There’s every chance you will be familiar with the work of Rex Crowle. Creating a visual aesthetic on both Little Big Planet and Tearaway that took the gaming world by storm, he’s now he’s working on a brand new game, Knights And Bikes. So we chatted to him about that, amongst other things…

Hey Rex, welcome to Thunder Chunky. How do we find you today?

Hello. Yep, I’m right here, slumped over the Cintiq, with some cats sitting on my shoulders.

What does a usual day-in-the-life of Rex consist of?

I’m trying to have a pretty simple life at the moment, concentrating on one, relatively small, personal project and trying make sure my hands-on art and design skills weren’t drying up. So my days are spent crafting a video game from my kitchen-table as my cats hover around me and give me feedback. I’m one of those freaks-of-nature called “A Morning Person” so I get up very early, have a walk around East London. This lets me get the wind in my hair, some rain on my glasses and some smog in my lungs, and then I come home and launch into game making.

The game I’m currently creating, Knights And Bikes, is a collaboration between me and my friend Moo Yu, so we chat a bit over Slack as the day processes, but mostly I’m lost in my own world, painting the environments, animating the characters, designing the gameplay and levels or working on the overall theme and presentation of the game. Basically, there’s a lot to do! But I have a rule that I have to have at least 2 walks a day, so I’ll usually go on another urban sojourn at lunchtime, to take a break and hopefully see some surprising things that’ll inspire my afternoon. And then an evening of cramming in as many people, films, music, books and games as I can in the evening, so that I’m topped-up again before the next days starts.

We know you well from your superb creative work within video games. Where did your love of video games begin?

I didn’t have any technology as a young child, although I enjoyed the glimpses of games that I got. We had an educational game in my primary school called “Granny’s Garden” which I swear was the most bastard-hard game ever created, but I really enjoyed playing that with my whole class (the school only had one computer, so we played on it as a giant group). I didn’t want to directly play on the computer, as I was intimidated by all the typing you had to do, but I enjoyed shouting “GO NORTH!” with my classmates, and arguing with the ones shouting “GO SOUTH!”. I guess that made my first experiences with games very communal and social, rather than that more isolated stereotype that games sometimes have.

It also fired my imagination, seeing the way these adventures were depicted visually, even though the technology was quite basic. A particular example that made an impression on me was a game called “Atic Atac” which represented the players wellbeing (i.e. their health-bar) as a juicy roast chicken on a plate. But as enemies hurt your character, the chicken was slowly replaced with a boney carcass.

I thought this was amazing. It really showed me how something that could have just been a percentage number, was represented in a way that I felt something about it. I felt actually hungry and weak when my character was low on health, and when my character replenished themselves I could almost taste that chicken! And I guess that’s something I’ve been trying to do ever since: use technology to create lots of little memorable moments of interaction and atmosphere (and with as few visible numbers as possible!).

How did you end up doing arty stuff within the video game industry?

In many ways it was by accident. I hadn’t totally forgotten the impression that early video games had made on me, but after studying Graphic Design in art college, it didn’t seem like there were any links between my qualifications and a job in the games industry. So I got into web design, and started using Flash, initially just for illustration, then for animation, and then I started to learn how to insert bits of code into my animations to control them. In fact, my final year project at college had been my own point-and-click adventure game.

I got inspired by a lot of the Flash pioneers at the time like Joshua Davis (Praystation) James Paterson (Presstube) and Hi-Res!, and made lots of little experimental web experiences and stories, which I guess were a little like tiny indie-games.

These experiments caught the eye of a games developer called Lionhead Studios, run by one of my childhood heroes: Peter Molyneux, creator of the god-game genre and titles like Populous and Theme-Park. And that brought me into the industry, and into an incredible hothouse of creative talent, even if I was just there initially to design their website!

Knights and Bikes looks incredible! Having had such success with Little Big Planet and Tearaway, what made you want to branch out and do an independently crowdfunded game?

Well, to be honest I was a bit tired!

I wanted to have a change in my daily routine, not forever, but I wanted to try a change to get me out of a rut. I’d recently attended a fantastic talk by Peter Chan (Concept Artist on Monsters University, Coraline, Grim Fandango, Full Throttle) which was mostly about his work/life balance, and it was so inspiring to hear how he was creating such fantastic work, but also working from home and having a good pure time doing it.

And obviously its not like one way or another is the perfect path to a creative life. But it felt like it was worth like trying something a little different, to give me a bit of time to regenerate during the usual post-project blues, which I think are pretty normal to get after pouring all your time and energy into some big long-term projects.

Where do you start when coming up with the visual style for a new game?

For me, it’s a mixture of absorbing what’s around you and stimulating you at the time, along with a lot of experimentation and a good deal of evolution as you and the team develop it. I like to have a strong ethos behind the game, not a visual thing, but a reason for the project to exist, so that it can actually say something. And that ethos can then drive all aspects of the project.

So for Tearaway, as that was the first time any of us had made a handheld game, the thought behind the game was to create a world that would feel like you’re holding it in your hands, and you are peering into this fantasy world that thinks you might be its God.

The visual style, of it being a world made entirely out of paper, came from that, but it wasn’t the starting point. It might have been a visual gimmick if we’d just decided to just make the game look like it was made of paper, but what was important was that the world would respond to how you were holding it, and touching it with the touchscreen. For those interactions to feel right, the world needed to be very responsive and tactile, and thats where the visual style of paper-craft came from, so the world would react very directly to how you touched it, more like a fragile pop-up book. So it was just as much about how it felt and sounded, as it was about how it looked.

How did you go about capturing a specific era in time, in this case the 80s, visually?

Well, for Knights And Bikes I’m trying to achieve slightly different angle on representing the ‘80s. Games tend to paint themselves in broader strokes than film, and most 80’s games are super-80s, dripping in neon unicorns. But unless you’re right in the centre of a major city it takes a long time for contemporary culture to trickle down. It’s not like everyone rushed out to buy a DeLoren on the 1st of January 1980, so we’re representing the period in a slightly more nuanced way, especially as the game is set on an island, slightly cut-off from the mainland UK, and is deeply inspired by the rural Cornish landscape I grew up in.

So it’s a combination of personal recollections, the Cornish setting, and visual tricks to depict the world from a “child eye viewpoint”. This will hopefully create a kind of nostalgia, even for younger players that maybe didn’t live through the era, but want to explore another 1980’s setting like they’ve seen in The Goonies or even Stranger Things.

But the secret weapon for creating atmosphere is always going to be audio. It allows so much more depth to be created, and I’m delighted that we’re working again with my favourite audio collaborators: Kenny Young (Head of Audio on LittleBigPlanet and Tearaway) and Daniel Pemberton (LittleBigPlanet, and also composer for The Man From Uncle, Steve Jobs, and King Arthur).

When making Tearaway, I really wanted to create quite a dark folklore atmosphere behind the colourful visuals, as the games setting is very rural and unexplored and unknown. And its inhabitants have created their own customs based on the tiny interactions they have had with our “real-world”, much like a cargo-cult. But that atmosphere is very hard to fully communicate in visuals alone, and because its an interactive experience, the player can accidentally (or deliberately!) undermine the atmosphere you are trying to create, by jumping around on everything. But the right musical atmosphere can really bridge the gap, and subtly influence the player to “play along”.

I saw somewhere that you mentioned Mary Blair as an influence. What was it about her work that really appealed to you?

I really love her use of simplification and stylisation, everything is so beautifully and cleverly composed, but its never cold and dry, there’s still an expressiveness in the brushwork and texture of her pieces. So in other words, they are incredibly clever, but also infinitely charming and expressive.

Are there any other artists that you feel have influenced your work over the years?

So many! As a child it was the anarchy of Richard Scary and the spidery linework of Victor Ambrus, which then progressed through Ronald Searle, Gerald Scarfe, Ralph Steadman and Mike Mignola. Along with lots of the classics, from Matisse to Duchamp. Most recently I’ve been getting a lot of my art influences from Twitter, and its my hobby finding inspiring new artists on there. The #VisibleWomen hashtag recently was like the most incredible curated gallery I’ve ever seen!

Your characters, such as Nessa and Demelza, tend to be slightly abstract, but always feel very human. Is there a process to creating them, or do they just spill out of your head?

I guess the only process I have is to work a lot in sketchbooks, and try to zone-out and just draw. If I try to draw to a brief it’s usually the worst work (so much for my career as a commercial illustrator!) but if I just get myself in the right mood and then fill up a few pages without thinking about it to much, there’s usually a character or two that are suitable for my needs. The abstraction tends to increase as I warm-up, the first few characters on a page will be at the more conventional end of the scale, but as I work, I’ll start to get bolder and make characters that are more extreme responses to the previous thing I drew. And when I reach the point when I’m just drawing overlapping triangles it’s time to take a break!

As the game has been crowdfunded, do you find this gives you more free reign on the design of the game, or do you feel a need to involve your backers in the process a bit?

It’s an interesting balance, because the crowdfunded backing gives you the freedom to work on a personal project full-time, but in order to get that funding you’ve obviously promised your backers a certain experience. So it wouldn’t really be fair to deviate massively from what you’ve originally promised to them, even though a lot of time (and new ideas) will pass between that initial pitch and the final experience.

So I think its important to create projects that have a strong atmosphere in its visuals, audio and overall tone, so everyone “gets it”. But you’ve got to leave yourself open to adjust the storyline and gameplay to make the best game. It’s probably not a huge insider secret that are lot of making games is making-it-up-as-you-go-along, but with a very clear end goal in mind, and having the flexibility to adjust based on what will improve the game. Because you have to experiment, and iterate on what you are creating, to make the best possible experience.

It definitely never feels like a chore to keep the backers updated, because it gives a bit of extra structure and encouragement to us. We always put out a fresh email and web update at the start of a month, and this helps keep us on track. We don’t have a traditional publisher, so it could be quite easy to slide on, obsessing over some tiny detail in the game that probably no-one would notice. But the need to put out a monthly summary means we’re always making sure we have a good mix of new features or content to tell our backers about. So while I might still obsess over some tiny details, we balance it with some bigger new features as well. So it keeps it development moving forward in a more rounded way.

Could you talk us through the process of a sample scene or visual from the game? Does it start in a sketchbook, do you use a graphic tablet etc?

Although I always start in the sketchbook, that’s more of a visual journal where I chat away to myself and work out what I’m trying to make and why, as I find it much easier to externalise all the questions and goals. There’s still loads of drawing, but i’m not necessarily trying to draw the actual scene/character or item, but put myself into the right place to start working digitally.

Once the Mac is turned on, I’ll work up the artwork using a Cintiq and Photoshop. I’ll make simple versions first and save them out as PNGs and import them into Unity (the game making engine we’re using). Once they are in Unity I can compose the individual pieces of artwork together to make scenes.

During this stage I’ll bounce back forth between Photoshop and Unity, layering up the 2D paintings in the 3D scenes, and iterating on the painted elements back in Photoshop to add or remove detail. And while doing this I’ll also be thinking about gameplay and ways the characters would be interacting and navigating through the scene, to create feelings of surprise, drama, or discovery.

What helps you stay creative throughout the day? Music? Coffee? Fresh air?

Definitely all of those things, I also like to have spoken word radio on, usually Radio 4, so I learn something during my day. I used to listen to a lot of mix CDs, but in the days of streaming they are a bit harder to find, so maybe some sets on Soundcloud or BoilerRoom.tv.

And if I’m needing a bit of visual stimulation, I’ll often put a movie on in the background, although my lack of foreign-languages really scuppers a lot of my top choices, as subtitles and painting don’t work well together.

And as I was saying earlier, I take lots of walks, so I can absorb a bit more of the world around me. I enjoy walks because of the amount of surprises it gives you. I get frustrated that the digital world is becoming ever more tailored to our own tastes, so all surprises are taken away from us. But as soon as you step outside, you’re hearing music you didn’t choose to listen to, seeing posters for movies and gigs you’ll never see, seeing people you don’t know, hearing languages you don’t speak. Its all far more inspiring than just seeing more of your own personal tastes repeated again.

Do you have a favourite thing that you’ve bought in the last few months?

Currently I’m actually enjoying getting rid of things, more than acquiring new stuff. But hmm, I guess its always going to be a book. I recently got the Steven Universe Art And Origins book, and that’s one of the best “Art Of” books, as it really goes deeper into the process of making the show. So instead of just featuring the visual design, its about the writing process, the inspirations, the team dynamics – all the stuff that makes it the success that it is.

Finally, what’s the one thing everyone should do today?

If you work in a very small team, or even a big one, its good to start the working day with a hug.

And go for a walk and look at some things that are ugly, bad taste, weird, loud, broken and wrong. They’ll probably have more of an interesting influence on you than the tasteful stuff.

A big thanks to Rex for his time and we heartily recommend that you go and check out Knights and Bikes. And go follow Rex on Twitter @rexbox where he shares lots of interesting little updates on the game, amongst other stuff!