After posting ‘Blender for PocketPC revived‘ earlier this week, Joel Schlosberg asked me about the history of the Blue Alien character. I talked to Ton and did some digging on the internet and I can now proudly present you the shortened biography of our blue friend :)
The alien was originally a character in a game called ‘HardMashed’ that was made as a demo for the Game Developers Conference [GDC] 2001 by NaN’s content team. I think it was one of the most complex projects they did and one of the best productions of the NaN content team ever.
NaN’s old game department: Reevan McKay, Randall Rickert (well hidden ;-), Willem Paul van Overbruggen, Joeri Kassenaar, Freid. Photo by Joeri Kassenaar.
If you want to have a look for yourself, the original file is available from the Blender site, bundled with some other games. I’m not sure why, but you have to switch to another scene and then back to the ‘X.game’ scene to see him. Oh, AND you’ll see the blue alien girl, too :)
While looking for information, I also ran across a photograph of the NaN booth at the GDC:
It was so funny that it turned into a mascot that was used everywhere. While he was carrying a gun in the original game, his character changed and he seemed to be in a perpetual panic. In the Blender Trailer (Made Joeri Kassenaar, Willem Paul van Overbruggen and Janco Verduin) he was already losing his wits.
After that he appeared in the announcement for the OS X release:
And of course the famous Blender for IPAQ release. We had a web-plugin version of him then too, but as the web-plugin is no longer supported I can’t show it here.
The end of his career was when he was trying to sell e-shop products on the blender3d.org homepage. Again in a state of panic, he failed miserably and was sent to his retirement.
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