I thought I'd continue with the triumph that is my 3D skills at recreating penguin. I don't think that there will ever be a better representation of the monochrome flightless birds created by a computer. Who needs millions of vectors? About 40 is more than enough I always say. Got to go the phone is ringing.... I think it's Pixar.
Who says I can't create stunning CGI? Look at this beauty. I made it myself, although we are going back a few years here and I think my skills in the third dimension have atrophied a bit. That said I still believe it's a phase and we'll soon be back to glorious 2D. I tried to get a grant from the arts council in Birmingham to get these made as sculptures. They said no and gave the money that year to film someone kicking an empty curry tray through the streets of Sheffield. They really did.
But these pixelated penguins returned when I was working at Gameplay to become the stars of everyone's favourite penguin romance simulation game on the WAP phone: Arctic Love. I'm going to have to see if I can dig up the actual graphics for this game. 24 pixels high and just black and white. These pictures were from the interactive TV version which kept to the pixeled principles of my original vision. I remember the game to be quite fantastically whimsical.
Cast your mind back to the year 2000. Remember that brave new world? Back then I think I was enjoying the best real job I ever had with loads of lovely people. We on the interactive TV game department could basically do what we wanted. You never get that freedom now with game designs and I think it shows. This was the title screen to TACOT racers: Tiny Animated Creatures On Television was the acronym (although there was a another secret acronym for those in the know). This was a top down racer for ITV. I didn't do the CGI but I designed the characters. I don't think we got a UK release but we were massive in Scandinavia. It was a shame Gameplay went spectacularly tits ups but it still remains in its original pre-evolved form here.
