AnotherDesignBlog.

Posts for Tag: Characterdesign

Still in love with Nintendo's Game & Watch...

A long, long time ago I was inseparable from my Nintendo Game & Watches - all of which I still have and play. This post is a gratuitous homage to my first (& most loved) electronic gaming system. In this post I've found some great Japanese flyers and an early Japanese Game & Watch advert (all too cool for school), plus some original sketches for Donkey Kong, followed by an embedded version of Game & Watch FIRE for you to play...enjoy!

Nintendo 1980's Game & Watch Flyers from Japan, a small collection of scans of Japanese flyers for Nintendo Game & Watches. These flyers were available at stores that sold Nintendo products in the 1980's - Source: 'Aaron's Game & Watch Info Archive' http://www9.ocn.ne.jp/~aaron/

Sketches of the original Game & Watch Donkey Kong characters by Shigeru Miyamoto, "...a young artist with a degree in industrial design, who had just joined Nintendo as a staff artist; he was brought into the company by Nintendo’s CEO Hiroshi Yamauchi, a family friend, and charged with rescuing Nintendo’s nascent coin-op business. Miyamoto spearheaded a small team of five who quickly set to work..." All of the characters were sketched by hand on graphing paper and he composed much of the music himself (additional music and sounds are attributed to Hirokazu Tanaka). Source: 'Donkey Kong: Great Game or Greatest Game?' article http://www.garagecade.com/?p=52

Play FIRE here...
This post wouldn't be complete without the chance to play a Game & Watch game, so click through the 'Skip ad' button & Play 'FIRE' here, use your left and right keyboard arrow keys...

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'Moyasimon' Manga: Super Cute Bacteria

Moyasimon is very popular in Japan with the comics selling out on release. The creator, Masayuki Ishikawa, was inspired to create it from a trip to an agricultural college where he visited the sake brewing room. The professor told him that when the sake was ready it 'spoke to him' - that gave Masayuki the idea.

"Moyasimon: Tales of Agriculture, known in Japan as Moyashimon (もやしもん?), is a manga series created by Masayuki Ishikawa. It has been serialized in Kodansha's seinen magazine Evening since August 2004. It won the 2008 Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize for Grand Prize and the 2008 Kodansha Manga Award for general manga.The series follows Tadayasu Sawaki, a first-year college student at an agricultural university, who has a unique ability to see and communicate with bacteria and other micro-organisms." From Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moyasimon:_Tales_of_Agriculture

They go up to 11, all on youtube...

More...Moyasimon Vol. 1: Tales of Agriculture - http://www.readaboutcomics.com/2009/12/11/moyasimon-vol-1/ and some Bento Moyasimon: http://www.annathered.com/2009/01/24/bento29-moyashimon/ - Figurines http://en.gigazine.net/index.php?%2Fnews%2Fcomments%2F20100726_wf2010_s_moyas... - Is being made into a real-life film http://asianmediawiki.com/Moyashimon

Parappa (& Friends): Sketches, Artwork, Vids | Rodney Alan Greenblat

Some great initial sketches for Parappa and Major Minor's Majestic March...

Rodney Alan Greenblat's site http://www.whimsyload.com/ - "...In the 1990's Rodney's experimentation with the then novel personal computer led him to the production of interactive CD-ROMs and then to the video game industry. He became the artistic force behind the best selling game for Sony Playstation called "Parappa The Rapper." This led to a whole line of popular consumer products distributed in Japan, and a weekly animated television series also in Japan. Rodney has now become known as one of the worlds top character designers, with his original character franchise "Thunder Bunny" still popular in Japan..."

An Interview with Rodney about Parappa by Austin Bunn for I.D. Magazine - http://www.whimsyload.com/media.items/parappa/paraInterview.html

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