Katamari Damacy’s artwork displays dozens of Easter eggs

[Ed. note: For the second issue of high-end independent game magazine A Profound Waste of Time, illustrator Doug John Miller, editor Caspian Whistler, and game designer Keita Takahashi put together a fold-out cover packed with references to Takahashi’s career, featuring games like Katamari Damacy, Noby Noby Boy, and Crankin’s Time Travel Adventure.

We loved the art, so we asked Whistler to provide the full image and dig through it to point out some of the best Easter eggs, which you can find below. A Profound Waste of Time is currently running a Kickstarter campaign to fund reprints of its first two issues.]

The cover of the second issue of APWOT was the result of many months of work and preparation, and required a great deal of back and forth to get it right. It’s packed to the brim with references to Keita Takahashi’s work and worlds, but rather than detailing each of them (I’ll let you discover them all for yourself), I’d like to let you peek behind the curtain in a few key areas to which we pay special attention to.

The prince: the pea-sized prince

You can see it? We played a lot with scale in this picture, but it was important to everyone involved that the Prince stayed small, especially in relation to other characters. It’s actually quite easy to miss him completely now. Having it small not only felt true to the source material, it also meant that we could have more space for the stage and other characters on the main face of the cover. There’s a lot going on in the image already, so it was really helpful to be able to integrate it in this unobtrusive way.

In terms of finalizing the size, we just wanted to make sure it was proportionally correct alongside the King of All Cosmos. He needed to be small enough to be able to stand comfortably in his father’s palm, just like he does in the original. Katamari damacy when a level is completed. The Prince has such an iconic design that it was almost a shame to make it so hard to see, but we made sure his cute face is seen up close in the illustrations within the magazine.

Noby Noby Boy – The longest boy

We really wanted to make sure that the ‘big three’ games Keita is known for … Katamari, Wattam, and Noby Noby Boy – all were represented in some way in the main “face” of the image (what the magazine’s readers would see before opening the issue). When it came to Boy, from the wonderful 2009 PlayStation 3 game Noby Noby Boy, it seemed like a good opportunity to do something creative.

With the folded cover and panoramic art, it meant we really wanted to do something interesting with those elements. In reality, Boy stretches the entire width of the cover from one fold to another, with his head at a distance of 600mm from its lower half. It’s very satisfying to follow your body throughout the image, and I’m glad we had enough space on the canvas to show it off properly! With this approach, you are technically on the cover of the post, but only part of it. Hopefully when people see her rainbow body spreading, they are encouraged to unfold the magazine and reveal it in its entirety.

He is a fantastic character to work with that we were able to have a lot of fun wrapping him in the corners and the text on the inside pages. We were even able to get him to eat some of the Keita interview text as he could interact with the lyrics in a similar way in the original release.

If you follow Boy’s body on the cover to the end, you can of course also find Boy House next to its lower half, another reference to the original game. Most of the buildings in the picture are very realistic in relation to the characters, so it was also nice to have a little touch of surreal and playful architecture.

Architecture – architecture everywhere

Speaking of architecture, it’s a big theme on this cover. Doug John Miller, the artist behind this behemoth, teaches at UCL’s Bartlett School of Architecture. His practice means that he is an expert in 3D modeling and in fact he rendered the entire cover art in 3D software traditionally used in the profession (Rhino 3D) before drawing his line art by hand on it. Here you can see an older version of the cover image when we were still figuring things out in August 2019. If you look closely, you can see that the King of All Cosmos was initially going to be much larger than it is now.

We were thinking of a world where Keita was in charge and what a city designed by him would look like. We also brainstormed on the topic of utopias and solarpunk visions for the future. As a result, we decided that the urban landscape should not only be upbeat and lush, but also a mix of architecture and visual influences from Keita’s home in Japan and where he currently resides in San Francisco. Wattam is a game about uniting the world, so it seemed appropriate to reflect Keita’s perspective in this way.

Keita himself insisted that there needed to be a lot of greenery in the city. One of the first comments you wrote at the beginning with these renders was simply: “Oh, it looks great. Although a city of Keita needs more trees, haha. “

Royal Gifts – Cosmic Gifts

Having so many densely placed buildings meant that it was easy to hide a lot of fun little details among them. Throughout the cover there are four hidden royal gifts, in reference to how you would unlock various cosmetics in the original. Katamari. It can be surprisingly difficult to find them all.

Other friends!

Of course, it is not only the gifts that are hidden in this art, as there are also references to Keita’s work beyond. Katamari, Noby Noby Boy, and those over 50 Wattam characters sprinkled around!

Crankin is a character from a game that has yet to be released (for the upcoming Playdate console), Crankin’s Time Travel Adventure. We thought it would be fun to emulate the Playdate screen by making it lower fidelity in some way. Doug decided to render it completely on a 2D plane, which was really nice.

If you look closely, you can also find a small cube with a face. This character is a reference to World, an augmented reality game that Keita made with Funomena for tango technology. In fact, it would scan its surrounding environment to make it an interactive AR playground using this friendly cube character.

I know I said we would look beyond the ‘mainstream’ console games, but I also want to give a special hello to the family from the original. Katamari damacy, who climbed this massive skyscraper to enjoy the view only to be blinded.

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I’ve only really scratched the surface in terms of the work done for this cover. I could go on for years, but I think I’ve said more than enough for an article.

This was a huge undertaking, so I want to take this opportunity to thank again Bandai Namco, Keita Takahashi, Funomena, Doug John Miller and everyone who made it possible. I don’t know if we’ll ever work on something as ambitious and detailed as this image again, but I’m very proud of the end result and grateful for the opportunity.