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.

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...

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

iPOPit

You can also watch it on YouTube here, if you like watching exactly the same thing but on a different page.

PopIt is the name of the menu system we developed, so that any player can build and customise everything in the game, from changing your hairstyle to constructing a LittleBigPlanet homage to ChaseHQ built from toilet rolls and plastic toy soldiers (if that's what floats your boat).

I think everyone's going to have a lot of fun with this when we release the game very soon now...

Taking Stress in the Jaw

Blimey I'm busy. Working my brightly coloured socks off. That PS3 game that I've been working on, LittleBigPlanet, is in its very final stages and looking like a polished and shiny diamond (assuming the diamond is made out of cardboard and milk bottle tops, and has toy wheels bolted onto it, and a rocket launcher). And I'm trying to balance that with some other little projects, and finishing Grip Wrench (Yes, I know, it was supposed to be finished, but needed some last minute changes to keep everyone happy, it was a bit too filthy for TV unfortunately).

In the meantime, here's an ad i designed that's in this months Edge magazine. It was a bit last minute and cobbled it together, but I'm pretty pleased with it. The little Sackboy character in our game is becoming so recognizable that I thought it would be fun to make a version of him out of some of the other assets I've designed for the game. And it you look carefully you'll see my face represents the characters groin, not sure what that symbolism means...

Oh, and if you're a Motion Designer, a Level Designer, or an Art Manager I'm sure Media Molecule would like to hear from you.

Work Work Work

I'm working like crazy at the moment, trying to finish off my Grip Wrench animated series and clear the decks of work before a much needed holiday. So very nearly there, I'm currently putting together the final episode, number 10, and it should be quite a finale. 

Here's a crop of a background I just drew for it, not very dramatic, but I'm pretty pleased with it. I think I'm gradually getting the hang of this drawing thing. Practice, practice, practice. And you certainly get plenty of that working in animation...

I'm looking forward to getting all this out of the way, not because I'm not enjoying it but because this, along with my other major projects lately (a show for Disney, and the design of the LittleBigPlanet game for PS3) have all been longer than a year in duration. So really wanting to do some quick projects after this. First up will be animating my film for this years PSST! Which I'm looking forward to getting my (hairy) teeth into.

And then finishing the new version of my main website that has been sitting motionless on a harddrive for months. And do a new showreel. And go on holiday (look out California, we're coming to visit next month). And make some puppets. And build a animatronic sasquatch. And get tattoos. And practice growing a bit taller. And writing it all down in a big to-do list.

In other news I've decided the size I'd picked for all images on here was stupidly narrow. So from now on they all going to be a bit wider. Which will look a bit ugly until all the old-sized images fall off the bottom of the opening page - by which time I will have probably decided I want to go for an even wider standard...

 

LittleBigPlanet: Tokyo Game Show

LittleBigPlanet, the game I'm working on with my friends at Media Molecule, for Playstation 3, just had its first proper showing in Japan at the Tokyo Game Show. So I needed to make a proper Japanese trailer to go with this.

It's a bit of a compliation of previous trailers I've made for the game, but with a new stop-motion intro (made using a glass table, my hands, some programmers piling up packs of paper as ballast, and some pens), and some motion graphics explaining the 3 key principles of the game: Play, Create, Share.