Five Questions From Students: Tearaway Part 2

This is part two of an interview that some of students had with Rex Crowle, the creative lead on the PlayStation Vita game Tearaway. I was very proud of the questions that my students came up with and hope that you enjoy reading it as much as I did facilitating it.

Once again, a huge thank you to Rex for taking the time to answer their questions. You sir, have made a huge impact on our class. Lest we not forget this...

Thank you.  Looking forward to what is next.

M's questions

1. What do you do to keep the creative process going throughout the entire project?

Some times we have game-jams, short periods of time where everyone experiments at the same time on new ideas. When we decided to do one to make the most of all the unique things the Vita could do, and thats when we created the drum-skins, taking photos of textures to put on the animals and lots of the stranger parts of the game! Things change so quickly while making a game that there is usually something fresh to play with, to inspire you a bit more, or someone interesting to talk to. 

2. Everyone has their favorite parts, like me with Atoi. But what is your favorite part?

I like playing catch with the Squirrels! It's fun just picking up some items and throwing them back and forth. I like that it doesn't give you points or make you loose health or do anything negative, its just a nice moment to spend with a little animal!

3. Is there anything about Tearaway you don't particularly enjoy?

Because I'm more of an artist than a fighter I enjoyed making things in the game a lot more than destroying them.

4. How did you rejoice after Tearaway released?

We had a great party! Lots of members of the Tearaway team decorated a venue near the office so it was covered in Papercraft all over the walls - it was like the end of Wassail Orchard when the music starts playing (except there weren't any giant fingertips making the records go around!)

5. Will you make another game?

Definitely! We already showed some little glimpses of things we've trying out on Playstation 4, when that console was first announced last year. But I'm not allowed to say anymore about that just yet!

Five Questions From Students: Tearaway Part 1

With the release of Tearaway, some of the students in my class who choose to pick it up.  After playing it, I reached out to the games creative lead, Rex Crowle, to see if he would be willing to answer some questions from a few of my fifth graders. Here are the first five questions from their interview.

A huge thanks to Rex for taking the time to answer these questions. Enjoy.  

R's questions

1. Does Tearaway use the same software as Little Big Planet?

No, it uses different software - we needed to create different software because this time we wanted to build a 3D world to explore, instead of the 2D world of LittleBigPlanet which was more like a race from left to right. We also had to put a lot of effort into simulating the paper, so it looked and reacted like paper, and thats not something our LittleBigPlanet software could do. 

But while making a game we use lots of software as well that is more common like Photoshop to make concept-art, diagrams and storyboards on how the game will look and work.

2. Was Tearaway difficult to create?

It was! It was very hard to make the world react and move like paper, and because games don't normally do that we had to invent how to make it happen, which took lots of experimenting and hard-work!

3. Is Tearaway based off of anything?

It's mainly based on just remembering how creative it was to play with paper at school instead of just using it for emails in a office (we're all very old now ;). Some of the influences also come from some of the old traditions of England, or other areas of the world. I originally came from a place called Cornwall, which has a lot of strange traditions, and lots of Valleyfold are based on those. Tearaways music by Kenny and Brian is influenced from folk music, and music from Scotland and South America. 

4. Who were the people (characters in the game) that talked to Iota along the way?

In Valleyfold they are called Mummers - they are based on an old tradition of people dressing up in disguise and putting on little plays, that they took from door-to-door. I really liked the way costumes for those events where created, and felt they would work well in paper. Stefan, who made them in the game, and Lluis and Mike, who animated them, made them come to life perfectly. Each one represents a different part of the natural world - some are like trees, some are like the fruit on trees, and some are like the animals that like eating fruit. 

In Sogport the characters are Mermen and Mermadames - they are fish that have come to live on the land, using the special yellow trousers they make to allow them to walk around. Half of the characters on Sogport are very traditional, they still stay by the sea in the harbour, and then the other half are more experimental and have decided to explore the world, and even outer space. They are the ones have have built the laboratory to study whats outside of the island. I thought it would be interesting to have some characters that like traditional things and some that like modern things - because lots of the story behind the game is about old things meeting new things. 

5. Did the prototypes look totally different from the released versions?

Yes, it started out with an isometric camera (a style that doesn't use perspective to make things get smaller as they get further away, unlike the real world) and it was more about exploring dungeons. At that point there wasn't the character of the Messenger (iota or atoi) it was just your finger, tearing into the world, with a little face drawn on it. I've attached a photo of how that looks, as its strange to describe! But as we experimented we found it was better to use your fingers for big dramatic moments, and then have a paper character inside the game, who you would control with the joystick.

An Over Due Extra Life Write Up

This post is way over due. On November 1, 2013 my class of fifth grade students started something amazing.  We held our first ever Extra Life gaming marathon. The kids each brought in money to donate to a local hospital through the Children Miracle Network. We raised a total of $160.00, which was great.

On the day of the event, the students came down to the gym.  We set up four systems on televisions around the area playing multiplayer games like Little Big Planet 2, When Vikings Attack, NintendoLand, and Smash Bros. Brawl. The grand gem of our event, however, was our tournaments on the big projector screen. We held two events, a Wii Sports Tennis open and a Mario Kart Wii Grand Prix. Our Tennis activity was a pairs competition. Half of the brackets was boys only, and the other bracket was girls only. In the end our boys champions met our girls champions in the finals. In an epic match the girls team brought home the crown. Our Mario Kart tournament was just as fun.

The students also enjoyed pizza, junk food, and other refreshments. Every hour we gave away a Nintendo based grab bag of goodies and every student went home with something small.  It was a great night for what I hope will become an annual event for our school.  Here are some of the photos. Enjoy.

The New Year has Begun

My last story to share is that the new year of our design club has kicked off. I have six new, creative minds ready to sink their teeth into the Little Big Planet franchise. The group began last Friday. As we did last school year, I am letting them start out by playing the games to really see the types of things they can do if they want to. It is always fun to watch them get in and enjoy the different aspect of the LBP2 and Karting.

I learned a lot working with the kids last year, and I am excited about this year’s group. I have some fun ideas about having the students contribute to the blog and, time permitting, do a team create competition where other students in our school judge the finished products. One step at a time though.

Love this picture. Our group meets on Fridays this year.

Also, I have a fifty dollar commitment from a backer to help get the group a PS Vita and several who have already given. Thank you to all who have helped so far. This will put our group exactly $66 away from adding that to our repertoire of hardware and open up new possibilities.

If you can help with that, please go to this link at donorschoose.org.

What does Awesome Sauce taste like?

My second bit of news is a little late, but it has been a busy first 9 weeks of school. I want to thank both the Little Big Planet community and more specifically our awesome Community Manager, Steven, for granting to me one of Little Big Planet’s highest honors. At the beginning of the school year I received the Awesomesauce pin. That is digital metal that distinguishes your work in Little Big Planet as valuable and important. When my wife, Kathleen, asked why this was such a big deal I explained it like this. This game has been played by around 4 million people or so. According to the Little Big Planet wiki, I was the 13^th person to receive the pin. So, yeah, it is really cool.

Thank you all for your support, we are not done yet though, more on that tomorrow.

Helping to Give Extra Life

I will be posting three very exciting bits of news over the next three days.  First, I am excited to announce that on November 1, 2013, our school will be holding an Extra Life event. If you do not know, Extra Life is a yearly fund raiser run by the Children’s Miracle Network to raise money for local hospitals and join the fight against cancer among kids. Normally the marathon is a 25 hour one, but what we are doing is five hours on five systems for students in grade five (get it?). This way we meet the 25 hour requirement. Student and some of our teachers will be playing from 3 pm until 8 pm. We are planning to play lots of cooperative and multiplayer games and even hold a couple tournaments. Our goal is to raise $100, and over half of our fifth grade is participating.

If you read this and feel moved to donate feel free to join our cause at my Extra Life page or go to Extra-Life.org and search for Adam Renard in the upper right corner. You can expect a huge write up about the event that weekend.

Very exciting stuff, and more tomorrow.

Kicking Off the New School Year

Wow, what a fast summer!  My family did so much that it was hard to keep up. My summer goals did not get as far as I would have liked, but I made some huge progress in my learning levels.  Our school year has started, and there is a major buzz around the fifth grade about Little Big Planet.  I have some big things in store for them, some of which I can’t even talk about yet. However, this is the stuff that I can share about this year so far.

Help Us Get a Vita Update

We are working with DonorsChoose.org to get a Vita for the design club.  Currently we have had nearly forty dollars pledged, which is great as they are all people outside of the school, my family, and friends I have regular contact with.  Currently we need $330.  What I am hoping is that we can get 33 people who will commit $10 to the cause.  If you are in the United States, I know that this is a tax deduction.  Please help. I promise you, we will use it.  You can use the link below or the one to the right of the screen.  I will keep you updated as people donate on how close we are.

Help our students add some new tools to their bag. <-- Just Click This Link

Design Club

Student Applications go out this week and those who want to be involved this year have to get proposals back to me by next week. After that, we will begin our design process, namely teaching the kids the ins and outs of basic tools.  I am excited because this year the students have longer to work on their projects, because of this I am toying with the idea of assigning multiple projects or even a team project to students. It should be exciting.

Testers

I want create a small testing group. I am looking at bringing these students in once a month to assist the design club in finding things that don’t work in their levels. However, while we wait for those kids to get the basics down this testing group may be trying some of the Team Picks or perhaps work with one of the fan sites to find levels to play for feedback.  This way the community gets different opinions and my testers get to practice finding positives and negatives in levels.

Reviews to Better Writing

Over the summer I found out that I would be moving from fourth grade to fifth grade. Here in Virginia fifth graders have to complete a writing standardized test where a big part of the score is a writing sample.  To encourage students practice as well as expand the site, fifth grade students will have a review writing contest each grading period where they can write a video game review for extra credit.  The reviews have to be written in the format that we use to prepare them for their test. They will be scored using the same rubric and the three best will be featured here on the site for all to read.  I am really excited to see what the students come up with for this.

Let's see what bright ideas this years students come up with.

As I said, I am doing more than just the things listed here, but all of that is for another day.  Thank you all for your continued support and encouragement.  I will keep you posted.