If you follow video games, then you’ve probably heard about Scribblenauts. The charming DS game that lets you use anything to solve your problems was a hit at this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo, taking home several awards from notable gaming publications. Nathan Hernandez, a lifelong gamer and a talented animator, works for Scribblenauts developer 5th Cell. We talked with Nathan about Scribblenauts, what he does for 5th Cell and what it’s like working in the video game industry.
TC: So what is Scribblenauts?
NH: It’s a puzzle-platformer. You have your puzzle levels, which basically give you a clue and you need to solve something with the help of that clue, and the action levels where you see [the goal] and you have to navigate your way there by spawning anything you want.
TC: What do you mean spawning?
NH: The tagline for the game is “write anything, solve everything.” You can write whatever you want — within certain bounds, nothing vulgar — and it will appear in the game. Then you can use whatever appears to help you solve the level.
TC: What was your job on Scribblenauts?
NH: I was the lead animator on the project. All the objects that move — creatures, birds, lizards, anything — if it was animated I worked on it.
TC: Since you can spawn almost any item, you probably had to animate a lot of stuff.
NH: Definitely. We were able to cut some corners for time reasons. Say a humanoid has a torso, a head, two arms and two legs. Anything within that same set could also be used in that animation. So we had some things that we could reuse, but there was a lot of stuff we had to do custom animations for.
TC: When it came to putting the words in the game, how did they do that? Did you guys just go through the dictionary one at a time?
NH: Yeah, we had people going through the dictionary, basically adding in every word. They had months of people doing it, researching, seeing if they were copyrighted, and making sure they were family-friendly. Then we had these wordsmiths which did an awesome job of coming in and finding more words. We’re pretty happy with the words we have. We’re hoping to see if somebody can really stump it.
TC: Did you add any words yourself?
NH: Actually throughout development, words would pop in our heads and we’d ask, “Is this word in there? Is that word in there?” I’m sure they got pretty annoyed with us after a while. We would try to stump our own game. I would be at home and a word would come to mind and I’d write it down. I’d get to work in the morning and check if the word was in there, and a lot of times it was. There was only once or twice that the word wasn’t in the game.
TC: Are there any Easter Eggs or hidden words put in there that people would be surprised to find?
NH: Yeah, there’s a ton actually. We put keyboard cat in there. I took a frame by frame of the video and I animated it — that was fun, but it came up to about a thousand frames, so I had to cut that in half, but if you watch it, it syncs up perfectly with the video. There are a lot of cool things in there and we’re hoping people will find them. There are a lot of things where if you spawn them in the right scenario, more things will pop up from that.
TC: Are there any characters from other 5th Cell games?
NH: No, there are no characters from our other games.
TC: What was your favorite thing to animate?
NH: I particularly liked the monster. I got a lot of inspiration from “Where The Wild Things Are” and Sully from “Monster’s Inc.” He was fun. I also really liked animating the dinosaur. When I was growing up, I watched a lot of “Denver the Last Dinosaur.” I made sure the artist drew him kind of like him, and then I made him animate like Denver. Overall though, the monster is my favorite.
TC: How would a player get your monster in the game?
NH: Just type in “monster.”
TC: Did you design anything or was it strictly animating?
NH: Strictly animating. Most of the art and design was done by the time I came on. The art would come to me, and I would fix it onto a 3D model, which is really just a bunch of polygons fixed on a 2D plane, and then I would animate it. [laughs] That sounds easy, but it was more complex than that.
TC: What was the best part about animating Scribblenauts?
NH: For Scribblenauts it was great because they gave me a lot of creative control of what I animated. I did a lot of research on marionettes and doll animation because that was the look we were going for. You’ll see in that in the game: if a guy throws something, his arm will spin two or three more times. Stuff like that I really loved to work on. Anything that is really stylized like that, I love to work on.
TC: How did you end up at 5th Cell?
NH: I graduated school in 2006 and I went to work for a company in Kansas working on a children’s television show. I really wanted to work in the game industry so I applied to a few places. I originally was going to take a job in L.A., but when I was told about what 5th Cell was working on, I was totally excited and I had to jump on board.
TC: Are you burned out on video games by the time you get home, or do you still play them?
NH: Oh I definitely still play them. I’ve loved video games since I was a little kid. I play them as much as I can.
TC: What’s the best thing about working at a game company?
NH: Probably going to my first E3 has been the big highlight of the year. Going there, seeing the games and all the big names in the industry was great. I had a list of all the people I wanted to meet.
TC: Did you meet them all?
NH: I got one of them. It was [Fallout 3 developer] Todd Howard over at Bethesda, he was really cool. I also met Charles Martinet, the voice of Mario, [Assassin’s Creed game developer] Jade Raymond from Ubisoft, and [Ninja Gaiden developer Tomonobu] Itagaki.
TC: Itagaki? Did he have sunglasses on?
NH: Oh yeah. He was way cool, he had his whole rock star posse with him and everything. He was actually pretty nice, and he was totally cool about us taking pictures with him.
TC: Scribblenauts went on to win a lot of Best In Show awards from different game publications at E3. Has that changed things in the office?
NH: We are so glad people appreciate it. We’re going for a game that people love to play and can’t put down. We were thinking this would be a cool game, and we wanted the people to see it, but when it started getting all the buzz, we were kind of surprised. We didn’t expect it to get as much buzz as it did. We weren’t expecting to win these awards, so we are totally pleased, and it really made everyone in the office smile.
TC: Do you feel like you have to live up to the hype now?
NH: Of course we hope our games are meeting expectations, but honestly, I wouldn’t say we are worried about living up to something. I want us to be known by the great games we do and the things in our games — the good design, the animation — so we strive for greatness every day at work.
TC: When does the game come out?
NH: September 15. Hopefully everyone goes out and picks up a copy and enjoys it. Send us an email and tell us what you think.
TC: Are you on to the next project yet?
NH: Yeah, we are on to the next game, but I can’t really tell you what it is right now.
Austin Light is a writer and illustrator from Charlotte, NC. All photos courtesy of 5th Cell and Warner Bros. Interactive.
