onedotzero london

This weekend onedotzero pounces on London once again, squirting cutting edge images into peoples astonished eyeballs and I'm premiering one episode of Grip Wrench during it.

The episode is called P.R.E.S.I.D.A.T.O.R and marks Grip Wrench's attempt to move out of action movies and into politics, with the aid of his monster truck, his pet leopard and enough explosives to knock the sun out of the sky.

I've stuffed in a few images below, but if you want to see it properly come along on friday (although I think that's sold out) or Sunday. Its in the wow+flutter programme of onedotzero at the BFI, London. More details here.

Hope to see you there!


Grip teaches some under-privileged children how to pilot an attack-helicopter.



Our hero likes to travel in style. Monster-Truck style.



Showing his artistic side, Grip paints this scene of him, his mother, and a terrorist.

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 :)

Reel of Show

Having got a load of projects out of the way I've had a little bit of spare time to cobble together a new showreel, filled with the things I've been doing for the last year or so. Here it is, via the lovely Vimeo (although, I reckon the version on facebook is better quality, which you can watch here)





So, for a bit of a rundown of whats in there, its got:
LittleBigPlanet (Intro, Motion Graphics, Game Graphic and Visual design)
Grip Wrench (Directing, animating, writing, doing the pictures, basically making it)
Orange Unlimited (Designing & animating)
Orange Mr. Sim (Designing & animating)
Orange Nokia (Designing & animating)
PSST! Pass It On (Directing/Animating)
And some older bits like Masked Balls (E4), Legends (onedotzero), Violence etc

Now I just need to get on and finish the new Rexbox website...

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

Mr Sim

As I was logging into my Facebook page this morning I got assaulted by a load of banner adverts with things whizzing about and distracting me, and they were more distracting to me than usual because I made them.

Orange and Poke asked me to work up a character I was playing around with back when I was illustrating and animating the Good Things Should Never End site: an animated Sim card. And he's now gone on to star in a number of ads and print stuff. Famous little fella.

Mister Sim is a miscevious little chap, obsessed with eating and talking and flashing his gold gnashers. He's just generally extremely mouthy despite his tiny size, as you can see from some of the examples I've lifted out of the ads below.

Orange have also made him a fan page too on Facebook, although be careful: he does bite.

Branson Pickle

I don't understand why so many of my doodles turn out looking like millionaire "playboy" Richard Branson. It's quite disturbing.

Especially with the absence of any clothes.

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.

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...

Grip Wrench splashes himself on Computer Arts

My Grip Wrench character has turned up in this months Computer Arts magazine, in a section about my inspiration behind the character and the series. So next time you are down the local newagents buying penny-whistles and moonbeams have a look. It looks like this, and has a stupid quote by me on the cover:

LittleBigPlanet Box Art

Put your eyes in front of this, it's the final box artwork for LittleBigPlanet. It took lots of revisions and hard work from Kareem & me, and dozens of beautiful character renders from Francis & Men Lu (all visual geniuses that I work with at MediaMolecule) but I think we got a pretty good balance between what everyone wanted out of the cover:

Read more about it on the Sony ThreeSpeech blog..

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.

Finished!

See what I'm holding? Its a DVD of the finished 10 episodes of my MTV Qoob series of short films, 18 months in the making!

It's been quite a journey, the biggest project I've ever tried to produce on my own, and I've learnt so much from it. Right now I'm completely exhausted, but excited because I'm getting on a plane in a few hours and jetting off to California.

But once I'm back I'll start posting up concept art and stills on here, and concentrate on getting the official site online, along with streaming versions of the film...

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!

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...

 

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.

Unitard

I knew my latest episode of Grip Wrench needed a unicorn scene, so during the weekend started sketching some whilst sunbathing, which brought on much amusement from my lazing-around-in-the-sunshine companion. I couldn't see what was funny until she pointed out I drew my unicorns with the horn on the end of the nose, rather than on the forehead.

(the other unicorn on that page was drawn after being shown the error of my ways)

I'd never thought about this before, and had always drawn them that way. I must have been been the laughing stock of the Fantasy Arts Guild. I don't know if they have a Guild, but I expect they do, and spend many a fun-filled evening in the tavern ordering flagons of ale from the "barkeep" and taking turns with the Cloak of Invisibility(+3). I better make sure I don't draw my dwarves too tall or my dragons with fur or I'll get punched on the nose by invisible assailant smelling of Real Ale.

Anyway, thanks to her input I've managed to draw a proper Unicorn now. Here's the final result which I'm currently animating. Horses (and horses with mythical horns) are a nightmare to animate, but a nice challenge.

Funny how all girls, no matter if they are artistic or not, seem to be able to draw perfect horses, when its the one thing that most artists say are particularly hard to draw. I guess it comes from huge amounts of doodling in the back of school-books before discovering they were more interested in having a boy than a pony.