CAP132 Tut Animation

82
Project four Animation
Creative workshop
The making
of Little
Big Planet
Rex Crowle gives the
inside story on how some
friends revolutionised
the future of videogames,
using a PlayStation 3,
a boy made of sack, and
lots of pens and paper
LittleBigPlanet is a unique platform adventure game
with a large social community that enables people to play, create
and share together in a universe of craft materials. Players control
their own highly customisable ‘Sackboy’ character to solve puzzles
and move across levels, some of which are available with the game.
However, the main focus of LittleBigPlanet is on players creating
and sharing their own levels, using the level and object editor.
As a team, we felt this should be the full ethos of the
game – not just a graphic style – so we designed it to resemble
paint and glue, rather than polygons and extruded vectors. We
wanted players to feel comfortable making constructions in the
game, without being put off by talk of level editors and poly-counts.
Building the software to enable this was a tremendous
technical undertaking, but we embraced everyday techniques and
playfulness in the development. Here, I’ll take you behind the scenes
of the design process, focusing particularly on character design and
the animation of the game.
Rex Crowle Skills

As well as working Create an
as part of the Media interactive experience
Molecule team to Learn to design a
create the LittleBig videogame character
Planet game, Crowle Produce flexible
has created and decals for varied reuse
directed animated
series for Disney,
MTV and the BBC.
www.rexbox.co.uk
Computer Arts Projects _January 2010 www.computerarts.co.uk
CAP132.tut_animation 82 8/12/09 2:14:34 pm

The making of LittleBigPlanet 83
01 From the start, we knew we wanted to make a game that would allow players to
shape and develop their own game experience in ways that naturally interested them. A lot of
the early influence for LittleBigPlanet came from researching the kinds of things people liked
making, without computers getting in the way.
02 We were focused on the idea of ‘creative gameplay’ – a game that you play, but also creatively engage with.
The concept was similar to the way that children are entertained and inspired by art and craft television programmes,
and explores new ways to create together.
Don’t fake it, make it
It’s easy to get carried away trying to fake handmade things in post-production, to
keep full control of all the elements of the design. But this can give designs a bland look, because
they have none of the happy accidents that can happen when done for real. Mistakes are good!
03 Looking at handmade items of craft and fan art, we became interested in the
imperfections that give such objects their character, such as a thumbprint left in a clay pot or
a dribble of paint. These individual marks show that the items were created, and set them
apart from the shiny world of CG and videogames.
Restrain the anarchy

If your design is exploding with colour and pattern, it will have more impact if you also
include some areas of calm. A good way to assess this is to look at your work from a distance and
04 These rough details needed to be seen up close to be noticeable, so a tiny – but magnified – world
seemed like a good setting to show off the imperfections of handmade items, and exhibited the technology required
see if it still works minus the detail. If it doesn’t, delete something!
to recreate it digitally. A change of scale also gave a new twist to these everyday objects, allowing the mundane to
become more dramatic.
www.computerarts.co.uk January 2010_ Computer Arts Projects

84 Project four Animation
05 This tiny/big 06 A number

world needed a suitably of attempts to fuse the
diminutive character, but handmade style with
with a large personality. We a playable character
wanted a figure that could produced a fairly
be customised to reflect terrifying selection of
each player’s personality rejected voodoo dolls,
– this was particularly until our brilliant
important, given that it’s a animator Francis
multi-player game where brought to life the
players have their own version we all now
avatar on screen. However, know, combining a
we didn’t want these recognisable silhouette
avatars to exist as blank with just enough detail
canvases; they still needed to remain iconic. As the
to live within the same character would be fairly
stylised world. small on screen, the
proportions were
adjusted so that its
facial expressions could
be read from a distance.
Look at your work in a different way

Don’t just look at your designs on your computer monitor: print stuff out. This can lead
to insights into your design work, and allows for fast changes. Drawing over your image in pen, or
folding the paper up, can help to kick off new, original ideas.
07 Videogame character design needs a large amount of iteration, because adding

a new ability to a character may require a redesign if the avatar can’t perform the move. 08 The stickering feature, allowing placement of decals on any surface, gave a lot of scope for me to develop
So a number of passes adjusted the limbs to make sure our character could perform all the another aspect of LittleBigPlanet’s distinctive look. By creating hundreds of these graphics in Illustrator and
acrobatic moves needed. A character might have great proportions in a static render, but it Photoshop, I could hand over creative control to players of all artistic levels to remix them at will. Some would be able
means nothing if its legs aren’t long enough to jump with. to use them for more traditional game texturing; others to create characters and storytelling elements.

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09 The main challenge when designing these decals was to keep them as flexible as
possible for varied reuse. This meant deciding which elements to create, and how much to
separate them into components. We had to strike a balance between quick accessibility and
creativity, with less prescriptive elements for more imaginative players. So the elements
might be anything from an eyeball or a tooth right up to a dragon or a fortress. 10 Having these graphic elements was particularly useful when it came to establishing the brand outside of
the game, as we could bring these into service to conjure up the world of LittleBigPlanet, whether printed on a stamp or
painted on the side of a tower block in Berlin. They proved very useful later on in the production when I was creating the
intro, and trying to merge the game with our real world.
Always take a stills camera
When shooting on location, take a good selection of shots of the scene and the actors
with a stills camera. It’s expensive to set these shoots up, so its good to have as much media as
possible to sift through when back in the studio.
11 For the actual setting of the game we decided to ground it in the cultures of the
world. Rather than inventing new worlds we wanted to create new collections of existing 12 Each level was filled with the visual culture and history of its real-world counterpart. After a period of
material. Just as our homes fill up with the items we find on far-flung holidays or in the local research and creating concept art we narrowed down our selection to half a dozen countries with contrasting visuals,
skip, we could give players with the same collecting streak the same abilities, but make the from an English country garden to the colourfully macabre Mexican graveyard and mystical Indian temples. Each one
collections’ creativity useful. was picked to give the game as much visual diversity as possible.

86 Project four Animation
14 With much of the visual language coming from everyday objects, it seemed like a
13 As the world developed, I started to plan how to introduce this setting to players of the game. Rather than good introduction to show them in their original context first before they were remixed, to give
producing a bombastic CG opening to engage the player through drama, I wanted to approach the opening from a foundation to the fantasy. For example, showing a cup used by a thirsty human before it’s
different angle. As the game is so unconventional, I wanted to relax players from the start with a feeling that the game transformed into a ship for a blood-thirsty pirate. I began brainstorming a number of
was a dreamlike extension of their everyday lives. contrasting scenes to get a good mixture of dreamers and dreams.
Do your research first

It’s easy to get carried away with the making stage, but your ideas will be much broader if you do your
research first, especially if you research in all directions in libraries and bookshops. Google Image Search may be handy
for quick reference, but it won’t provide as much depth.
15 Once I’d
assembled mood
boards to establish
the atmosphere,
events and grading,
I moved onto the
storyboard and
animatic stages, to
get the timings right
and so that the
composer could
begin work. And
thanks to the help
of a production
team, we put
together a full film
crew and started
scouting for
locations and actors
to bring the plans to
life, which mainly
occurred on a two- 16 After a successful shoot I moved into a post-production stage using After Effects. This process
day shoot around involved tracking the subtle camera moves, and then matching in overlaid game-like elements, such as
some contrasting stickers. Grading, blurs and camera noise were added to blend the mundane with the magical, building up
corners of London. to the climatic ending in space.

17 The building of the craft planet

was the last addition, created in stop-
motion with a stills camera. I layered up
bits of craft material – bound together with
glue and tape to represent the building of
the planet – in front of a green screen so
that the rendered space background could
be added in afterwards, along with the 2D
animated logo sequence.
18 The final packaging was one of the hardest elements to work on, as there were
so many messages to convey. But as we had built up a strong vocabulary around the game,
it was mainly a case of balancing these themes in a carefully anarchic design, which was
recognisable from the other end of a shop and stood out enough from other game covers,
without turning off too many potential players.
19 The anarchic style of LittleBigPlanet meant some consideration was needed if we were to avoid creating 20 Since the launch, its been fascinating to see not only how creative players have
a muddled design. When putting together the style guides for promoting the game in international territories, it was been inside the game, with well over one million user-made levels, but also outside of it,
important to demonstrate principles of traditional design and layout. We wanted to ensure there was always an creating new artwork and knitting their own Sackboys and Sackgirls. Hopefully, this will
underlying composition – to achieve a mash-up, not a mish-mash. inspire another batch of creations in the future.

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82

Project four Animation

Rex Crowle Skills

Computer Arts Projects _January 2010 www.computerarts.co.uk