Y’all can probably name a few of the old Renaissance masters, but unless you’re a particular sort of history buff, you’re probably not familiar with something called the studio system.

Basically, how it worked is that once you were famous and well-established enough that you could get away with calling yourself a master, you’d make arrangements with young, up-and-coming artists whereby they’d come and help you with your art projects, and in return, you’d let them live at your studio and do art full-time.



Some masters had only a handful of students, while others had dozens; Raphael in particular was famous for having had over fifty students working at his studio at one point, many of whom later became masters in their own right.

So… where am I going with this?

For the past several years, I couldn’t help but notice that a notable number of new webcomic creators and indie game developers seem to have some involvement with Homestuck in their past, whether as an artist, or a composer, or just somebody who once designed a t-shirt for What Pumpkin.

That alone would merely have been peculiar, but then this anecdote started going around about how Toby Fox developed Undertale quite literally while living in Andrew Hussie‘s basement to help out with the Hivebent project, and I couldn’t help but think: this pattern seems awfully familiar.



I guess what I’m saying is that Andrew Hussie is turning into some kind of fucked up present-day Renaissance master. Any day now he’s going to start rocking a Michelangelo beard and painting dicks on church ceilings - just wait.

