have been brought together by the site and it's been a great place to get help, share quizzes and do a bit of competitive quizzing. Stewart and the mods run it really well I think

baptistegorce: What do you hope for JetPunk development in the next months?

overtired: Hmmm, well, any new quiz formats, or variations on existing ones, will always be exicting to explore. Maybe something where typing specific wrong answers ends the quiz, or anything like that. Also I'm generally in favour of any ways to highlight good quizzes that might otherwise go unnoticed. The spotlight system is great, so anything else along those lines e.g. for quizmakers to curate their pages a little to highlight quizzes they think people might like, or add a welcome message to do the same. Honestly though the site is great as it is, and every new feature that gets introduced is always well thought out and fun to experiment with so whatever Quizmaster and Stewart come up with I'm sure will be great.

baptistegorce: Do you have a message to pass to the whole JetPunk community (or at least to the few users reading these blogs…)?

overtired: Well, I've seen quite a few comments from people saying they wished they could do SVG/CSS quizzes and I'd just say that while I'm still very much a beginner I've been able to get going from knowing nothing and having no programming experience so it's all doable if you're willing to put a bit of effort in, especially with Stewart's SVG guides and the Discord available to help. Other than that, just keep making great quizzes, so I can take them :)

Oh, and fun fact Poirot. I've met the guy in your Discord profile pic!

baptistegorce: Really? You met David Suchet? Wow! That's amazing! David Suchet is the Poirot actor.

overtired: Yeah, and he was very nice. I was kinda lost at an event where I was supposed to meet someone and he asked me who I was looking for and helped me find them. It took me a moment to realise that Poirot himself had just appeared to help me solve a mystery! I agree, he's the perfect Poirot. No one else has come close.

baptistegorce: Haha! That seems to be an amazing situation. The interview is now finished. Thank you a lot for your seriousness in this project!

overtired: You're welcome!

It's my turn to give you a little fun fact: I asked overtired to become my interviewee for the first time on the 26th of March. He would have been the 12th interviewee. But I'm not disapointed at all for the waiting, because it was a huge chance to have the possibility to talk with this very creative but also helpful and kind JetPunker. Thank you a lot for your very nice attitude, overtired! Never change it.