Trophy Monkey

I did a bit of designing in the third dimension recently, as I had the huge privilege to design this years re-skinning of the Vector Monkey trophy for Spike TV's annual VGA Awards (the Video Game Awards er.. Awards). Because we (as in Media Molecule, my LittleBigPlanet-making pals) won the award last year for Best Team, Spike TV thought it would fun if we designed this years trophy, so I got busy with the neon paint.

I wanted it to fully embody our Media Molecule way of reusing and re-appropriating found materials, so I came up with a design that changes the content of the statue without changing the physical shape. So, instead of the monkeys face being straight-on, he's looking upwards and crunching on the crown with his bitey maw. OH NOM NOM NOM he later commented.

Here's Jack Black waving one around (which apparently I'm told he broke later, the butterfingered rascal) and Jake Gyllenhaaaal staring at one, wondering what the hell he's looking at.

As it's now become a new tradition for the winner of the Best Team category to design next years trophy I can't wait to see what Rocksteady design. Especially after having my socks and spats blown off by their tremendous Batman: Arkham Asylum.

City of Game

(Original photo by TigersHungry, new characters revealed by Photoshop)

Last week I made my first visit to Gamecity, up in Nottingham, a festival of games, talking, and education, and good it was too. I had been invited to talk on a panel with Robin Hunicke (of the always-inspiring ThatGameCompany, creators of Flower & Flow) and Dr Barbara Lippe (visual goddess behind the fascinating, and completely unique Massively-Multiplayer Online game Papermint). Where we talked about some of our influences, (I talked about SchoolDaze a favourite game of mine from the Sinclair Spectrum) ways of working, highs and lows, and took questions from the audience.

Having met up with my old pal Jon Burgerman for lunch I was able to drag him onto the next panel with me as well, which led to lots of rude jokes on stage and a impromptu session of game-designer Chinese Whispers. A particularly strange experience, as we were doing this with Masaya Matsuura (creator of Parappa the Rapper and Vib Ribbon) Keita Takahashi (Katamari Damacy) and Adam "Atomic" (creator of my current gaming obsession Canabalt ).

Other highlights included too much curry, playing the games in the indiecade including the epic projector games, meeting up with some great folk, and being introduced to 1-up Megazine by its creator, truly one of the most beautiful videogame magazines I've seen.

And this:

Playful 09

Playful is a great event full of people talking about interesting technology used with playful applications. It's right up my street. So it was nice to be asked to do the branding duties for this years event. Here's some of what I've been doing for them (using the lovely stuff that Poke did for last years event as a jumping off point).



You can see more on the official Playful web home here. Maybe you'd even like to score a brace of tickets while you're there too.

I'll also be speaking at this years event, so would be grand if a few folk turn up to see. I'll probably natter about some LittleBigPlanet related stuff, like about avatars and customisation and remix culture. Or maybe I'll just draw a cock on a flip-chart. We shall see soon enough.

Grip Wrench gets an outing in Brighton.

My MTV animated series Grip Wrench is going to be screening at the Loop Festival in Brighton this Sunday from 1:00pm (in the Pavilion theatre), thanks to the lovely folk at onedotzero. I'll be there. Hopefully you'll be there. Although please remember, you won't be able to un-see what you see.

In the meantime here's a photo of Mr Wrench's last trip to the seaside, a happy day of sun, speedboats and exploding flamingo corpses. Hopefully he'll be able to outdo himself this time with a KissMeQuick hat, a donkey and a three gallons of melted ice-cream.

Fresh Smack

Feeling like jumping around to some electro bouncy noise, while staring at visuals from another world and fending off a man with a marker pen that's drawing a donkey skull on your arm? Well, you're in luck - all these things and more can become reality next friday in south London.

Noises will come from the decks of Merf, Brother, Superstar PJ and Forward-Thinking Tam and live performance by Super Soul Soldiers, and I'll be there to do my usual drawings on anyone brave enough to have a go.

Hope to see you there, you brave fools. Here's the poster:

Stand Up

I'm off to FMX in Stuttgart next week, with Kareem & Francis from MediaMolecule, to talk about how we made the wonky world of LittleBigPlanet. It looks like there's some interesting programmes on, I might have to sneak in and geek out on the various talks on the production design of Hellboy2 and Watchmen.

Talking of Watchmen, here's a portrait of The Commedian, it's not really finished but I'll have to leave it as it is for now..

WibbleDone

The cream has curdled, the rackets are splintered, the nets are packed away, and Cliff Richard has been returned to his sound-proof cage. And now we are left with the artwork that Cookie & I frantically generated in our Layer Tennis match last friday, and the fine prose commentary of Anne who managed to write it up at a zillions words per minute.

Each volley lasted 15 minutes, here they are all stacked up. Cookie won the toss and went first, creating the beautiful image of Albion which set a fantastically high standard. A standard that I fumbled with in my first volley, panicking about time-management rather than getting on with making something nice. At least my return had a sea monster in it, and an obscure reference to LittleBigPlanet with him saying YARG! (the name of cheese that was chosen as a codename for our latest game update, which is produced in Cornwall, where I'm from).

Anyway, here's the collected volleys. Scroll down for more waffle.



I think I managed to improve with subsequent volleys, finding my stride and just getting more comfortable with working in this way. I guess the x-ray of the cod-piece is probably my favourite round of my images, I'm not really sure that's what a gentleman would keep in his cod-peice, but if I could carry around some ninja stars, a pint and a cod with me at all times I probably would.

It was great fun to participate, and a real honour to play, exhausting too. A combination of exhaustion and a couple-too-many post-match Margaritas led to me falling asleep on the Tube on the way home and me getting picked up by the police. Beat that Mr McEnroe.

Photoshop Tennis

The Pims has been poured, the lawns have been trimmed, the strawberries are on ice. It's must be almost time for my Photoshop / Layer Tennis match with Cookie. You can follow the progress of the match here, commentary will be provided by Anne from I Like, and many thanks to Coudal and Adobe for running the whole thing.

For those that don't know the procedure, the 2 of us will be taking it in turns to create artwork in a series of volleys, building on what has just gone before. And with only 15 minutes for each turn its going to be a mad flurry of paper, crayons and Wacom pens. Here's an image I warmed-up with, it was done in 7 minutes so maybe there's still hope for me.

Sofa Surfers

Some very brave friends decided to supply alcohol and pens to all of us that came to their housewarming party to decorate their sofa. Here's some photos of its development/deterioration. I like the photo of me, Nicky and Cookie each beavering away on different cushions - wish I'd worn a single coloured t-shirt too, my plaid ruins the composition!







I really need a haircut, Nicky nearly used-up a whole Sharpie pen trying to draw my portrait...

Psst! London Screening

Psst! Pass It On has got a London screening, far handier than that one in LA the other day, so I'll be going along, hope some of you other cockney-sparrows come too. Here's the details:

(Psst! is a collection of 17 collaborative films made by some very clever people. I made a bit too, about a young womans sexual awakening with a snail. Saucy.)

Little Big Disc

Finally today, after about 3 years, LittleBigPlanet, the Sony Playstation 3 game I've been fiddling around with and designing comes out in Europe! (It should have been out a couple of weeks ago, but we had a slight hiccup with a licensed music track which was all over the news for a few days until Mr Russell Brand and Mr Jonathan Ross managed to divert the press once again).

Look here it is, in the box:



Note the cunning use of the Rexbox knight logo that has sneaked onto the disc, and is about 4 times larger than the Sony logo next to it, mhahaha.

Anyway, so now you should be able to buy the game pretty much anywhere - and although I would say this, I hope you do, because its a really fun game and more than that, it's been designed so that anyone can build and share their own levels and enviroments in the game with the rest of the world (well, the rest of the world that has a PS3 and a net connection).

I'm really looking forward to seeing what everyone makes - because its been a long time since it was possible to really make games in your bedroom (I once made a very ambitious cyberpunk RPG with my friend Richard on the Amiga written in AMOS, with a disturbingly realistic death animation of your character slipping around in their own blood. Ah, happy days.) So I'm really hoping with this game we'll see the same kind of mad creativity you used to get back in the 80's when people used to make games about stuff that interested them, no matter how small and mundane or surreal and fantastical - rather than just rehashing what sold quite well last season.

Here's a few examples of fun stuff people have made so far (as its already just been released in USA and Japan)

Kaneda's bike from the Akira movie.
A music video using the tilt-controller and automatic lip-synch.
A car that plays Sweet Child O Mine as you drive.
A cardboard remake of Gradius.
A very topical election level.
A Joker costume.

Plus 1000s of fun levels that you just have to play to enjoy. The mad thing is everytime I turn on my PS3 theres hundreds more to play, it's a constant distraction and it's ruining my life. But in the best possible way!

And if you make anything with LittleBigPlanet, let me know - I want to see :)

LittleBigPlanet BigLittleShop

As the LittleBigPlanet hype machine rumbles on, Sony have built a pop-up shop in London, themed around the game, to run creative workshops, give punters the chance to play it on PS3, and hopefully buy it once it comes out next week!

It's a really nice design, giant furniture that makes even the largest visitor feel tiny and child-like, huge Sackboy dolls, and it was fun to see my artwork plastered (or should that be stickered) all over the walls. It's basically the closest you'll ever get to being inside the game unless you mess up like Jeff Bridges in Tron and get beamed into your PS3.

Unfortunately when I skivved off work today to return to take some pictures it was closed for the day, so all of these where taken from the outside, and without happy-faced monsters fighting with their parents for "just one more go" - which it was like at the weekend. Even TVs Jonathan Ross was spotted there on Sunday playing it with his kids and doodling on the doodle wall. Awright.








More pictures on my Rexbox Facebook page.

If you fancy coming along the address is:

Unit 1&23 Thomas Neal's Centre,
Covent Garden, London, WC2

Saturday the 11th Oct 2008 to
Monday the 17th Nov 2008

Doodled Arm Tactics

Thanks everyone that came down to the exhibition. It was a whole load of fun, and great to see so many friends and meet so many strangers (some more stranger than others). Hopefully all those that attended managed to scrub off whatever drunken doodlings I did on their bodies by now (I hear a bath full of bleach, tippex and fake-tan are the best way to remove them). 

If anyone has any photos of it all, or links to Flickr pages, blogs etc, let me know, as me and Brynley would like to collect them all together, to preserve the event in digital form.

Here's my arm, at the end of night two. It's waving you all goodbye until next time...

Shunted

The opening night of ArtInIndustry was an amazing success. People came, people looked, people made deformed sockmonkey monsters, people got drunk, admiring glances were made, music was played, people watched some episodes of my new Grip Wrench thing, and we got trapped in a lift with a fisherman and a copy of the London AtoZ.

 

And the best thing is, it's still on for another 3 days. So get yourself down there tonight, or friday or saturday night. I'm having a night off tonight, but I'll be back tomorrow to deface faces, and attack arms with my marker pens. Just like in this wonky photo:

Grip Wrench seemed to go down well, with the auidence laughing, and mainly at the bits that were supposed to be funny. Although many said I have a sick and diseased mind, and I should be put to sleep before I damage the world any more.

There was loads of beutiful artwork to see, although I need to look at it all again as I got completely caught up in Nickys Making Things Club workshop last night. It was quite surreal to see so many people in a club all sitting on sofas sewing and making. My attempts at drunken sewing led to all the eyes falling off our attempt at making sock monster conjoined twins, thankfully I had a talented seamstress to patch them up again before the blinded pair stumbled into box of pins.

Jaypeg got some better photos of this little corner of craftiness. And I'm sure there will be more turning up on the internets soon. Although, of course, it would be much better to get down there and see for yourself, and join in..

ArtInIndustry

Being Industrious

I've just been finishing off a canvas for an exhibition I'm exhibiting in next week - the show is called Art In Industry, in Shunt (in the amazing catacombs beneath London Bridge station) and features the work of several friends of mine, built round the loose theme of showing things produced away from of their main commissioned work.

I'll also be screening some episodes of my Grip Wrench show in the cinema area, which will be the first place to get to see them in the UK. Not only that, the now completely finished tent by me and the other members of 70p (7-Tipi) will be on display too.

And here's the extra canvas I've been painting for it. And if you're free next week come along to the exhibition, its going to be a fun one. Details here.

Tipi doodled

Thanks everyone that came along on Sunday to Stokefest, and to all those that offered encouragement while I carried on doodling with what felt like a broken hand. It was a great day: hot sun, cold beer, felt-tip pens, bikinis and spray paint. Thats what I call a good day.

Here's some of my doodling on the tipi. More photos on Facebook, and a few are starting to turn up on Flickr when I did a search earlier. 

It's hopefully going to have some more work done on it this week and then the final piece will be displayed in a exhibition very soon, watch this space..

Rexboxhornypants:

A glimpse of SteakZombies panel alongside mine:

Time to pack up and find a pub:

70p at Stokefest

If anyone is around east London this Sunday I'll be at Stokefest, the free festival in Stoke Newington, Hackney, doing some live urban art next to the stage. As the festival is a little oasis in the city we've decided to work on a different kind of canvas, a tent!

They'll be around seven of us working on the tent. Tortoy, one of the collaborators on this, came up with the genius name for our tent decorating collective: 70p (Seven Tipi). 

Hope to see you there!

Webby Winnah!

Yay! Thanks for voting everyone. Orange Unlimited won the peoples vote for the Webbys for Best Visual Design (awards which Vanity Fair calls "Better than the Oscars") so thats nice. I shall now drink drink some beer, rip off my clothes and dance with strangers. East London will probably be evacuated shortly.

Webby

The great gods of the Internet (I've decided they are called LOLZ & PRON) have decided to award the Orange Unlimited site I made with Poke London a Webby nomination in the "Best Visual Design - Aesthetic" category. 

It's a public vote, so if you feel like voting, or checking out any of the other finalists (all of which are amazing) go henceforth here.

Design Museum: Designs of the Year

My eyes are going funny. I've been spending the last few days designing and animating in a retro pixel-art style, and now the world around me is talking on a 16-bit 2D videogame appearance; I'm walking sideways and picking up roast chickens off the ground to regain "health" but at least I seem to have unlimited credits. Anyway, all will be revealed soon, here's a teaser:



Anyway, back in the real, 3D, realistically rendered world, the Design Museum has revealed its "Designs of the Year" Award / Exhibition - and the Orange GoodThingsWillNeverEnd site I produced with Poke is in it. Blimey. It was quite odd to see my animated doodles of vikings and sasquatches featured alongside the iPhone, the Nintendo Wii, Peter Saville's identity for Kate Moss, the Helvetica documentary and the Dior spring collection. But I shan't complain..

I was celebrating far too much to point a camera at anything on the opening night, but since then I've sneaked back and recorded some evidence:













It's a nice exhibition, and worth attending if you're in London, even if you just spend the whole time playing with the Tenori-On machine: