LittleBigPlanet 2 Preview

Q: My opinion is that game art design is not generally particularly adventurous. This is your field. Do you agree with that?

KE: I see where you're coming from. We are in the impressive period of video games more than the expressive one. Expression always comes a lot after being impressive. You have to conquer the skill and then start saying something. You learn the guitar, you learn the chords, and then you start making the song. The thing is that a lot of games want to mimic movies, nature and existing things. The achievement would be, look what we've done, we've used the digital medium to achieve the prehistoric look. That was the first hurdle. And still is, to be honest. But what we're trying to do is go further. When we were researching the first game, countries of the world and looking at the originality of the primitive arts in the world. I really like to open the influences. In LBP2, looking at things that range from futurism to junk art, to combine things that are not easy to combine in the first place but we work with it. We started the Fifties with a suggestion from one of our producers, actually. We started looking at retro sci-fi stuff, it's kind of cool. And then when we were looking in that we found some of the old propaganda stuff. Then I was like, my God! The different images of idealism of the different parts of the world were so amazing. The East to the West, everybody had their competing vision.

At the same time there were fine art movements happening as a response to the war. The technology, constructivism, all these things are incredible achievements. We look at that, try to put it together in an image, see what that image looks like, and then break it down into a LBP collection - the sticker, the decoration, the background - and see what hybrid it can create. The steam punk example; if you want to do a purist steam punk you can. But what we tried to present is we're going to expand the steam punk, we're going to mix it with Victorian decadence and see if it works. If it manages then we're encouraging people to mix themes. It would be great to see people mixing. We want to be seeding the example of risk. Take the risk, don't be safe. Still try to make it work. Never do anything for the hell of it just to be different, but it's good to try to mix. Collage is a difficult thing because it can easily look muddy and messy. You want it to have meaning. We tried this time to have our inspirations coming from known genres. The Renaissance palette can allow you to create you're fairytale look. But then you can take that and put some Lady Gaga twist on it. Then it's something new. That's the whole thing. We want people to make new movements, make new art statements.

Q: Obviously LBP 2 has better graphics than LBP. How important is technical power in terms of the consoles for good graphics? The Wii is the best-selling console at the moment, but graphically it's the least powerful. Does hardware matter in terms of developing great graphics?

KE: It's a good question. Me, my first answer is no, I don't. I think good artists make good graphics. That's the truth. The pencil is the best answer. You can still do overwhelming things with it. But, the PlayStation… because in the real world games are very complex pieces of software, if you want to experience… LittleBigPlanet is quite hard to do on any other console because it really needs the muscle. It needs the processing power because it's not only a graphic tool, it is trying to create AI, it's got real time physics, it's got real dynamic lighting. I could rephrase it and say the technology is great, but you've got to use it, not be used by it. That is the dilemma. A lot of times people just say, ah you can draw 60 polygons with that graphics card, let's draw 60 polygons. That's not a good reason. You draw 60 polygons if you want to, if your design needs it. But if you don't, draw as much polygons as you need. We definitely have used the full power. And if there was more in the machine we would have used it. Especially because of the creative tool we have. If you want to go decadent, like you go, I want to put hundreds of those creatures, the limitation is creative. We all have limitation. You've got words that you need to confine for your article. Somebody's got a canvass that has a size and proportion. If we had all the power that is possible, that will make us get lost. I'm a bit of a dinosaur. I see the new high quality televisions, the graphical detail I can't see anymore. How detailed can you get? I want to see a good story and a good composition, something that moves me. Of course quality and power matters for this kind of industry, and it's used. But definitely there comes a time when the expression and the application are far more important.

Q: Is it fair to say this game could only have existed on the PS3?

KE: Especially LBP, the way it's written, yeah. To be honest, I'm an art guy so I don't really know. But hearing the conversations that we have, a lot of the time we go, why can't we do this? And we go, it's full. The memory is full. We have that conversation every day about some feature. It's just really using the full range of the beast.

Q: Apart from this game are there any other games that stand out to you in terms of the art design?

KE: Yes, a lot. To be honest, traditional games like Killzone or Uncharted are incredible and they take so much effort and time. It's easy to get impressed by the sort of novelty ones, but traditional games take a very hard choice because they have much more competition, and they have to stand out. So they really have got to a state now, a class, that is really amazing. So that is in the traditional. I really like the soothing, therapeutic ones, like Flower and Flow and these kinds of games. It's like, yeah, man, that's all I need! Sofa time. These are cool. And I like Ico. Ico is special. It was one of those ones that had the effect that you get when you are a kid and you watch something magical.

LittleBigPlanet 2 is due out on the PS3 later this year.