/vr/ - Retro Games

>>7089253
>Gamasutra: What was the process of creating characters like? Did the team ask for very specific things was asking for a character or just a general idea? Was there much back and forth, or tweaking?
>Greenblat: Most of the time I would give them a series of sketches, maybe three or four choices and they would choose one or two, then I'd do another two. Sometimes I'd hit it right away and sometimes I'd have to do it over and over again. The best example is Lammy herself, which took me forever; I did four or five different Lammys and #2 was put in the game.The first fully finished level that they were testing had this other Lammy... they had gone all the way to the animation and then they asked me to go literally back to the drawing board.
>And designing the main character is the hardest part; the main character is the logo basically. [I had done many others but] they went through four official Lammys that were approved but rejected later on. [The final design was] so far from my original plan that I was a little disappointed, because it's supposed to be a lamb. I had a curly haired, lamb-looking character. And then the whole Natalie Imbruglia thing came, the Australian pop star, where they wanted it to look like her.

Hindsight is 20/20 and as someone who's only known the final design, it's really hard to imagine Lammy ever reaching the (admittedly still moderate) popularity and fondness she carries 20 years later with any of the older designs. However, I can also totally understand Greenblat's feelings about having to scrap everything so often and regularly, especially with how the other characters like Katy and Sunny and Parappa himself were apparently pretty much one-and-done things.