Items tagged with 'Sackboy'

This post is somewhat overdue, but it’s time to talk about the tragic events that have been unfolding in Japan recently. There’s perhaps no need to go into too much detail, we all know about the earthquake and subsequent tsunami that has caused immense devastation, and loss of life there, we all know they face a very tough time ahead, and can do with all the help they can get.

The games industry obviously has special ties with Japan. These people are our colleagues, friends, family, team mates, opponents, compadres, buddies… you’ve played their LittleBigPlanet levels, and they’ve played yours. That’s why people from within the games industry have come together to build the Play For Japan campaign.

Play For Japan aims to channel the passion and generosity of gamers into a relief effort, through events, donations, and auctions of rare and interesting gaming memorabilia. That’s where we will be joining in, with five auctions we hope will raise some much needed cash for those in need. All the money raised will be donated to the Red Cross Appeal.

Own a piece of LittleBigPlanet history!

Four of our five auctions are for framed original concept sketches, each with a signed copy of LittleBigPlanet 2…

We have framed four pieces of artwork by Francis, the chief creator of Sackboy. They show some ideas for the development of our beloved hessian chum, and if we may be so bold, each one is a piece of gaming history. In the words of Indiana Jones, they belong in a museum! There are four of these pieces of artwork, each one is different, and as they are the originals, they unique.

 

 

Each framed sketch comes with a very special copy of LittleBigPlanet comes with a special uber rare ‘Mm Special edition’ box art slip that has been signed by the whole team here at Media Molecule. (One of them has even been signed twice by me, double value, not at all a mistake!) There are only a very, very small number of these custom covers in existence, they were originally intended to be owned only by Media Molecule staff.

 

Go bid on these auctions!

1. Blue Framed Sackboy Artwork and signed copy of LittleBigPlanet 2
2. Red Framed Sackboy Artwork and signed copy of LittleBigPlanet 2
3. Yellow Framed Sackboy Artwork copy of LittleBigPlanet 2
4. Green Framed Sackboy Artwork copy of LittleBigPlanet 2

Buy your way into royalty.

This is an auction for an in-game crown item for your Sackboy. These are very rare, and usually reserved for competition winners and people who go above and beyond the call of duty.

This is your chance to buy yourself into royalty. Some may see this as cheating, but by winning this item you will be aiding people in need, and we think that is worthy of recognition, naysayers be damned, this is for charity!  Bid on the auction for a Crown.

Update!

Ebay took our Crown auction down, so we have re-listed it as something slightly different - it’s an even sweeter deal now, a Regal edition of LittleBigPlanet 2, and a crown too - check it out!

Bid generously!

All these auctions are available now via ebay, 100% of the profits going to charity. Go forth and bid generously, and remember to check out the big list of other items being auctioned by Play For Japan - there are some great chances to own some rare items! Thanks people!

Back in 2006, When Alex, Mark and Dave pitched LittleBigPlanet to Sony, the loveable bag of fluff we all know as Sackboy was nothing more than debug programmer art - a little pink square body and a triangular yellow head,  aptly called YellowHead.  Even at that early stage the character that would become Sackboy had started to emerge, but how did he evolve from that set of simple shapes into the Sackboy we all know and love? It’s been two years this week since LittleBigPlanet was released, what better time than this could there be to find out?

Last October was the first anniversary of LittleBigPlanet, and being relatively new to Mm, I was keen to find out where Sackboy came from. In order to enlighten us all, I grabbed two of the key artists involved with his creation, dragged them into a room and, bombarded them with questions…. Unfortunately we never actually published the results… until now…

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Seeing as it’s the second anniversary of LittleBigPlanet’s release this week, we thought we’d finally get around to publishing the final two chapters written for the History of Mm section of this very website.

These final chapters are more about the development of LittleBigPlanet than they are about the company forming, as we hear from Alex Evans about how the game started to take shape and become the game we all know and love today.

“Before we put layer restrictions in we had some awesome levels, but the camera was massively zoomed out, with wild camera zones. It was 3D, and deep, but it felt slow, and you never connected with sackboy because he was only four pixels high. “

“So superficially, even though when you watch the old videos it feels much bigger and more epic, to play it was far less fun. There was no character customisation, and the levels were realllly hard.”

“Making and designing them was absolutely jedi mind trick, because it was so unconstrained. You spent hours with Auto Z” [the thing that makes sackboy automatically change layers when you jump.]

“People complain now… You think it’s a bit tricksy now, but in that version you could just jump and Sackboy would go wooooosh and fly 100 meters back to the nearest block. So building levels was really hard.”

Read Part 4: Taking Shape, and Part 5: Ship it! Over in the History section, or if you missed them, you might want to check out the first three parts first!

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Posted by: Spaff

Categories: LittleBigPlanet
Tags: alex evans auto z history sackboy