Bernie on… meeting Jon Ritman
“I met Jon through friends of his. I played in a new wave band called The Position and after band practice we would bundle round to Jon’s place and annoy him with our cassette recordings. The poor lad had a lot of patience and tolerance for a gobby teenager, which as one of the youngest members of the band was what I was. Also, being the band’s artist, my artwork had been appreciated before Jon started programming, so it was a sort of synergy. The band had split and the Spectrum had outgrown the basic stick graphics that adorned so many games.”
Bernie on… Batman Begins
“Batman was really an experiment. I'd asked Jon to explain why there weren’t 'Disney' style graphics for computer games. As an amateur cartoonist, I was disappointed by the stick men and indistinct blobs of pixels. Having explained the speed, space and memory constraints, we were then pleasantly surprised by Ultimate’s Knight Lore. There had been 3D before in the form of a scrolling isometric, and occasionally good too, such as in Ant Attack. But the big, visually distinct, solid sprites were a revelation, and Jon, knowing I was a cartoonist, decided to find out what an artist could achieve that a programmer couldn't.”
Bernie on… The look of Batman
“For Batman, Jon pretty much knew what he wanted to do and employed me as artist to do just what I did. The look of it was influenced by the early sixties Batman comics where Batman would be fighting the foe on a giant typewriter, a bit Alice in Wonderland.”
Bernie on… Head Over Heels
“Head over Heals was a natural follow up [to Batman] as Jon had perfected the game engine with a few extras which were unique to his programming. There was a growing number of isometric games and some were only available on specific machines so there was no crossover. But more to the point was the release of Ultimate’s follow up games Alien 8 and Gunfright both of which (with respect) made us feel like we were onto something better. I still feel until I began using 3D on powerful PCs, the graphics for Head Over Heels are some of my finest pixel work.”
Bernie on… the look of Head Over Heels
“For Head Over Heels we developed a brainstorming pattern before each game where ideas would bounce back and forth, often with Jon frustratedly explaining the feasability (or lack of) or each idea. Sometimes a wild notion would be an easy fix or code so I'd draw a graphic fit for purpose. Jon would have a new device or tool to encourage the creation of new room puzzles. The graphics were created using a tried and tested technique; in short I just drew, let my imagination fly, and any images that looked good, fitted a purpose or inspired more graphics or ingenious game puzzles were kept. Any that we considered failures we dumped although sometimes I'd XOR the bad ones together and see if an unexpected image pops out of the mess. The Killer Koala from Batman came about in just that way.”
Bernie on… large heads
“There was the collision box problem. The programmer creates an invisible boundary box that accompanies the sprite and registers any collisions and boundary crossovers. Just imagine a box wide enough to encompass your shoulders, then how much wider than your head would be! So a deadly brick that touched your arm could be inches away from your head but still register contact. So initially I drew in a cartoon style like Felix the Cat or Snoopy or even Mickey Mouse, the head artificially large compared to the body. This made both the collisions look more convincing and gave more pixel room for facial features. After Jon created the stacking system for Head Over Heels it meant we could see the body as seperate stacked objects. After Matchday 2, Jon and I worked on an arcade version for Rare in which we had much more realistically proportioned player sprites, whose heads would turn to face the ball. It looked great back in the early Nineties.”
Bernie on… the Prince Charles Dalek in Head Over Heels
“The Prince Charles Dalek came about as a joint idea. Jon developed a stacking sprite system which we then used to increase the amount of monsters in the game by mixing and matching. The Prince Charles head was originally Plug from the Bash Street Kids, but Jon felt he looked as much like the Spitting Image Puppet of Prince Charles and would be more popular with the public and games journalists.”
Bernie on… the complex reincarnation fish
“The reincarnation fish is one of the best graphics I did, but I see your point about complexity. The problem may stem from the fact that Batman’s graphics were drawn in black and white on a Spectrum. Jon went on to develop a colouring system, so it's possible that some of Head Over Heels’ graphics were drawn in colour then converted back to black and white and that might be why it's a bit fussy. But as an ornate Victorian crystal fish I think it works.”
Bernie on… brainstorming names
“Foot and Mouth was basically a working title [for Head Over Heels]. I remember going in to a production meeting with the two bosses at Ocean and we had a fun brainstorming session where I came up with most of the names, including Rough and Tumble and Head over Heels. As a productive creative lyric and songwriter, coming up with names is my forte. The characters were never intended to be male or female; as a politically aware youngster, I was nervous of appearing sexist, racist and brutalist.”
Bernie on… Head’s origins
“Head is actually based on an original cartoon character called the Park Creature who was a natural animal trying to get by living on an industrial estate, surrounded thugs and dumbies. The inspiration for the Park Creature was Charles Schultz’s Snoopy and the idea for the bulldog chewing a wasp face of Heels was a reference to the fact that he had to carry Head most of the time. Oops, a bit of 'objectification' slipped in there!”
Bernie on… Monster Max
“Doing the graphics for Monster Max on the Gameboy was much harder because I was acutely aware of how small the screen was. So the graphics needed to be plainer with less detail, which is the root style of my artwork, detail within detail within detail and so on.”
Bernie on… life after the 80s
“After Head Over Heels I worked with Jon until the late Nineties. Around then I was studying all sorts of frontier science subjects, and in 2000 I created and conducted a field study of atmospheric phenomena (having to teach myself Physics and Chemistry to achieve it). Then, having been successful at that little aside, I got into video production and film making. The videos you see on my Facebook page credited to Silver Temples or Michael Fair are usually all my sound and image work. Having said that, I recently completed my first commisioned piece for the band Blue Orchids' debut single, The Flood.”
Bernie on… then
“For me it was a dream time playing instead of working which offset what was a very stressful period for me in my personal life. But we grow up and we move on. Good luck on any future projects, Graeme.”
Thanks Bernie, for everything.