On a grey damp afternoon (October 18th) Centennial’s Game Art & Design students made their way to the the edge of Lake Ontario to Corus Quay for Digifest’s Warren Spector and Marv Wolfman Disney Epic Mickey 2 keynote talk.
The panel discussion lasted for just over an hour, and was informal and engaging with anecdotes and information for budding game designers and writers.
Warren Spector, reknowned game designer and Marv Wolfman writer for Epic Mickey 2 focused on the upcoming Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two and detailed Warren Spector’s experiences with the creation process of both the original Epic Mickey and its sequel. Marv Wolfman focused on his experience of writing for the game, which was interesting and enlightening, particularly with his descriptions of transitioning from comic to videogame writing.
The process of making Mickey an engaging character and Epic Mickey an engaging game gave rise to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit as an alternate ego to Mickey . Oswald was the first character Walt Disney created at Universal but as he was under contract, Oswald remained property of Universal. When Disney formed his own studio he created Mickey Mouse, essentially a version of Oswald.
At the end of the talk there was a brief Q&A session with both Spector and Wolfman, and included questions on the writing process . Centennial Game Art & Design students asked some questions regarding the process of transforming a 60 year-old silent character to a talking video-game character.