I Scream Robo

My first -- and to date only -- experience as a mecha designer came in 2002. Hiroko and I were working on a difficult-to-localize title for the original PlayStation. During a late-night meeting with the game's director at the local izakaya pub, I half in jest suggested that we re-envision one of the enemy characters as a giant transforming ice cream truck. In robot form it'd have ice cream scoop hands, an ice cream cone head, an ice cream parlor awning "skirt," the works.

Little did I realize he had taken me seriously. When we showed up at the office several days later he showed us a short loop his animator had created based on the idea. In the end it never did make it into the finished product, but seeing my clumsy-looking, beer-drenched robot concept come to life on a Japanese animator's computer screen was an amazing experience for this American-born mecha-maniac. I wish I still had the cocktail napkin with my original sketch, if only to highlight the difference between my drawing abilities (which are on par with a third grader) and those of a professional mecha artist.

As to which company and game we were working on... naisho, naisho (secret, secret!)

Comments

[Corey]

That's awesome, Matt! I recently had a similar dream realized when, after a drunken evening scribbling out sketches of the kind of girl I'd like to take home, I woke up with one of them in my bed the next morning! (the napkin, not the girl - it was stuck to my left elbow)

[Matt]

>(the napkin, not the girl)

That's the story of the average mecha designer's love life in a nutshell, I think...