Skylanders speed drawing

[Video Link] Last night my 8-year-old daughter and I played Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure (we have a Wii and it is available on the other console platforms and the PC as well). We had a great time playing the game, which is geared for younger players but has sly humor that kids and adults will enjoy (is was written by Toy Story writers Joel Cohen and Alec Sokolow).

The game comes with a "portal," which is a wireless peripheral that you place 3D action figures (included) on to have them appear in the game. The action figures contain an RFID chip (or something like it) that the portal scans and sends to the game console, and the new character immediately gets swapped into the game.

Skylander's Spyro's Adventure Starter Pack comes with three characters, and additional characters (which have different abilities to help you on your quest to save a world from destruction) cost about $7 each.

A friend of mine named I-Wei Huang (who I met when I saw his amazing steam-powered remote control vehicles at Maker Faire a few years ago) designed many of the Skylander characters. The above video is a cool speed drawing he made using Sketchbook Pro.

Buy Skylander's Spyro's Adventure Starter Pack on Amazon.com

• [liquidstar]

  This is pretty cool, but it’s eerie how much the whole set up reminds me of of “game” at the beginning of PKD’s Three STigmata of Palmer Elderich. 

  http://www.allreaders.com/topics/Info_10971.asp

  PKD has that eerie prophet thing going sometimes.

  • [chellberty]

    This is “mixed reality” and that does not correlate with what he meant when they were playing with the layouts, they were using psychoactive drugs or communions with malevolent or cruel and indifferent forces.
    “How many times today they have to play that dumb game? Timothy asked himself. Forever, I guess. He could see nothing in it, but his parents played on anyhow.”
    ~ The Days of Perky Pat
    It was thought by the uninitiated to be a waste of life, As in many of his stories the analogy is of drugs rotting your brains and people need to get back to reality whatever that is. 

    PS if anyone is reading about Fremont right now, it is A RAM Check
    not Aramchek they are  in a machine.think Pente.

• [michael b]

  When I draw, I’m always happy I get the shading right on my cube, cone and sphere…haven’t gotten much beyond that, I guess.

• [shiftdelete]

  This is actually a really fun game. Super polished and excellent presentation. Story by the original “Toy Story” writing duo (although Skylanders pales in comparison).

  Their business model is intriguing if not a little evil (throwing mini video ads into the game for characters you have to buy). But I think it will be successful.

  As for the video, it’s totally brilliant. I love to see concept artists at work.

  (I’m also REALLY loving the PKD analysis!!)

• [greg59]

  …..i’ve always loved Bjorks music… looks and politics……ya just
  have to be on the same organic plane as her to appreciate what she
  stands for….If not…..then you should at least appreciate her for exposing
  her soul to us………..and if not that…….then why bother leaving a
  negative comment……kind of pointless don’t ya think?? 

• [liquidstar]

  (reply to chellberty )
  Well you have the figurines (dolls) that you can buy, and they are transferred digitally into a virtual space (instead of  using a drug to create the identification with that virtual space) where you can identify with and interact through them.  I find the similarity  to be functionally very close.  Presumably the company would want to  put out more and more elaborate figurines with better features, much like the Mars colonists would save up to buy toy cars etc. This business model has been foreshadowed through the use of specially coded cards in cardgames that allow greater functionality in MMO’s, and I see no reason why more companies wouldn’t  pick up on this, and expand it as it is intuitively available to both the customer (squeals when sees her/his favorite figure on the shelf) and the company (sees a physical commodity that can be converted to cash for virtual property).  I am only referring to the layouts part of the book.  PKD seemed to have a very sophisticated approach to drugs, and generally treated them in his work as functional metaphors (take Ubik for example).  As for the layouts in the book,  the critique of American society and its obsession with material goods is obvious – they are literally reduced to toys.  The creepy part is reality has in turn returned the favor.

• [Cactaur]

  That’s a lot of merch… I can hear parent’s wallets weeping.

• [TheMudshark]

  GodDAMMIT, that´s some tight drawing! I think I need a cigarette, and I don´t even smoke anymore.