- Interview Date: 7/3/2025
- Interview Location: Anime Expo 2025
- Interview Format: One-on-One, In-Person
Anime Herald: You take your work very seriously. Where does that come from?
Beth Radloff: I’ve been told that I think a lot about a lot of things. I have a degree, a minor, in critical theory. I went to art school, but I’ve always been interested in multiple disciplines. Yes, I do take my work very seriously, but at the same time I’m an absurdist. At the end of the day, even though I think art is one of the best ways we can communicate abstract ideas, I like to communicate those ideas in ways that make people giggle and laugh. They can consume it in a way that’s delightful, even if it is complex.
Anime Herald: Your absurdism is on full display in this piece. What is the name of it?
Beth Radloff: Monkey See, Monkey Brew.
Anime Herald: We see the coffee that they are brewing. Is there an actual brand?
Beth Radloff: Kōhī. (Editor’s note: Coffee for monkeys, by monkey.)
The original subject matter of this piece has been cropped out. I was doing a series of big, horned men. It was the Year of the Ox. I had a giant lumberjack going through with rat spirits.
Anime Herald: I just want to tell you that, if you can do large horned men in the style of this piece, it’ll sell.
Beth Radloff: That’s the problem, it didn’t! I had the ox-man. This one was a dragon. I had this giant dragon-man who was the top half of this piece. He was lounging in the mountains in the distance. His body is heating the hot springs.
Anime Herald: I would have bet anything that that piece would sell. I’m shocked.
Beth Radloff: Apparently, people don’t want to put giant nude men up in their dining rooms.
Anime Herald: I dunno, if you know the term “bears,” I’ve seen a lot of “bear” art sell.
Beth Radloff: I’m going to the wrong cons then.
Anime Herald: So, this piece was take two.
Beth Radloff: It was complicated. The original story of this piece was the little coffee shop. I fell in love with the idea of an old monkey running a business, selling cigarettes and coffee out of a kiosk. Because he’s a monkey, I was thinking about the hot spring monkeys in Japan. What if it was a fantasy scene of an economy of monkeys in this environment, interacting with the women who come to these hot springs? Let’s put a giant dragon-man in the background to create more of a fantasy scene. But before I did that, I just did this little simple illustration. Hundreds of people said, “We love this. We’d love to have a big version of it.” At the time, it was 5 x 7 inches. The resolution was too low to blow it up. Instead of making it larger I said, “What if I spent the next year building a story on my Twitch stream?” I’d add and add until we created a comic book in one image. All of these characters have their own different relationships, family groups, love stories.
One of my favorites is in the top right-hand corner. There’s a slacker employee of the old monkey man. He’s doing a “She loves me, she loves me not” with a flower while looking down at his crush. She’s being flirted with by one of the bad boys, denoted by his bandanna. Not only is there an existing economy of monkeys. There’s also a black market where they are bootlegging. They’re taking the coffee, spiking it, selling cigarettes, trading money with naughty women. Swapping the name from “Monkey Business” to “Monkey Sin.” They’ve changed the way the logo is drawn.
Anime Herald: You’ve put a lot of thought into this. Did any of the ideas come from Twitch?
Beth Radloff: I would say “Yes.” It’s a conversation. It’s so much easier to adjust and edit things that already exist than to start from a blank page and ask, “Hey, what should I draw?” Zooming out on this piece, if I want five characters in this upper right-hand corner, what could they be doing? I might throw in a couple of older parent monkeys. Someone on my stream might ask “Oh, what are their kids doing?”
Kids are mischievous. Maybe they are trying to peek at the people in the hot springs. And if there are kids, there must be babies. There are mothers here. And maybe different monkeys have different opinions. One of them doesn’t appreciate the nudity and is trying to use a towel to cover it up. Another one doesn’t like the taste of the coffee and is pouring it out into the hot springs.
Anime Herald: The old monkey is looking at him. He sees. I guess he’s thinking, “Oh well, I still got paid.”
I can see how this piece could take a year. I’d love it as a play mat.
Beth Radloff: Thank you.
Anime Herald: What is your origin story as an artist?
Beth Radloff: I was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan. My mom is an artist. My dad is a union electrician. My mom is an incredibly creative person, but she never made any money doing art. When I was growing up, my dad would come home haggard and tired. He was the kind of person who never took a sick day. Growing up seeing that, I thought that work had to be rough. It had to be hard. I was always preparing myself for a job that would be a burden. But also, always being creative. I was always drawing, always taking the long way around on my class assignments to make something a little bit more expressive and interesting.
My French teacher in my junior year of high school… I never took an art class in K-11… then in my junior year of high school, my French teacher asked me, “Beth, do you know about commercial art? Do you know there are artists who go into a studio and work with art directors to create all of the branding for Coca-Cola, La-Z-Boy, and other big corporations? If you look around, everything you see has been designed by an artist. The chair you are sitting on, the table you are working on, your telephone, your refrigerator. All the packaging and labeling on juices and foodstuffs. Everything has been touched by an artist. Someone has to make that. Have you thought about making that?”
It blew my mind open. For the first time, I thought that there might be a bigger world out there that I could explore with the skill-set that brings me so much joy. Rather than…
Anime Herald: Being a union electrician.
Beth Radloff: Exactly. My dad once told me he would rather me become a stripper than a union electrician. I will always think about that. I’ll have to ask him why later.
Anime Herald: Thanks, dad.
Beth Radloff: Thanks, dad. So, my French teacher pushed me in that direction. A mistake on my senior year class registration put me in advanced placement art instead of Drawing 1. My friend who was in advanced placement art said, “Beth, you’re good enough, put a little portfolio together to show the teacher, we’ll see what she says.” The teacher looked and said, “Oh yeah, you’re in.”
I got a five on my AP exam, that’s top marks. It totally redirected my life. It was one of the only times in my life where I had a sure moment that this is what I wanted to do. It was the Summer before I took that AP class, out of a need to be over-prepared, I took a drawing class at Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center. It was my first nude life drawing class. I’m standing there. To my left is a sixty-year-old man. To my right is a woman who hasn’t showered in two months. We’re all painting. The sixty-year-old man is giving me criticism I did not ask for. The woman to my right… there’s just a lot going on in her life that I don’t know about. Despite that, I was so in love with what I was doing. With the environment, and the energy in there. With how it made me feel. A light came on in my life: “Let’s focus all of our energy towards this.”
Within four years, I had graduated from art school and moved to Los Angeles. I got a job at an ad agency. I got the job before I moved. I’ve been out here ever since. It’s been thirteen years.
Anime Herald: What school did you attend?
Beth Radloff: The College for Creative Studies in Detroit.
Anime Herald: Good times?
Beth Radloff: It’s a mixed bag. Some good times. I don’t regret it. I think there’s a lot of value in going to art school, but also, one of the most popular pieces that I sell is a bird with a speech bubble, “My degree means nothing.” All of my bird art is dark comedy.
Anime Herald: The bird is just being honest.
Beth Radloff: The bird is just being honest. I’ve never been asked to show my degree, just my portfolio. That makes sense as an artist. So, did I need the degree to do what I do? No. Am I better for having the experience? I think yes.
Anime Herald: I’ve spoken with a lot of artists. One of the major criticisms about art schools is that they aren’t bad at teaching art, but they are lacking when it comes to teaching the business of art. How much of that did they teach you, and how much of that did you have to learn for yourself?
Beth Radloff: Good question. I would say I had one class that helped me with the business of art. It was a portfolio class that we took in our last year. In that class, I was asked for the first time to put down twenty companies that I would like to be associated with, to do work for. It could be anything. It could be Square-Enix because you love Final Fantasy. It could be Ben & Jerry’s because you love ice cream. We wrote down our favorite companies. We were told to look at their portfolios. Think about what kind of artist would be hired for those companies. Build your portfolio around that kind of work to aim in that direction. There were a lot of other things. That stands out.
In that class, we were taught how to build a business plan, or how to write artist grant requests. Naturally, I picked artist grants. I’ve never written an artist grant request. I should have picked business. But I didn’t know because I was eighteen years old at the time. That said, even though I only had one class that taught business, so much of the value of a college experience is developing those adult relationships. With your teachers, with other professionals in the field, with your peers who go out and do things beyond school. If you manage to find yourself with a network of people who do what you do, talking to them as resources about what the business elements of these things are is the way that I ended up learning up what I know.
Anime Herald: What advice would you give to the next generation of artists? What information would you want to pass along?
Beth Radloff: Oh boy, that’s big! “Artist” is such a broad label. Depending on the kind of artist that you are, you’re going to need different advice.
For me, something that I always keep in mind is that there’s this idea that, as an artist, you have this personal story that you need to communicate to people. It puts in the center of that gravitational force. I’ve found that if I remove myself from the center of that, and instead put in the idea that I have the ability, as an act of service, to make somebody feel more like themselves than they did before, because of the work that I have brought into their life. If I make work with that in mind, versus wanting to be famous, or known, or revered, then the way that this works is much more beautiful.
Anime Herald: Hopefully that will help future artists find their way.
How did you get involved with Anime Expo?
Beth Radloff: Anime Expo is a show that I’d been trying to get into for four years. When you do conventions, one of the worst parts is the application process, because every convention does it differently. Anime Expo is a coveted show. All of the people who do what we do want to have a table here. So, all of the people who do what we do apply to have a table here. I’m up against five thousand people trying to get one of maybe five hundred tables. The way that Anime Expo does it is different this year, which is one of the reasons I got in. It’s transitioned into more of a lottery system.
Anime Herald: Before, if you were already in, you had a leg-up in getting in next year.
Beth Radloff: Yes.
Anime Herald: They have killed that incumbency.
Beth Radloff: I understand the frustration that those artists are feeling.
Anime Herald: They also expanded the hall.
Beth Radloff: Yes.
Anime Herald: As someone who is a patron of Artist’s Alley, that’s great. More art for me. But for the artists that got in as part of the first wave, it doubled their competition.
Beth Radloff: Yes, there’s pros and cons to it.
Anime Herald: Do you read manga or watch anime?
Beth Radloff: I do.
Anime Herald: What are you reading or watching?
Beth Radloff: I’m currently watching Frieren, because it’s all over the place in Artist’s Alley right now.
Anime Herald: I thought Frieren should have won Anime of the Year. Solo Leveling won, and I understand why. If you’ve ever seen the original manhwa, it’s absolutely beautiful. But as an anime, Frieren beats it.
Beth Radloff: I’m ten episodes in. I’m getting into some action, and wow, the fight sequences are something else. The build up to the power expression is really interesting.
Anime Herald: No spoilers, but the best fight in that show lasts about a second and a half.
Beth Radloff: That’s exciting.
Anime Herald: It will stick with me for a long time. “Oh, that’s clever.”
Beth Radloff: My favorite right now is Dan Da Dan. I’m a huge fan of Dan Da Dan.
Anime Herald: I love Turbo Granny. She’s my favorite character.
Beth Radloff: Yes!
Anime Herald: Do you remember the scene where they turn her into a Lucky Cat? She blinks twice and then hauls ass out of there.
Beth Radloff: Yep! It’s a riot. It’s got so much style and pizzazz. I also appreciate that some of the designs are a little more grown up.
Anime Herald: You’re exactly right.
Beth Radloff: I like it when a woman looks like a woman.
Anime Herald: We’re on the same page. There’s some subtext here. I particularly hate “Oh no, she’s not thirteen, she’s 1300 years old, but she acts like a thirteen-year-old girl!” Yeah, that’s not good.
Beth Radloff: If I was 1300 years old, I would not be acting like a thirteen year-old girl.
Anime Herald: Do you have any questions for us?
Beth Radloff: It sounds like you have similar frustrations. I wonder if the anime community at-large has similar frustrations about moe and cuteness and kawaii over-saturating what anime can be?
Anime Herald: It’s not about the over-saturation. I hear where you are coming from, and also isekai taking over the world. But that’s not where my frustrations lie. It’s not about the percentage of the anime market. For me, I find it “ick.” It’s worse than cringe. I understand there are different cultural mores and biases. And there’s some positivity too. In Japan, kids can ride the subway or take the bus and they’re completely safe. But I don’t feel like the kids are safe in the anime or the manga. That bothers me.
Beth Radloff: I would love the sex pests to no longer be a thing in a show. I so enjoy My Hero Academia, except for Sticky Ball Guy (Mineta). Sticky Ball Guy can get out of my show, please. It’s not funny anymore.
Anime Herald: I’m not sure it was ever funny to begin with. I’m right there with you. I think there are cultural differences here and I don’t think they’re going away.
Is there anything you would like our readers to know about you?
Beth Radloff: I stream on a noon Pacific time every Wednesday on Twitch. I’m Beth Be Rad.
Anime Herald: I will let our readers know. Thank you very much.
Beth Radloff: Thank you.
Interviews With Artists: A Conversation WIth Beth “BethBeRad” Radloff – Seth Burn