Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Lucas Martinez. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Lucas, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Owning a business isn’t always glamorous and so most business owners we’ve connected with have shared that on tough days they sometimes wonder what it would have been like to have just had a regular job instead of all the responsibility of running a business. Have you ever felt that way?

Beyond happy, Heretical Fun House is a company built on creative passions that go beyond the norm. I remember the day after I saw the first Lord of The Rings movie and my face hurt from smiling so much. I’ve always wanted to recapture that moment, and provide it for others. While we’re still actively working on it, our shows have so far amassed an audience of nearly 100,000 across all our platforms. I’d like to think our series “Life of Artificer” has brought smiles to thousands with it’s comedy. I’d also love to think that our series like “The Cage” has provided them with suspense, thrill, and oh so much more. The ability to make people feel these things, and hopefully one day make millions feel the same way I felt with LOTR, makes me wake up every day with a smile.

The interesting thing is, I actually DO have a regular job. This business has started to become profitable after a few years of hard work, but I still wanted to keep my day job. Because it keeps me grounded. I’ve told people numerous times, but I probably won’t quit it till I see that first million in my bank account. Even then, I’ll probably keep it still.

If anything I see it this way. Everyone is told to chase their dream, but they’re never told how exactly. People get overwhelm chasing that metaphorical eagle in the sky, wanting to fly like it. By keeping my day job and working hard through it I can guarantee that I have solid ground to run on. That’s really what a lot of people in this day and age should try, I believe. Chase the dream, but make sure you’re still running on the solid ground of a good job.

To finish, I will definitely make Heretical Fun House my full time job one day. When I do, the world is gonna be flooded with new stories, shows, movies, etc etc, and all of them will have the highest standards.

Lucas, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Certainly. My name is Lucas, I originally came from the city of Edinburg near the Texas/Mexico border. Ever since I was a kid I was obsessed with stories. Books, movies, tv, street performers and plays, all of it. To me, stories are uniquely human and I wanted to explore and expand on that passion.

I always wanted to make telling stories my job, but seeing how difficult getting into movies and theater was, I decided instead I’d go to college to pursue a degree in business management. My reasoning was if I could control myself and the direction of a business entity, it’d be easier to guide the creative passions and projects in the direction I’d always wanted to.

Throughout college, and honestly even before it, I tried everything I could. Gameplay and reaction youtuber, musician, submitting my writings to contests and groups; at one point I would even jump onto a game called VR chat and start telling stories to attract a crowd in random lobbies. Sadly nothing really took off.

It was about two years after graduation when I was working my first job. My at the time girlfriend and I had just gotten home and were exhausted, so we had a lot to drink to unwind. I was sitting at my computer thinking of stories as I always did, and I finally wrote a one page short script. See a friend of mine had been telling me over and over that I needed to upload stuff to tik tok, but eh I didn’t see the point at the time. But this one page script would fit Tik Tok’s sixty second rule. I didn’t proof read it, I didn’t tweak it, it was the first draft and I shrugged it off.

Said script would be about a genius inventor in a fantasy world launching a clay pot at some knights. The pot, filled with bees, would be fired from a cannon, cause a bit of chaos, and bam. It was silly, beyond silly. But I was happy, it made me laugh and so I contacted a friend of mine and asked him to voice it. Now this friend was by no means a voice actor at the time. He was a friend I’d played D&D with who had a voice just filled with sarcasm in a way that made you laugh nonstop. So he read the lines then and there, sent them my way, and I got to work. It was about three in the morning and I’d had many many more drinks.

Now some important context, reader, I was not a video editor. I’d tried to learn but I was still very bad, so I dove into keyframing animation of our first video. It was clanky, janky, and had me cackling at my desk as I showed it off. Once the video was done, I uploaded it to tik tok, went to sleep, and didn’t check back in. A few days later in the car with my dad heading home for Christmas and I check Tik Tok. Over 5,000 views. Nothing I’d ever made before had broke a thousand, this was insane.

I got to work. Every week I was putting out two of these sixty second animations. My weekends were filled with scripting, every day after work I’d use what time I had to animate, edit, and research posting times. Our channels grew fast, our community even faster. Check us out on Youtube at Heretical Fun House to see the rise in quality too as we hired actual animators and editors to join us.

Now I know I’ve rambled a bit, but here’s the final kicker. I wasn’t satisfied with just doing animations. Younger me had a goal to tell a story of every genre in every form. Books, TV, Movie, video game, audio drama, all of it. In 2024, after about three years of working day and night on Heretical Fun House, I set my sights on a new goal. Expansion. We began setting up new wings of the business once I had enough people making the animations it practically ran itself. But as I set up these new wings I focused on learning every role so I knew how to talk to my team.

When I started making audio dramas I learned proper scripting format, sound engineering, all of it. Then I hired people and we took off running.

I opened a game development wing, a studio wing to dub web comics and, one day, anime brought to the USA. We opened a Voice Actor Demo writing wing, we’re in the process of opening an ADR dubbing wing, and many many more. I won’t be satisfied until Heretical Fun House has a presence in every creative part of the industry, and even then only when it’s perfect will I finally take the nap my now fiancé insists I take.

To end, Heretical Fun House aims to provide the world with stories. Not just mine, but those I see immense potential in, and those I see that pursue their creative passion with eyes hunting for perfection. I think what sets us apart from everyone else is in pursuit of this goal is, if I’m being perfectly honest, our unorthodox approach to the creative business. I have no interest in the safe path of sequels and established fanbases, nor do I have any interest in anything without risk. I want to see stories that take everyone to new worlds, show new ideas, introduce new characters we’d never seen. If it’s a risk on profit, so be it. We have so many different streams of revenue from our pursuits that we can happily take such risks.

I couldn’t be prouder of this team for joining me on this venture, and I can’t wait for the next step in this adventure.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

When I first started Heretical Fun House, I was waking up every morning and driving an hour to work at my first job. Nine hours at the office, driving back an hour. Then I had maybe three hours to hustle. Weekends were the big time where all day every day I’d be pushing through to make something worth that time. My pay at work was, at most, ten bucks an hour, so I couldn’t exactly pay for people to help me. For two and a half years it was just me, two friends voice acting characters, and endless hours. I can’t tell you how many nights I’d get maybe four hours of sleep before over coffee I’d get a little more done before hoping in my car to make it to the office on time.

There were so many times I wanted to quit, to get a little extra sleep or maybe just have a little extra time to do nothing. But I told myself time and time again, the views are going up, the subscribers and followers are going up. Most importantly? The comments. People were flooding the page saying these silly little animations made their day better, they were looking forward to these. One guy commented ages ago it was the first time he’d laughed that hard in the past couple weeks. Even my fiancé was excitedly watching my scripting, asking questions, curiously bouncing ideas my way.

The community started to suggest ideas too, thoughts for short little jokes. We’d make videos featuring their comments and proudly making the videos they wanted to see.

There was a time I was even laid off, and as I hunted for a job I slowly had videos coming out telling our community that no matter what I’ll do what I can to still make it work. Support and donations flooded in, and it solidified in my mind this will be done no matter what.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

Being a boss and being a leader are as different as they are similar. When I was doing everything by myself, I quickly took note of how difficult and complex each job was. Voice acting, writing, editing, sound engineering, scene placement, art design, etc etc. I didn’t want to be a boss that told people unrealistic goals or have impossible demands. Learning how my team works and what they do let me become more of a leader and accurately point everything in the right direction. You can’t just tell a writer to add more flare, or a sound engineer/Voice Actor to “Give more oomph!” Knowing how it all works gave me the tools needed to accurately voice what I needed at certain scenes/key moments in our work flow.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://hereticalfunhouse.carrd.co
• Twitter: https://x.com/LucasMartinezva
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@HereticalFunHouse

Image Credits

Me in a helmet – Halloween 2025, still all fantasy vibes for everything.

Blue Shirt – Business trip 2025 at my day job

Me with the older gentlemen – Me and My father, one of my heroes. That man lives life happy and excited, and I am to be just like him.

Me in gray shirt – At the mic, recording, or rather setting up for the next audition!

Goofy dragon head – My company logo!