The articles in this series can be anything from illustrations, ideas and random thoughts, to little snippets of writing, videos, and musings on small side-projects that the creative folks here at Tarsier are working on in their spare time.

We start with illustration of a mysterious red-haired lady, drawn by Andreas, who is one of our artists.

You can read more about how he drew it below and he also include a timelapse of the whole image being drawn.

For this illustration I used a workflow quite different from what I normally use.

Laying on an abstract base with my own customized brushes I build up shapes by marking them out with the lasso tool and paint inside the selection. This way I can also build up gradients inside the shapes which provides for shading and other effects.

This approach is quite stimulating when working without predetermined goals and simply letting the image tell you what it needs. As with looking at clouds it’s just a matter of time before you start seeing figures in the mess and move on to define them further.

If you like this illustration you may find this timelapse interesting, which covers the process from start to finish.

You can see more of Andreas’ art on his blog over here.

The Marvel – Arcade Pack contains three fantastic new games, each of which will challenge you in very different ways.

In Hero Rush, team up with three of your favourite Marvel heroes – such as Iron Man, Spider-Man, or Thor – and try to survive for as long as you can. Shoot for highscore heroics by avoiding plasma beams, rockets, and all sorts of obstacular trickery. Of course, obstacular isn’t a real word, but you should never let a dictionary get in the way of your thrilling Marvel heroics!

In the mind-bending puzzler Avengers: Ultimate Escape guide several Marvel heroes, including Hulk, Captain America and many more, through a deadly maze. The cool thing about this game is that the challenges you face will be completely different depending on the hero you choose!

And last, but by no means least, we have S.H.I.E.L.D. – Interceptor! Take control of the Quinjet and blast your way through wave after wave of the invading Chitauri hordes. Don’t forget to pick up coins along the way to unlock new weapons in The Vault..

Of course, it wouldn’t be a LittleBigPlanet level pack without a whole host of new create assets to play with and bring your own creations to life! By collecting coins in the arcade games, you can unlock over a hundred new stickers, dozens of decorations, sound effects, and three new interactive music tracks.

The Marvel Arcade Pack will be available on 3rd April priced at £3.99/€4.99, exclusively for LittleBigPlanet PS Vita. Be there, or we’ll send Hulk round to convince you!

The award, currently in it’s 7th year, highlights companies or individuals who have made an important contribution to furthering Malmö’s position as a central player in the creative industry. We are honoured and delighted to have received this award!

You can read the motivation of the judges below:

This year’s winner mixes playfulness, optimism and ambition in a way where entrepreneurship is as much at the heart as creativity.

With an explosive growth experiences are created and emphasis is placed on employee talent, creativity and perseverance.

The move to Malmö was seen as given. The perfect location has been found and they are now charging full steam ahead.

We eagerly look forward to this development.

• Additional DLC costumes and stickers
• Reduced audio skipping during download operations

Size: 143MB

To find out just what these additional costumes and stickers are keep your eyes on this blog or follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Time Saver Pack

Just before Christmas the Time Saver Pack was made available on the PS Store.

If you just want to jump into Create mode or want all unlockable costumes right from the get go, this is the pack for you. The pack gives you instant access to all collectible goodies, without having to pick up every prize bubble in the Story mode.

If you have a PSN account you can buy it here.

Garfiel and Odie Minipack now available

A few days ago the Garfield and Odie Minipack was released on the PS Store. It contains a Garfield and an Odie costumes as well as a bunch of stickers. Why not make your own Garfield comics in LBP PS Vita?

Click on this link to buy it now.

Fun fact: Garfield is called Gustaf in Sweden.

LBP Internship Update

The finalist for the LBP Intership competition were announced a short while ago.

We are now in the process of deciding who of the four finalists will join us here in Malmö for month later this year. Good luck to all of you!

If you are interested you can queue up the finalists by using this handy list.

Over 50000 Community Levels!

And of course all of you published a ton of really awesome levels over the past few months. There are now well over 50000 levels! You can find some of our favourite levels in the TeamPicks category. Do check them out.

There are screenshots of three TeamPick’d levels below.

Sounds vague and not very interesting, but we think you will like it a lot as it should speed up the load times of community levels considerably! And you may also find that your connection to other players is now more stable as well as various other improvements in the same vein.

Patch Notes:

• Improved Community performance

Size: 106MB

Merry Christmas to all of you!

Patch Notes:

• Support for additional DLC costumes
• Interface update to accommodate additional content
• Fix for freeze when deleting a large number of downloaded levels
• Locked levels can now be unhearted
• Improved browsing of Cool Levels
• Fix to stop a blank photo page appearing on community levels
• News feeds will no longer display when empty
• Declining the EULA will now be saved throughout all game areas
• Fix to remove PlayStation®Store icon staying on screen in certain situations
• Additional improved stability updates

Size: 106MB

As always, let us know what you think and if you find any issues please report them on this site.

A huge thanks goes out to all of you who voted for LBP PS Vita in the TIGA awards!

It really means a lot to us to see that the game is not just received very well by the critics, but also by all of you, the players, who are in many ways even more critical than professional reviewers. So, thanks!