How It All Began (Bob Rafei and Jak and Daxter)

Let's get this blog started... And what better way to begin than with the genius who opened my eyes to character design and illustration when I was just 10 years old...

Bob Rafei

Bob Rafei is Naughty Dog Inc.'s artistic mastermind behind Crash Bandicoot and my all-time favourite award-winning video game series, Jak and Daxter. With his art design of Daxter he won Best New Character of the Year. He also co-directed Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, and has worked at all levels of the gaming industry, from art direction, character design, modelling, animation and cinematic direction. 
He is a 16 year veteran of the gaming industry and Co-Founder and Chief Visual Director of Big Red Button Entertainment, Inc.

Bob Rafei - Big Red Button Entertainment


Go push the Big Red Button and check out all of his glorious art (like the image below) at BobRafei.com

Keira and Jak & Daxter by Bob Rafei © SCEA, 2000

A Cheesy New Beginning

Get ready, it's about it get corny. Although, while you're chuckling, feel flattered. This information has never been revealed to anyone...

For the sake of an uninteresting personal history lesson, and to give readers some background information, let me show you how it began.

It was November 2001. I was 10 and an occasional collector of the now discontinued children's magazine, Disney Adventures.

I was in the supermarket when I spotted the magazine and I was almost about to walk past it but something caught my eye on the front cover. Spy Kids? Nah. Britney Spears. Bleh. Harry Potter? Nope.
"Hot New Game Jak and Daxter".
From a distance I thought I almost saw a cartoony, tough-looking female character with an orange cat on their shoulder. (Yes, I was already living with the slim hope that a tomboyish female lead would be made for, well, something.)

Somehow my eyes swept past everything else to gaze at the peculiar form in the bottom corner. Would your snickers increase if I told you I still had this issue and it was in pristine condition?

On closer inspection it turned out to be an elf-boy with elongated eyes, a crazy hairdo and a bipedal weasel (*Ottsel) companion. Pfft same difference. I was still curious. It looked like the style of illustration I was already mildly interested in; a blend of Disney and Manga.

I suddenly became excited.
A Disney/Manga hero with a cat on his shoulder? A "Hot New Game"? What could this be? Could this be something I'd be interested in? It was almost too good to be true.

I flicked to the page with the short article.
Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy...
Naughty Dog game studio...
PlayStation 2...
And then I saw it.
Two of Bob Rafei's illustrations were on the bottom right, and it was literally love at first sight... 

On the right we have Rafei's illustrations for the Geologist and Sculptor © SCEA, 2000
To this day I still don't exactly know why I took such a fancy to those two particular designs, but it was somehow enough to kickstart a new interest. Who'd have thought? 

I'd never seen anything quite like it. (Especially considering the most I'd experienced was, unsurprisingly, Disney, Don Bluth and monster anime like Pokemon, Digimon, Beyblade, etc....)
I ask you, what's not to like about two character designs which were cute, colourful, fluid, and had funky outfits?

While the article also talked about the game's creation including character modelling and programming, they were particularly concerned with the art, which they even mentioned to be inspired by Disney's Tarzan and Anime. (The discovery that it was Bob Rafei came a little later).
Admittedly, I didn't even know what a PlayStation 2 really was but I knew I had to have one if it meant being about to experience this new modern marvel.

I didn't actually know what it really was, but I knew I had to have it.

Then, to my pleasant surprise, for Christmas my parents gave me my first gaming console, the PS2, and, oh my, Jak and Daxter. Again, it was love-- if love could be applied to a video game.
Other games came along that were enjoyable, and NDI then expanded on the series, but nothing quite compared to the first game. I've lost track of how many times I've played it.

While it may sound silly to be rambling so passionately about a game and its art, those two simple images were what got me on this road. I abandoned my seven-year obsession with drawing Dinosaurs and palaeontology, and decided that I would become a character designer and work in the gaming industry. Someday.
So I began designing my own characters, typically female, who could be the potential star of a video game (or even a music video/animation/novel, etc.). I began studying other art styles, finding new artists, and practiced designing humans and costumes.

It's been almost thirteen years and I haven't changed my mind yet.


If I didn't pay homage to Bob Rafei, Naughty Dog, Jak and Daxter or dear ol' Disney Adventures at some point I'd feel bad.


Disney Adventures November 2001, Volume 8 Number 11 © Disney, A.A Milne and E.H. Shepard.
Jak and Daxter © Naughty Dog Inc. and Sony Computer Entrainment of America