Meatbook Faux

My friend Spaff left his Macbook Air with arms-reach of my doodling pen. As he's a fan of fine foods and gastrobation I thought I'd give it a coating of pork:

I hope he won't mind...

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:

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

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:

Stickers

Stop looking at my withered old hands - look whats stuck on them: Stickers! I just got these printed. They are pleasingly shiny. Shiny is good.




They make good facial decals as well:




Don't worry Laptop. You get one too: