Antlers And Tentacles

You remember when I said that Super Sheep was my first real original character? well there are actually two others that I made in the first Little Big Planet game, although my family wouldn't end up getting it until 2009 (which was after the game's original 2008 release, so I'm still having trouble remembering if they technically predate Super Sheep or not), one year before Monsters Vs Aliens would hit the scene and inspire me to try and do a sequel with my own toys. Who Are These Characters That Potentially Predate Super Sheep? Their names are Antler-Man and Octo-Guy.

Wait, So How Did They Come Into Existence?

One day, in the year 2009, my brother and I were both given one game each by our parents (I can't remember why we both got a game each that day, but we did), I ended up getting the "New Play Control" version of Pikmin for the Nintendo Wii (which is a Port of Pikmin for the Nintendo GameCube with newly added motion controls in order to work better on the Wii) and my brother ended up getting Little Big Planet on the PS3. While I quite enjoyed what little I ended up playing of Pikmin (even if I didn't really like that there was a time limit for exploring the levels and even completing the entire game), when I played Little Big Planet with my brother and discovered that I could create my own levels, I ended up becoming more interested in Little Big Planet while Pikmin ended up falling to the wayside. As to how this relates to Antler-Man and Octo-Guy? well in the game (as well as the rest of the Little Big Planet Series), you can customise Sackboy (or Sackgirl if you prefer) with various costumes and outfits, he/she could be everything from a pirate to a super hero, a fairy princess and even Sonic The Hedgehog. (Sonic was one of many DLC costumes alongside Pirates Of The Caribbean and even The Incredibles) With this in mind, there were two costume pieces in particular that ended up leading to the creation of Antler-Man and Octo-Guy, and those were the fake antlers, which led to Antler-Man coming into existence, and the octopus tentacles, which ended up leading to Octo-Guy being born (I can't remember if the tentacles were in the base game or if they were part of the Pirates Of The Caribbean level kit that added water), I can't quite remember what they originally looked like (other than the fact they were just Sackboy/Sackgirl with a pair of antlers and a set of tentacles respectively), although for years they were restricted to the confines of the digital realm, unlike Super Sheep who had a physical form at that time that I could play with, which is probably why I don't quite remember their adventures as much. Regardless, they would both go on to become a team (because they were made in the same game at around the same time) and during creative media level 2, I'd finally attempt to break the two characters out of their mind prison and into an actual project of mine, as Antler-Man would have made an appearance in my big ol' billboard campaign before I ended up having to cut it down to just a single billboard featuring just Super Sheep, Cartridge and Billy Billson (you can find out more about that on my other website):

Of course, Antler-Man would end up getting a design anyway, and it definitely looks different to how he did in the Little Big Planet days

As for Octo-Guy, I just sort of did his design for the sake of being able to say I designed the character

For the design of Antler-Man, I decided to try and give it a much more conventional super-hero flair where he has a big "A" that's stamped on his chest, much like a certain DC super hero who's faster than a speeding bullet and able to leap over buildings in a single bound. The reason I did this was so that I could distinguish him from Super Sheep, who just sort of flies around naked with nothing but his cape on, the reason for this is because I plan for Super Sheep and Antler-Man to have a sort of philosophical conflict about whether it's better to work with a super hero agency in order to stop criminals from doing things in a dignified manner and let the police handle things vs just running around beating criminals up and dealing with them head on.

As for Octo-Guy, I didn't fully know how I wanted to design the character, but eventually I landed on him being a blue octopus guy who wears green shorts. (and that's it)

The reason they're both designed to be half human half animal hybrids is because in the Super Sheep lore, I also want to have characters that are hybrids of humans and animals (not to be confused with characters such as Super Sheep who are animals with human traits), you could think of these particular characters as being mutated freaks that wondered out of a nuclear power plant one day.

With that, I think I'll finish this quick little lookback into Super Sheep and some of his friends from before college, it's been quite fun being able to shed some light into the history of these characters and do a little bit of retroactive reflection, and with that I think I'll go back to doing a few more experiments in Dreams PS4/5 after another brief break.