Join The Movement
Are You a Creator, a Remixer, a Punk Dreamer? Do you Crave Stories that Twist Reality, games that challenge norms, and art that’s free to evolve? Welcome to Polydina Flynt’s ecosystem.
About Me
writer | blogger | digital artist | writing coach
Hi, I’m Polydina Flynt
I’m a writer, producer, and digital systems artist building worlds at the intersection of storytelling, design, and technology. My work – explores how narratives behave across mediums – how they fracture, mutate, and reassemble when translated.
Current work spans novellas, comics, zines, webseries and animation, digital theatre, experimental machinima, tabletop roleplaying games, and software-based narrative prototypes. I’m especially interested in world-building as a practical craft: designing props, environments and written settings that can sustain story, collaboration, and derivative works across multiple forms over time.
One of my long-term ambitions is to follow the lineage established by early Peter Jackson and Middle Earth, alongside Star Wars (the original trilogy despecialised and Old Republic eras), Star Trek, and the shared universes developed by Stephen King and Bruce Timm—by creating a monumental, authored world that is designed in-world, built to support multiple media, collaborators, and generations of stories. One of my seven creative universes is intended as a contribution to epic New Zealand screen history and physical world-building.
I place strong value on indie and underground artists, and I plan to hire and collaborate with many of them on major works in the near future. At present, I’m developing a slate of 24 creative projects aimed at both traditional publishing and indie ecosystems, including:
— literary and speculative fiction – mostly short form up to novella length
— comics and illustrated worlds
— tabletop roleplaying games and cultural zines
— narrative software projects and machinima
— experimental theatre and television writing
— digital art and CC-BY creative assets
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How do I describe my writing?
I write stories about people who remain functional while emotionally fractured. My work focuses on characters who use work, systems, art, or collaboration as coping mechanisms in post-digital, late-capitalist environments.
Stylistically, my writing blends literary restraint with genre elements (sci-fi, horror, noir), favouring anti-plot structures, procedural detail, and quiet emotional pressure over spectacle or resolution.
Thematically, my stories explore identity erosion, technological estrangement, and intimacy displaced into process — a low-heat, high-pressure approach to modern alienation.
About Polydina Flynt Studio (World.exe)
The Handmade Surreal — Worlds That Feel Alive in Their Weirdness
“They are an artist shaped by a deep fascination with the fragile boundary between sincerity and subversion, drawing from a lineage of creators who challenge both form and feeling. Their work carries the handmade soul and emotional intelligence reminiscent of Jim Henson, paired with the participatory, curiosity-driven spirit of Casey Pugh and the intimate, human-centered storytelling associated with Gracious Films. Beneath that warmth, however, lies something more disquieting.
There is a clear affinity in their voice for the existential absurdity and stark honesty found in Don Hertzfeldt, colliding with the operatic intensity and moral precision of Park Chan-wook. Like Lars von Trier, they are unafraid to provoke, to dismantle comfort, and to interrogate the audience’s complicity. Systems, rules, and play also shape their thinking, echoing the design philosophy of Richard Garfield, where structure becomes a canvas for emergent meaning.
Visually and tonally, their sensibilities drift between the grotesque and the playful. The anarchic darkness of Jhonen Vasquez and the elastic, expressive dynamism of Jack Cole surface in their work, while Shane Carruth’s cerebral minimalism informs their approach to narrative ambiguity and time. There is also a musicality and rhythmic absurdism present, not unlike Brendon Small’s ability to balance satire with sincerity.
Their work demonstrates a keen awareness of interactivity and perception, reflecting the meta-commentary and philosophical playfulness of Davey Wreden. Dialogue and character psychology carry weight as well, shaped by writers like Joe Penhall and Arnt Jensen, whose work often lingers in moral gray areas and emotional tension. Meanwhile, the tactile imagination and inventive world-building associated with Mark Healey suggest a desire to invite audiences not just to observe, but to inhabit their ideas.
At its core, their creative identity is deeply introspective. Like Spalding Gray, they understand the power of personal narrative and the vulnerability of direct address. This introspection, however, is filtered through darker lenses: the psychological vastness of Stephen King, the visceral, bodily unease of David Cronenberg, and the surreal, dreamlike logic of Jan Švankmajer.
The result is a voice that feels both deeply human and unsettlingly alien. Their influences do not simply coexist; they collide, mutate, and reassemble into something that resists easy categorisation. They create work that invites wonder while quietly destabilising it, blending tenderness with discomfort, structure with chaos, and play with profound existential inquiry.“
Building a Living Art World – My Journey Blending Games, Writing, and Interactive Art
My first digital art product is a reimagining of T.A.N.K.S. for the Acorn Archimedes, a 1996 artillery-style game that I’ve been rebuilding from memory. It’s my love letter to the BBC Micro and early PC eras — all clunky vectors, simple ballistics, and pure creative logic. The goal isn’t just nostalgia; it’s to honour that golden age of tinkering when you could open a program, read the code, and learn. That sense of openness still drives me today.
On the physical side, I’ve been building a prop called the Kinetic Orb — a segmented tin-and-aluminum sculpture with a clock mechanism, insectoid shadow-play and LED core. It’s part mechanical curiosity, part performance object, and a symbol for how I see art: something that ticks, glows, evolves, and occasionally misbehaves. I treat it as the beating heart of my creative world — an intersection between sculpture, design, and narrative mythology.
Alongside that, I’m developing The Top 15 App, a piece of “software art” designed to re-capture the joy of self-expression through lists and nostalgia. Think 43Things meets Letterboxd, but smaller, more personal — a reflection engine rather than a social feed. My other software project, The Machinist Port, explores presenting the user with a fake terminal where the only interaction is typing but the output evolves – from simple drawing to looped painting methods, semi-3d extrusion and digital solutions to real-world problems, inventing supported by AI.
Next, I’m diving into two small digital games — Grounders 2D, a GameMaker project with physics-based arcade energy (sewer-based football), and Dungeon of Cats Digital, a surreal RPG Maker reimagining of my tabletop title. Both are playful worlds designed to feel handmade — like old Amiga or PS1-era games with modern weirdness layered in.
At the same time, I’m working on my first wave of 15 writing projects: two novellas and two pen-and-paper print-on-demand role-playing games (novellas: Pixels vs. Symbols, and Destined for Perfection, TTRPGs: Dungeon of Cats and Story of the Feldlings), a nonfiction zine series (NerdCulture: Coffee & Conversations 1), a horror-comedy script (The Mortal Report). I’m writing another post-punk zine (Potato) as a tribute to teenage filmmaking on video (1999) failed adventures, and two screenplays I want to release open-source (40 days of becoming, and my first machinima – a shoebox full of USBs – with RPG Maker) and multiple hybrid works that mix memoir, fiction, and philosophical essays. I’m interested in how stories evolve across mediums — a character from a zine might appear in a short film or a game cutscene later.
I want to build something that feels alive — both human and machine-made, both nostalgic and forward-looking.
I’m also deeply committed to open-source creativity. Every asset or mechanic I can ethically release for others to use, I will — from RPG Maker templates to sound effects, public zine layouts, and code snippets. But I’m equally focused on developing original IP that can grow commercially — scaling sustainable art that can fund itself while staying artist-driven.
My long-term aim is to make world.exe — a cohesive, cross-media ecosystem where everything I build connects through tone, mythology, and design. It’s less a company and more a creative organism — one that grows by sharing its DNA.
Would love to connect with other devs, writers, and artists doing similar world-building or transmedia work.
Here’s a clear creative overview of each of my other writing projects — showing how they fit together under my living-art-world umbrella.
1. Shards of the Wall
A serialised, metaphysical fantasy drama told through short “shards” — cinematic episodes that together build an epic mosaic.
Each shard is a fragment of a shattered world, guided by Rasmes, an enigmatic being, and Raffei, a gifted child who unknowingly summoned him through dreams. The story unfolds like a pilgrimage through dying realities — part Earth X, part The Little Prince, written with the psychological tension of Jim Krueger and the visual poetry of Jeunet.
Ultimately Shards of the Wall explores imagination as rebellion: every “shard” is both a self-contained parable and a piece of a cosmic jigsaw.
2. Lucid Dragons #1
My debut comic in a long-form fantasy-sci-fi universe, Lucid Dragons merges dream logic with mythic symbolism. The first issue introduces a fractured society where morality is ambiguous and dragons are hosts of time-travel-enabling chemicals.
Visually it’s painterly and surreal — a cross between Moebius and Jae Lee — while the writing channels my own blend of philosophical satire and emotional vulnerability. It’s both a myth about moral dismantling and an allegory for the artistic process itself.
3. Podcast: NerdCulture – Coffee & Conversations Vol. 1
A companion series to my first zine.
Each 30-minute episode expands on interviews and essays from NerdCulture Vol. 1, offering behind-the-scenes stories, out-takes, and reflective commentary about DIY media, fandom, and creative survival.
The tone is part late-night radio, part art-school hangout — an honest dialogue between misfits, makers, and thinkers about how to build culture from the ground up.
4. Zine 2 – Focus Thought Revolution: The Awkward Punk’s Manifesto
The sequel to my first zine, expanding its mix of essays, chiller and macabre short stories, and experimental layout design.
Where Zine 1 was journalistic and conversational, Zine 2 is more rebellious and self-reflective — a collage of underground aesthetics, psychological essays on focus and discipline, and punk-meets-philosophy artwork and weird tales.
It carries the voice of someone turning process into protest: an art-as-therapy manual for creators on the edge of burnout and breakthrough.
5. Story of the Feldlings
A tabletop role-playing game that combines cozy exploration with emotional world-building.
Players inhabit “feldlings,” gentle elemental creatures who are struggling as prisoners to werewolves – but they are changeling mages. The game balances melancholy and wonder, encouraging collaboration and introspection rather than combat.
Think Studio Ghibli meets Moomins with Journey’s atmosphere — designed to be both an art object and a storytelling tool that ties back into my broader narrative universe.
6. Theatre: Process
My experimental stage project examining the act of creation itself.
Process is structured as a metatheatrical loop: characters rehearse a play about making a play, blurring the line between actor and author.
It fuses script, choreography, and live improvisation — a conceptual cousin to Dogville or House of Blue Leaves — and is followed by a new screenplay (“ESD”) where a alien defector from a marxist gang planet arrives in a utopian garden in small-town New Zealand and is taken in by the struggling hipsters who are trying to build startups with no money.
The finished version of my theatre will be published as part of a script bundle alongside my artbook.
7. The Digital Desert – A Downloadable Digital Theatre Project for Itch.io
A hybrid between interactive fiction and performance art — theatre that exists inside a downloadable space.
Players wander a minimalist desert rendered in glitch-aesthetic visuals, discovering fragments of recorded monologues, mechatronics, computer software demos, holographic props, and looping puppet theatre.
It’s not a “game” in the conventional sense but an act of digital theatre: an exploration of isolation, memory, and data decay.
Intended for Itch.io release, it bridges my Machinima and theatre practices, turning the act of playing into a stage performance experienced privately through the screen.
Find/Purchase my latest work and get freebies.
A Wellington Creative Circle
I’m forming a **Wellington-based creative group** for transmedia storytellers, digital designers, filmmakers, writers, comic and prop artists, game devs, and creative entreprenerds.
The goal is simple: **regular meetups with people who care deeply about making things**.
This in-person group event is about:
* sharing ideas, workflows, and practical advice
* talking openly about creative work, business, and sustainability
* offering moral support and perspective
* building long-term creative momentum together
No performative networking. No gatekeeping.
Just thoughtful creatives meeting regularly to learn, support, and grow.
This event is a closed event – invite-only, no +1s, no audience, and annually in Wellington.
I want to make it in-person small groups, (four people per meetup, with staggered online chat groups of between 4-11, in between) yearly in Wellington, NZ.
There was a time when artists did not work alone.
In the late nineteenth century, certain neighbourhoods of Paris became places where painters, writers, performers, and craftsmen lived side by side. Studios spilled into cafés, conversations lasted late into the night, and ideas moved freely between disciplines. Someone might arrive as a student and leave months later having learned a new craft, collaborated on a performance, or discovered an entirely new way of thinking about their work. What mattered was not simply the finished artwork, but the shared process of making.
That spirit has largely disappeared from modern creative life.
Today many artists and makers work in isolation, separated by geography, cost of space, or the fragmented nature of digital culture. While the internet has made it easier to share work, it has also made it easier for creative practice to become solitary and disconnected from the physical act of building things together.
This project exists to restore something that once worked remarkably well.
The goal is to establish a living creative workshop: a place where people with different skills and backgrounds can gather to experiment, collaborate, and produce new work together. Writers, performers, craftspeople, designers, students, and curious newcomers would share the same environment, contributing their talents to projects that emerge from collective energy rather than rigid hierarchy.
The model is simple. A small core group of experienced makers forms the backbone of the studio, maintaining standards of craft and helping guide larger projects. Around them, a wider circle of collaborators joins for specific productions, workshops, or experiments. Some arrive to learn, others to contribute, and many will do both.
The environment itself encourages cross-disciplinary creation. Workshops for fabrication and craft exist alongside spaces for rehearsal, writing, and performance. Communal kitchens and shared gathering rooms ensure that conversation continues beyond formal work hours. Meals are as much a part of the creative process as the studio itself; the exchange of ideas rarely stops when tools are put down for the day.
Projects developed within this environment may take many forms: collaborative builds, experimental theatre pieces, narrative media, design work, and other creative ventures that combine storytelling with physical craft. Some works will be shared locally through performances and exhibitions, while others will reach broader audiences through digital distribution.
A key principle is openness to learning. Expertise is valued, but curiosity and generosity matter just as much. Experienced practitioners pass knowledge to students and apprentices, who in turn grow into collaborators capable of leading their own projects. Over time the community becomes self-sustaining, with new participants continuously bringing fresh ideas and energy.
The purpose is not to recreate a historical movement, but to recover the conditions that allowed those movements to flourish: proximity, shared tools, long conversations, and a culture where experimentation is encouraged.
In an age when creative work is often reduced to individual output or online visibility, this initiative proposes something different. It offers a place where people can gather in person to make things together, learn from one another, and contribute to a living culture of craft.
The hope is that such a community will produce work that reflects the richness of its environment — projects shaped not by a single voice, but by the collective imagination of those who build them.
And, as in those earlier creative enclaves, the most important outcome may not be any single piece of work, but the relationships, skills, and ideas that emerge when artists and makers share the same space and the same table.
Surreal Creations vol. 1
My comic strip/book construction process.
My comic pencil process – video 1. A bit about my experimenting with bug-texture brush creation in Photoshop. And an intro to my first comic book:
Lucid Dragons vol. 1.
If you want to switch from Photoshop to an open-source alternative, i.e. GIMP, the last video shows how to do colour flatting in GIMP. (coming soon)
My digital colouring process for comic strip creation including colour flatting (sectioning colour layers and getting rid of imperfect paper backgrounds) in Photoshop.
Surreal Creations vol. 2
My indie game dev journey – so far.
My first devlog, after Dungeon Crawler Jam 2024 – with my team (a company I have since closed down, in order to go solo.)
My 2nd devlog about where I’m at in 2025 with indie game development, TTRPG writing and mostly open-source video game art. As well as supporting small devs with writing, cartooning and web dev. And tutoring anybody who shows an interest in coding.
CONTACT
Get In Touch With Me
Have a remix idea? Want to collab on a zine, game, or script? Or just share your thoughts on my surreal worlds? I’m all ears—drop a line and let’s hack reality together.
Insta
@polyflynt
Vimeo
https://vimeo.com/polydinaflynt