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:

Letting The Beatles Be

I got asked recently to take part in a fun project - redesign or reinterpret the cover of any album from the top 100 albums of all time (as chosen by Pitchfork) for the folk at Becks Beer.

So I leapt on "Let it Be" by The Beatles (well, actually I leapt on Purple Rain, but Kate Moross had already picked that one, so I swapped pvc and superbikes for coudroy and facial hair). I've written up in more detail on Becks' Flickr page my thoughts behind choosing this cover, mainly for the challenge of creating a likeness of the band while also sticking with my bold style, so you can read more about it in detail there.

But here's the image:





And here's some work-in-progress, as you can see from the Ringo sketch I was originally thinking of using a more realistic style, closer to brilliant artwork they used themselves on Revolver (by Klaus Voormann) before switching back to a bolder simpler style so I could concentrate on getting likenesses with as little extraneous detail as possible.





And in Beatles related news, there's a new trailer out for the forthcoming Beatles Rock-Band game, which, although I have not interest in actually playing, looks amazing in the Sgt Pepper segment at about 1:00 in. I want to see more games that use colour, lighting and post-effects like that more. Down with polycounts! Up with art direction!

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.

Psst!

I've been asked to make a film for this years PSST! Pass It On - 17 collaborative films made by covens of motion-graphics warlocks and animation alchemists. It'll be launching around the world at various events in the next few weeks, and you can pre-order the DVD here.

My film is a collaboration with Bran Dougherty-Johnson of Grow Design Work and my particular section concerns a time-traveling aphrodisiac, a cup of tea, and a famous nursery rhyme. It looks like 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

onedotzero twothousandandeight

This years onedotzero kicks off soon, traveling the world and squirting hot beautiful images into the audiences eyeballs. There's going to be something exciting happening in Buenos Aires to kick off the world tour from the 26th to 28th of September. In the meantime here's a preview video of some of the things screening at this years tour. At 00:17 you might be able to spot Grip Wrench playing a guitar solo on the roof of a monster truck to a leopard...


onedotzero_adventures in motion from onedotzero on Vimeo.

Seeing this video has reminded me to get back into using Vimeo again, its such a great site for video. Here's my very out-of-date Vimeo page.

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!

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:

Grip Wrench Premiere

My secret animated series, that I've been working on for longer than I can remember, is going to start being revealed this week, at the Future Film Festival in Bologna, Italy. Funded by MTV's Qoob channel (which also brought us all Grant Orchards exceptionally fun Love Sport series) its a show based around fictional 80's action movie star Grip Wrench.



While Grip maintains a Hollywood career, and acts in various iconic movies from the 80s, he also struggles with the memories of active service in Veitnam, and once the camera starts rolling he starts confusing make-believe with his war-torn memories, causing havoc for himself, his long-suffering director and any other cast members. All of which has some similarities with the happy-faced carnage I filled my 2004 short "Violence" with.

There's 10 episodes in all, although I'm only showing the first 3 this week, based on Vietnam movies, on cult movie The Warriors, and Miami Vice. So if anyone is making a trip to Bologna, hope you enjoy it, and come and say hello. And watch this space for more details, and news on the next 7 episodes.

Here's the posters for the first 3:

Sneaky Photos

Here's some photo evidence of the Sneaky Critters exhibition.
Plus, extra photos here, where you can also use cash/money to buy art/pictures.




Detail from my tiniest canvas.




A bigger one.




Lots of great stuff. Julies canvas in the foreground.




People. Artwork. Beer. A winning combination.

Sneaky Critters Exhibition

Residents of London may care to note - I'm taking part in an exhibition on the 22nd. Woo. It's called Sneaky Critters, and it being curated by Ms Sneaky Racoon herself. So come down to the Bodhi Gallery on Brick Lane and say hello, and I'll say hello back and everyone will be happy.

Here's the official flyer: