Mr Dile Crocodile is a wonderfully whimsical character designed by Kaoru Shimada, a Japanese artist living in London. With her permission I have begun a mini games-jam with her delightful artwork to discover new ways to bring Mr Dile Crocodile to life!
During a wander through London, I came across the Sway Gallery on Old Street and Kaoru’s work on the final day of her solo exhibition. We had a wonderful chat about Mr Dile’s history:
“Mr. Dile Crocodile is a crocodile. But he has his own pride as a British gentleman.
He was born in the Nile, on the edge of the river, but came to London by accident when he was a child. Since then he was brought up by a British couple Mr & Mrs Jones, like a normal kid in London.”
The work is made out of mixed media, stencils, fabric, and lots of bright colours. Instantly charmed, I also discovered that she had also worked on a live action animation. Soon we were talking about the potential to take Mr Dile’s adventures into a living digital environment, and thus the idea for a games-jam appeared.
The idea has been to remix artwork already available to view on Kaoru’s website into a exploration game. The first demo includes an easy puzzle in which the player must remove the fog over London using Mr Dile’s whimsical rope.
[The demo for Mr Dile Crocodile is being worked on and updates will appear here as progress is made]