Christmahs

Happy Christmas everyone, hope you all have a good holiday. I'm spending mine recharging my creative batteries with experimental cookery, stirring my lethal mulled-wine recipe with a protective gauntlet and also crafting something that will be revealed in the next update after xmas.

To celebrate the holidays here's a long-lost poster from Grip Wrench's ill-judged Christmas cash-in film from 1987, Daddy Christmas: Chimney Interceptor, which I found tucked down the back of my OS/X Finder.




And if you're looking for something to watch in the post-lunch vacuum I'd recommend the adventures of Cookie (Illustrator, Explorer, Fellow Margarita Connoisseur) He's edited together highlights of the 3000 mile trek he made earlier this year up the CDT (which I still thought was woodwork class).

Looks like perfect xmas viewing, especially as there's nothing on the telly anymore, and it doesn't feel right playing Dead Space on Christmas Day.

Little Big Metal Gear Solid Planet

SACK! SACK! SAAAAACK!
I love Metal Gear Solid - and its unusual mix of Japanese technology, high drama and moments of complete silliness. So when we set to work on making a new pack of MGS themed levels, stickers, costumes and materials for LittleBigPlanet I declared the world officially full of win.

It's been amazing to have access to all the original files used to make the MGS games, and Konami and Kojima Productions have been brilliant about letting us re-imagine their world in our little universe. A world in which assault tanks are made out of cardboard, weapons shoot paint and the major characters are recreated in doodles and stickers - which I've had a lot of fun designing and also directing this trailer which shows it all off..



I've also been wondering what I'd call myself if I was a Metal Gear Solid character (bearing in mind this is a universe filled with characters called things like Screaming Mantis and Revolver Ocelot).

So far I'm favouring Giggling Mandrake or Petulant Sea Cucumber.

MAN OF MEAT. MAN OF ACTION.

I've finally put my website for Grip Wrench live. It's the animated series I made for MTV QOOB, featuring Hollywood hardman, Vietnam veteran and fearless patriot Grip Wrench. And basically gave me plenty of sleepless nights for a year and a half while I was trying to animate all 10 episodes on my own (whilst doing LittleBigPlanet at the same time). What a nutter.



Anyway, its probably best if you just go and have a look yourself, there's some iphone wallpapers too (which I think all promo websites have to have now by law..) desktop backgrounds and of course all 10 episodes are on there, although here's an embedded episode which is one of my favourites:

My favourite LittleBigPlanet level so far

I haven't really been posting any LittleBigPlanet level videos so far, not sure why, in some ways I could be trying to get lots of traffic by shouting I HELPED DESIGN LBP all the time and posting every moment it gets a glowing review (and its had a fair few of those now..) but that just gets a bit annoying and there's plenty of other places you can browse videos of all the amazing things people are making with the game.

But this level really captured my imagination, its so far from the "look" we designed for the game - it reminds me of some of the old LCD Game-And-Watch handheld games I grew up with. And the use of the text (which they've made themselves) is really witty, the way it narrates the level structure, it's almost like a music video..



I'm just finishing off the Grip Wrench website and then I can get back to making my Grip LBP level...

Cullumdar

Nearly xmas and it's a busy time of year for a designer/animator person - there seems to be a neverending line of people needing lumps of snow added onto the top of their logos, or animated flakes drifting around their websites or title sequences. Here's my latest yuletide project - I got asked to make a flash advent calendar for top jazzer Jamie Cullum. Here's an image from it.



And you can see the actual calendar (or Cullumdar as I jokingly called it) by running off in this direction. Although nobody will notice I spent ages making the doors open exactly as I wanted to, and hand-making animation on all of them, so they all open very slightly differently. I'm a nutter for things like that.

There's no chocolate behind the doors, but at least you can win tickets to see ACDC or get all arm-wavy with a Nintendo Wii and other less jiggy prizes.