A creative week in London

Hope you’re doing well. I recently got back from a trip to London. I’m originally from South East London but now live in the countryside, so it’s always nice to go back, see the city, and catch up with family.

While in London we went to the Natural History Museum to see the dinosaurs, and more importantly (for my son) the Pokémon collaboration. It was a lot of fun and the museum never disappoints.

This newsletter is a little shorter than normal because I’m in the middle of a game jam and, thanks to the holiday, I lost half my time. I’ll talk about the jam in a minute, but first I wanted to share some of the things we did while we were away.

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Pixel Cam

Shortly before we left for London I made a small camera tool. I thought it would be fun to make a retro pixel camera inspired by the Game Boy Camera. I’ve seen a few people posting images taken with Game Boy Cameras recently and, since I have some experience with photo apps, I thought it would be fairly easy to do. I ended up doing some work on it while we were away, and used it to take random photos around the city.

My son and I had a lot of fun picking colour palettes and using them as we went around London. I actually broke the app one morning and didn’t realise until we had left the hotel and were on our way into central London. Fortunately my web host has a control panel that let me roll back to an earlier version, so I was able to fix it while standing on the platform at the train station.

One of the things I am most pleased with is that I was able to turn it into a PWA so you can install it on your phone and use it like a normal camera app, even offline. As long as you install it (or add it to your home screen), it will work almost the same as a normal camera app.

I have plans to turn this into a video camera that creates short pixel-style GIFs, but that will take a bit longer to finish. In the meantime you can try the camera out for yourself, and I’d love to see any photos you take with it.

I’ve posted some of my pictures below.

Try Pixel Cam

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My Neighbour Totoro

For me, one of the highlights of the trip was getting to see My Neighbour Totoro in the West End. I have been a huge fan of Studio Ghibli for a long time, and I have seen many of their films multiple times, but I’d never seen one live on stage. It was a really fun experience and the show was magical. The Totoro puppets were amazing, the set design fantastic, and it was surprisingly funny.

It turns out the puppets were made by the Jim Henson Company, which I thought was awesome. If you get a chance to see it, I highly recommend it.

Watch the video

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Aardman at the Young V&A

If you read this because of Brush Ninja then you know I am very interested in animation. At one point I wanted to work for Pixar or Disney, but I ended up working in web dev and games instead. I still love animation and find the process and craft fascinating.

As such, this exhibition at the Young V&A was a treat. I’ve actually seen an Aardman exhibition before in Bristol, where Aardman are based, but this one had lots of new models and drawings, so it was great to get up close to the real thing.

The models in particular were, as expected, amazing. They had examples of Robin from Robin Robin, Wallace and Gromit, Shaun the Sheep; and Over the Garden Wall, which I wasn’t even aware Aardman had worked on.

Besides the models, I really enjoy seeing the sketches and storyboards that show the process of creation. I love seeing the evolution of ideas and how everything comes together in the final product.

Below are a few of the dozens of photos I took of the exhibition. If you get a chance to see it, I highly recommend it.

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Currently…

I’m mostly working on a game jam game at the moment. The theme is “Machines”, so I am making a game about a small robot trapped in a factory. You create a list of commands to guide it out of each room by pushing crates and avoiding hazards. It’s a puzzle game with a pseudo-programming twist.

I have the core game working, but since I was on holiday for a week of the jam I only have six days to finish everything, and I’ve already spent about three hours this morning looking up My Neighbour Totoro and Aardman.

Below is the first screenshot of the game. By the next newsletter it will be finished and I will hopefully have gotten the most votes 🤭 and become an internationally famous game developer. Or more likely, there will be a finished game you can play and I’ll have something new on BeepMini.com.