The Wizard Riders Quick-Start Rules are coming later this week on Free RPG Day, June 27th. In anticipation for this awesome occasion, I wanted to talk to another one of the minds behind Wizard Riders. This time, I turned to Rob Hudnut!
As you will see, Rob isn’t only an artist, but an avid gearhead, biker, and author. He brings a unique and classic style to his work that you may recognize across hobby garages, car magazines, and seminal comic strips. Not only that, but he also has a significant following for not only his art, but his motorcycle mechanic acumen and how-to content.
Enjoy this interview and get ready for the first taste of Mr. Hudnut’s work on Wizard Riders and beyond!
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Meical Kingfisher: Okay, let’s get started then. Might as well just jump right into it. It’s Rob Hudnut right?
Rob Hudnut: Yep. H-U-D-N-U-T.
Meical: Awesome. Tell everybody about yourself. What do you do?
Rob: What do I do? There’s a lot of different avenues we could go down with that. I’m an illustrator. I'm a published author of a six book series called Greasy Reaper Book of How-To. It’s six separate volumes of fully-illustrated how-to books that teach you how to repair and customize all kinds of motorcycles, including choppers. I also developed and created a board game, a motorcycle-themed board game. Which all of those things sell internationally and all that jazz. Other things; I’m a bike builder, I’m a pinstriper, I’m a welder, I’m a leatherworker, and I work for the state for my nine-to-fiver. You know, we could keep going on, but that’s the gist of it right here.
Meical: Okay, that’s fair! I’d seen some of your work on Greasy Reaper, and Matt [Heerdt] pointed me to some stuff recently and it blew my mind. I’m not a big biker myself, I’ve never been able to, but I absolutely love it. This leads into my next question. So Matt told me about Merlin’s Beard and I ended up looking on your YouTube channel and seeing you put on the little wizard on the front of your chopper. So what else do you have in your stable right now? Do you have any other project bikes you’ve worked on?
Rob: Oh my gosh, that I have worked on in the past, yes. That I have right now? It’s just Merlin’s Beard and that bike is my original bike that I hardtailed and went full-chopper on. So that’s my very first chopper build, and I built it like ten or thirteen years ago, or something like that. And did all the work myself, hardtailed it, the whole bit, then just basically did a shakedown run, and that shakedown run lasted like ten years, I was just having so much fun! You know, and so it was the quintessential sketchy chopper. The paint was like, I had sanded it and put body filler, it just looked really sketched out, but it was perfect for a greasy, gritty looking chopper. That wasn’t my vision for the bike, my vision for the bike was totally finished with chrome and engraved cases and deep purple, metal-flaked paint with pinstripes and stuff like that. And it’s going to happen, and it’s happening right now, but I had to put it off for the books.
The books did take me a half a year for each one of them, and that’s just coming up with content to fill one hundred plus pages each time, then reaching out to subject matter experts, and then the illustration. Once the book was done, I’d have half a year to do what I wanted to do, then I’d have to shelve it until the next year. So I never got to dig into my chopper the way I wanted to. Now that the series is over with, after six, I was done and now I have time to do it. I thought, “Hey, I’ve always wanted to do a YouTube channel, so why not just document it for my own records so when I’m an old man I can look back and take a look at how I built my bike up and everything.” It’s really just for me and if other people like it then that’s great.
Meical: I just saw the mods you were doing and thought that this was just some practical information for somebody that’s never built before. Or they have, but they’ve not done the stylized stuff. That was really neat. I’ve always enjoyed seeing metal sculptures and stuff like that and seeing them work into something that’s built and rideable (eventually)...
Rob: I’m right there with you. I’m self-taught and I’ve always loved seeing those things. As a kid, my dad was always into customizing motorcycles. He always rode British bikes. Nortons, BSAs, Moto Guzzis, he would ride year-round to work. Unless it was snowing out he was on his bike. And he would customize them.
He had a ‘49 Ford and a ‘51 Ford Coupe. I cut my teeth on that. In middle school he had me channeling a ‘57 Studebaker with a cut torch and stuff. We didn’t throw the ball around much, but we definitely had a lot of garage time and that’s where I became a gearhead. He’d take me to all kinds of bike shows and hot rod show-and-shines and car shows and go down to the track and watch motorcycle races and stuff like that. So, I totally appreciate seeing somebody make something out of metal and turn it into some sculpture or a functional piece. Yeah, I love that. I must have figured it out, I guess, because I love doing that stuff myself!
Meical: That’s really cool! You actually answered one of my questions. I was going to ask, “How did you get into motorcycles,” but that kind of explained everything, didn’t it?
Rob: Yeah! My dad and my mom rode two-up. They were members of the AMA (American Motorcyclist Association) and they were actually road workers, like signal workers at the track for motorcycle races and stuff. So they were really heavily into it.
Meical: So, where do you ride the most right now? Where do you like to ride? Do you go to Sturgis or anything like that?
Rob: No, I’ve never been to Sturgis. I’ve only been to a few shows outside of my state. I went to Mama Tried and stuff. I didn’t ride there, of course, I flew over. There’s guys that are iron-butts that put down tons of miles and everything. I guess I’ve never been that type of guy? I love to go camping. I’ve got a softtail that I picked up just knowing that I needed a bike to ride when Merlin was down. I bought that about two years before that went down so I had two years to go through it, and kind of customize it and stuff. I load that thing up with camping gear and go to different camp spots throughout the state, so I kind of keep local, I guess.
Meical: Those are always some of the most fun rides too, in my opinion. I can be back home within an hour if I need to be.
Rob: Exactly! And on top of that maybe it just has to do with my physical limitations. Ever since I was in high school I messed up my back then did a lot of manual labor. I don’t have the best back and I don’t have the strongest hand strength. For the longest time, my hands will go completely numb where I don’t even feel the bars. Maybe that’s one of the reasons why I don’t do the long haul? So I’ll ride until I really can’t take it anymore, then I’m at my camp spot and then I’ll just hang out.
Meical: That makes sense! So, let’s move into Greasy Reaper a little bit more. Where did that name come from?
Rob: Ha! Well that’s a different story right there, in itself. I was starting to hardtail Merlin’s Beard and my brother said, “Hey, you should check out instagram.” This was way early in the day, so I started up an Instagram account called Cycle Monster, and I started posting my pictures that I had taken of my bike, basically like a “how to,” like a step-by-step. And then a couple of people thought it was cool. So then I’d started drawing things that I’d already done that I didn’t take pictures of. Some people thought my drawings were kind of neat. Lisa Ballard, she used to work for Chop Cult at that time, saw my stuff and she was the first one to really reach out and say, “I really like your stuff, I’d like to do a feature on you.” I thought that was great, and so we did the feature and overnight I got a bunch of followers.
And from those followers, they said, “Man, if you ever put all this together in a book, I’d buy it.”
I said, “Wow, that’s an interesting idea,” but nobody in my family had ever done any books. Down the road, by my third book, I thought, “This is starting to gain some traction and I need to go big or go home.” At the time I had just started out with a junky URL that was “cycle-monster-art.com” and there were so many chances to screw that up and it would be hard to remember. So I looked it up to see if “cyclemonster.com” was available. And it was, but it was $3000. But I popped on it, so cool. Now I have “cyclemonster.com.” And then I thought, “Let’s go to the next level and trademark it.” So, I went to the USPTO and that cost $4000. At the very end of the trademarking process, it’ll be open to the public.
Well, there happened to be an energy drink company, and you can probably figure out which one, and they said, “Hey, we think there is going to be some confusion because we have affiliation with motorsports.”
I responded, “Well, I don’t make energy drinks and they don’t illustrate how-to books, so I don’t understand what the problem is.” But I found out later while doing some research that, even if I was appointed a trademark, that that company would come back after the fact saying that it was wrongly appointed and they would sue me.
The USPTO did their work, they earned their money. You know that going into it that there are no refunds. So, instantly overnight, I lost $7000, and couldn’t use the URL anymore because I had to change the name of my company.
So, now to answer your question. I reached out to the community that I had built up on Instagram and put it to them. They came up with a lot of really great suggestions. But I had to put them through a test. Does it have an available URL? Is it easy to say? And all of the other checkmarks, right?
My mom was actually the one that said, “Hey, what about that guy, that mascot that’s on your front cover. The little reaper guy.” So I came up with Greasy Reaper. It has the exact same letters in each word. It was available, and the actual URL wasn’t that expensive. And it just stuck!
Meical: It’s cool that you put it out to your community and then your mom’s just like, “Oh by the way, what about that dude?”
Rob: Yeah! And like I said, they had a lot of good suggestions. We put it to a poll and then we had a vote. I mean, it was a really cool, involved thing, where the community had a say in it. Even though I didn’t pick one of them in the end.
Meical: And I’m sure that everybody understood. At that point they were like, “Okay, yeah. That’s a really good idea.”
Rob: Yeah. And they were so supportive. I told them what’s going down and they were like, “You know man, we don’t care what you call your stuff. We really like it.” And that was really nice to hear, so I knew I could make it.
Meical: That’s really cool. To change tack a little, where did your art style come from? How did you develop it? Do you have favorite artists or anybody that you look to for inspiration?
Rob: Oh one hundred percent. And they’re all older, childhood inspirations. I don’t really have any “modern day inspirations.” It’s all from the comics I read as a kid. I’ve always been artistic. When I would read the comics, I wouldn’t necessarily “read” the comics. I would study how they drew things. How did they convey shiny chrome with just black ink? How did they make the cuff of the pants look good and the hands and all that.
To answer your question; Archie Comics was a big one for female faces and cartoon faces, hands and wrinkles and pants and clothing and stuff like that. I really picked up a lot on that, as well as their lettering style and their text bubbles. And then, of course, Rat Fink for Big Daddy Roth, all of his Rat Fink stuff, his monsters. That’s a huge influence. You can see in my book, all of my demons with the horns and crazy teeth and stuff like that. And MAD Comics, one hundred percent for that. Just all of the crazy, kooky humor. And then there was a magazine that’s not all too known called CARtoons. A cartoon magazine that’s just emphasized on cars. It’s kind of hard to explain, actually. But it’s just a comic that’s automotive-based.
Meical: Ah! I see it! I just found some on eBay. That’s cool!
Rob: Yeah! So CARtoons was huge. The very first one you’d open up to was a headliner called Krass & Bernie and it was these two buddies that lived above a garage and would build these absolutely insane cars out of nothing. It was just cool, man. Anyway, I just love that guy’s artwork, the way he did his tires, the way he did his chrome, all that.
So anyway those are a lot of influences for me.
Meical: I recognize a lot of these. My art teacher in high school was really into that kind of artwork. So when you said Rat Fink, I was like, “I know that!” He painted the walls around the classroom and the top band would be a ton of different comics, and there was this whole section that was all this old drag racer-style. I recognized a lot of that when I was going through the Wizard Riders Quick-Start Rules.
Rob: Oh really cool! That sounds like he was a great art teacher!
Meical: He was. He was awesome. I miss hanging out with him.
Rob: My art teacher, who I loved, was also the jewelry teacher. He would go into the classroom on a Monday or whatever and he had taken his colored chalk and went up to the chalkboard and made a three dimensional ring or something like that that was just like, floating in space, man. It was so good! It was pretty rad.
Meical: So, you mentioned your board game earlier, do you play any other tabletop games? Obviously, we’re a tabletop company.
Rob: I grew up with board games. Just your regular stuff, you know. Sorry and whatever. Never got into D&D. My brother played it a little bit. They used to draw their own maps. I never had any buddies that were into D&D, but I’ve always been intrigued and I’ve always wanted to play. But, it’s kind of bigger now.
Meical: Oh, it definitely blew up!
Rob: Yeah, it blew up. I wish I was a bit more knowledgeable about it. I mean, I have the concept, but I’ve never actually played a game. I see the dice and everything and am like, “Dude, that’s rad,” but I’ve not had the opportunity to play.
Meical: That’s fair enough. So, if you’ve never played, how did you end up getting involved with Wizard Riders?
Rob: Matt actually saw my books, and he rides, and he had purchased a few of my books for his personal collection. When this game was being discussed, I think he was like, “Dude, I may have an artist.” I don’t know, that’s what I am thinking happened. Because he reached out to me. He said, “Hey, I’m just wondering if you’d be interested in a commission piece to work on this game. It’s right up your alley. It’s got wizards riding on choppers.”
It sounds like you guys made a game just for me!
Meical: When I interviewed him, it was really interesting because he sent me a photo of him dressed up as a wizard for Halloween literally the year that he submitted the pitch for the game. It was hilarious because he was all decked out in biker gear, but he has this massive gray wizard hat on!
Rob: Right on! I’m at least familiar with roleplaying, so I can grab onto that!
Meical: What’s the most interesting aspect of Wizard Riders to you?
Rob: Since I don’t know how to play the game, the most interesting thing to me is all of the characters they came up with. I’m really intrigued on how this game gets put together and plays out. All of the stuff I illustrated, I don’t really know what it does, but I know the names of them and I know what the descriptions were so I could illustrate it. But, I would be really interested to find out what all of these creatures and maps, how they work together.
Meical: How they all fit together in the world?
Rob: Yeah! The most intriguing part to me is just the gameplay itself. How does it play and is it fun and what do all of the characters do and stuff like that.
Meical: Right now I’m looking at a piece in the Quick-Start Rules, the ones that are coming out on June 27th. And it has the Goggler. The demon cop thing?
Rob: Oh yeah. It’s got the wizard hauling ass away on his chopper from some guy that’s flying? The Goggler, from what I understand, is kind of like their police, but they’re kind of corrupt. They track down wizards, apparently. This wizard’s just trying to escape the long arm of the law. Basically just running from the cops, it’s the old story.
Meical: I think my favorite part about this whole piece is seeing the little wand in the sheathe. That is hilarious!
Rob: That wasn’t even my idea! All of these illustrations, I’m just the guy that drew this stuff, everybody else came up with these ideas. Thank you for the compliments on my illustrations, but the people that design these characters and what they want them to do and the whole scene, that’s all character development. That’s on their team.
Meical: I got you! So, what’s your favorite piece that you worked on for the Quick-Start Rules specifically?
Rob: That’s a good question. Well, for this last push, I did thirty-three illustrations in thirty days. I could just go look at my filing cabinet really quick! That might be easier.
Meical: I think my favorite piece in the Quick-Start Rules would literally just be the one wizard just doing a burnout. I love seeing the cloud there, I love seeing the stylized flames coming out of the tailpipes, it’s just perfect.
Rob: Right on! That’s a really good one to put up there. I purposefully made the guy look like Lemmy from Motörhead, so it kind of has a little flare on that. What’s interesting about that was that Matt and I were talking about the description of that piece and I said “Would that piece that’s on the back of every one of my books work for this piece?” Because, I have basically that exact same drawing on the very back cover of all six of my books. He’s wearing a t-shirt that just changes with each volume and one t-shirt will have a “three” on it and one will have a “six” on it, you know? It’s like a self-portrait of me sticking my tongue out and my butt crack showing, it’s just kind of funny. That’s probably a good one, I do like that one quite a lot.
The one, I’m not sure if you saw, it’s like a cloaked, chrome skeleton guy riding his chopper and there’s the Thaum Cats, a female rider group. They’re riding down and he’s basically doing some type of sorcery, halo-thing with a fist, and she’s got her sword out ready to swing, and his pipes are shooting electricity and lighting bolts. It’s just kind of a neat little piece.
Meical: I’ve not seen that one yet, I’m going to have to ask about it.
Rob: Yeah, that one, and they came up with this thing called “Hazard,” it’s another character that you have to deal with. What’s really cool about this whole thing is that they gave me good direction, but they didn’t lay out every tiny little detail, so it gave me some room to have some artistic license on it. With this kind of bear, imagine a bear standing on its hind legs, and it has shark teeth, so layered teeth, and dragon scales and all this stuff. They didn’t say anything about the eyes, so I gave him a triple eye cluster, because dude, it’s a monster. Let’s see what happens. And they didn’t say anything about it, so that’s cool!
Meical: They were definitely going for the weird in this, and I love it! That’s what you get with Shadowrun writers too, they’re always going for the weird stuff.
Rob: Oh, well there you go! I guess I was going down the right alley with that one!
Meical: Now this is going to get a little more theoretical. Now, plop yourself in the world of Wizard Riders. Just what you’ve seen with the art. What kind of biker are you?
Rob: Hmm… Well, I’ve definitely always seen myself as a wizard, so I would guess World Enders, because they are basically what I wear, except I don’t wear a wizard hat. Yeah, they basically wear what I wear, you know? Jeans and boots and a chain wallet and a sleeveless denim vest and ride a hardtail chopper. Kind of what I’ve associated with myself ever since I built that hardtail, since it’s called Merlin’s Beard, it’s always been a wizard bike. And so I always have envisioned myself as a wizard riding the thing.
Meical: Yeah. From what I’ve seen, the World Enders look really fun, honestly. A lot of the pieces that have them in it are just goofy and I love it.
Rob: Yeah! I’d definitely be in the wizard pack, for sure.
Meical: Do you see yourself trying out the game when the book releases? Maybe as this character?
Rob: Oh, one hundred percent.
Meical: Alright. I think this pretty much wraps this up. Last thing, I know you mentioned Greasy Reaper, so greasyreaper.com. Where else can people find your work?
Rob: You can go to YouTube and check out my videos. Just type in “Greasy Reaper,” that’s the name of my YouTube channel, and you can check out what I’m doing to Merlin’s Beard, and how I’m basically rebuilding the entire bike how I wanted it to be built. And it’s not just me building a bike, I do a whole bunch of useful tips and tricks and how-to stuff along the way too. So it’s useful as well as entertaining. I’m on Instagram, of course, and that’s also “Greasy Reaper” on there. So those are my three things, my website, YouTube, and Instagram.
Meical: Well thank you so much, Rob! It was great talking to you today.
Rob: Thank you for the call and the interview today. It was a lot of fun!
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That was a lot of fun!
Thank you Rob for this conversation, and thank you reader for checking it out!
We’ll save you a few searches here, if you want to look at Rob Hudnut’s work. You can find his Greasy Reaper series of how-to books and his board game, The Dicey Campout, you can at GreasyReaper.com. To check out where his work started and what he is doing now you can find him on Instagram. And to follow his work on Merlin’s Beard and more, you can easily find his YouTube Channel.
The Wizard Riders Quick-Start Rules are coming on June 27th, 2026 and you will be able to find them at your local game store and at the Free RPG Day website.
If you made it all this way and don’t know what Wizard Riders is, you can get a quick primer on the world of Orth with Catalyst RPG Director Jason Hardy’s Experience Arcane Anarchy with Wizard Riders this Free RPG Day!
Check out the previous interview in this series with the Catalyst RPG Division Media Design and Production Lead, Matt Heerdt. He came up with the idea of Wizard Riders, and has a lot to say in Talking Wizard Riders with Matt “Max Beardo” Heerdt!
Finally, if you want to see an early version of how Wizard Riders plays, A First Look at Wizard Riders - Actual Play at PAX Unplugged 2023 has you covered! Experience the chaos of Orth’s high-wastes with Rem Alternis, Talon Coleman, KP Upadhyayula, James Kirtley, and Dapper Raccoon!
- Meical Kingfisher
