Some of you may have noticed a second video in the IGTM collection, 'Making Super Meat Boy'. This little piece features Edmund McMillen's super talented wife, Danielle. She's the creator behind the Meat Boy (and Bandage Girl) plushies. (You can see more of her amazing work on her blog - http://danielleorama.blogspot.com/.)
When we shot this sequence, we weren't exactly sure where it would go or how it would fit. We did know that we really liked the idea of watching a tangible Meat Boy get made from scratch. We thought this spoke, in a very visual and beautiful way, to a few things about Team Meat and Indie Development.
Obviously, there is a lot of skill, time, creativity, concentration and, above all, love going into Danielle's creation. In watching Tommy and Edmund work, you can't help but see the exact same combination of all of those elements.
After talking with the guys, it became abundantly clear that Super Meat Boy is much more than a fun, joke-laden, platformer to those guys - there is some huge emotional investment in the project.
Another thing that we thought was just lovely beyond words, was the simple fact that Danielle was making a plushie Meatboy (which helps support SMB development) eight feet away from her husband, who was working hard on the digital one. The scene painted just such a clear picture of the important role family & friends play in creative development. Everyone needs support in one form or another. And this was a brilliant example of that.
...of course, this is all after-the-fact justification. At the time that we shot, we just knew it would look cool and had a hunch that'd it be useful :)
So we began cutting together the piece as a thank you to Danielle for all our their hospitality, but then as we were cutting, we quickly realized that we were looking at something a little more than a stuffed toy being made. And it became a nice, little, visual poem that we thought would be fun to share.
To top it all off - Danielle was nice enough to give us that Meat Boy in the video! Here's the little guy in his new home here in Winnipeg.
