A great lil video feature
Keiichiro Toyama started in the games industry in 1994 as an artist on Hideo Kojima’s cult-classic Snatcher. He went on to direct, write, and do some art for the original PlayStation classic Silent Hill, after which he continued making horror games at Sony Japan with the Siren franchise.
Most recently, Toyama is responsible for the creation of one of my favorite games, Gravity Rush, and its impending sequel. Japanese program toco toco ended its shorts documentary series on game creators earlier this month, tracking Toyama on his commute to work, which he went into despite the holiday, as the team works on finishing Gravity Rush 2.
Toyama talks about the “Franco-Belgian comics I liked since I was a student” that inspired Gravity Rush‘s art, which has long been described as Moebius-inspired. Incidentally, the book he name-checks in particular is The Incal, which was written by cult favorite film director Alejandro Jodorowsky (El Topo, Dance of Reality) whose The Holy Mountain I just caught on 35mm last week. Gravity Rush‘s conceit — being able to manipulate the direction of gravity — stems from indefinite falling scenes in The Incal blended with Toyama day-dreaming during his walking commute about how much faster he’d be going if he was walking downhill.
It’s a pretty fantastic series, and when you’re done, you can go watch shorts on Suda51, Swery, and some of your favorite Japanese developers.
