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(Originally posted January 19, 2010 on the Japanese Bayo-Blog)
A little late, but Happy New Year, everyone. Kamiya here. I’m not sure if it is because I run my mouth too much, but big brother ends up censoring me, so I haven’t really been able to give you all up-to-date information because my blog has been slow to update.
Since it is a New Year, I received various New Year’s cards and presents from our fans and others. They motivate me to work hard, so thank you so much!

So Bayonetta has finally been released worldwide, huh? Is everyone playing it having a good time? The game has been on-sale in Japan for more than 2 months now, and even though it is a game with its own peculiarities, people who love it seem to truly love it, which makes me quite happy.

Which leads me to some news… The one and only TIME magazine wrote about Bayonetta in their 1/25 issue! It was the video game pick for TIME’S PICKS FOR THE WEEK. This is pretty cool, as TIME is a huge magazine, with a circulation of over 3.3 million readers in North America!

Hashimoto said the other day that he wanted to sell more copies of Bayonetta than the original Devil May Cry, to which I replied, “Not happening…” (LOL) Anyways, I think that this game is where we planted the seeds for something that will eventually grow into a tree with a stout trunk. But I just say that kind of thing and then leave things be…Which ends up with me getting stuck with some sort of global label as someone who doesn’t want to make sequels. (LOL)

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(Originally posted on the Japanese Bayo-blog on December 25, 2009, but withheld due to spoilers.)

Hello, I am an animator here at PlatinumGames. You can call me Nakajo. It seems early, but it is already Christmas, huh? The office building that houses PlatinumGames has an enormous Christmas tree that really sparkles and shines, attracting huge crowds of revelers even on the weekends. This is the third tree that has welcomed the Bayonetta project, but this year things have calmed down, so I was able to look at the tree in a new light. (Don’t ask what it was like before this year…)

About My Role on Bayonetta
I jointed Team Little Angels primarily as an enemy animation designer. The senior animators on the team have already gone over much of the animation here on the blog; however, I thought I would talk a little bit about one of the Cardinal Virtues, Temperantia, and the Infernal Demon summon that finishes off the boss.
(I thought the animators’ blogs were finished up with Uchi’s blog… But I got called in to write one… I’m writing this now half-crying because I just couldn’t figure out what to include…)

When animating the Temperantia fight, I worked making sure to absolutely avoid destroying the sense of scale, all the while paying attention to the sense the heft and speed the fight had. With something as big as Temperantia, getting a sense of heft and scale requires the attack motions to get bigger and bigger, so I had to go through numerous… numerous… numerous… revisions to make sure the attacks didn’t come from off-screen. (If you are attacked from off-screen, you can’t see the locus of the blow, making it impossible to dodge, right?)

Since the main part of Temperantia is SO big during that fight, the boss actually ends up being the stage, and we included various gameplay devices to this end. Some new big of gameplay would be put into the game and then go through numerous… numerous… numerous… revisions. (Again!!)

With the Infernal Demon summons, they would start by deciding Bayonetta’s summoning pose. Uchi-san also posted about the motion capture process in a previous blog, but I would patch things up using some of the stored motion capture data.

However, there is a limit as to how far you can use this data, and having things like “win poses” overlap with each other wouldn’t be good, so it was always a bit of a difficult situation when we’d begin to argue over poses:
“Hey, I’m using that pose already.”
“Really? I’ll look for something else…”

Once Bayonetta’s pose was locked down, I then moved on to how the Infernal Demon and Temperantia would interact. In Temperantia’s case, he is met by the six-armed demon Hekatoncheir. It was consulting with Kamiya-san, who wanted to make sure that this thing was powerful, that we decided to increase his number of arms from two to six. (Huh? He only used to have two… But six is three times as powerful! And three times as much work!! *cries*) During production, I got a really weird sweat and two or three times I thought that my soul might literally escape out of my mouth; however, I was able to finish the product.

Bayonetta is a game that holds many things and memories; however, having users play it and enjoy it would make me happy.

That’s all for now!

SEGA Europe and SEGA America can today announce that an online update will be available on Jan 28th for the PlayStation 3 version of BAYONETTA. This online update allows the game to be installed onto the console’s hard drive which significantly decreases the loading times for the game.

The update will automatically be downloaded to PlayStation 3 when users launch BAYONETTA.

BAYONETTA is available now on Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft and PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system.

Kamiya here. Lately I’ve been listening to the Bayonetta soundtrack while working, but whenever I listen to the music from the latter half of the game, I have some sort of conditioned response to remember being in a nice warm bath, staring back at downtown Osaka (Umeda). It doesn’t leave me in a good mood. Ahhh… The last part of Bayonetta’s development was really brutal, and since I couldn’t go home, using the spa here at our offices in the Umeda Sky Building to wash away the days fatigue was the only thing I really had to look forward to; however, it seems like that left an indelible impression on my psyche. The spa on the 22^nd floor has an unbroken view of Umeda, so during the day I would escape the development floor and head up to soak my messed up body in the bath. While soaking, looking out at skyscrapers under the expansive blue sky, it felt so great, like I was in heaven… When I hear the track that plays before you enter Balder’s Room, “Paradiso – Sea of Stars,” or the final track, “The Greatest Jubilee,” I feel completely opposite to the track names themselves; it’s delusional, like I’m getting sucked into hell. Both of the tracks were composed for us by Mr. Rei Kondo… Sorry… They really are good tracks… (LOL)

Speaking of the soundtrack, it isn’t just songs created by PlatinumGames staff. We had the opportunity to work with lots of people outside of the company, which I am really grateful for. From Rei Kondo, to all the staff at GEM Impact, to Hiro-san at SEGA, thank you from the bottom of my heart! I’d love to work together again!

On to the next… A while back Wizard Magazine held an art contest entitled Bayonetta Re-Envisioned, and lots of great works were selected as prize winners. Of course, we had a say in who won, and the staff all looked at all of the entries! The Grand Prize winner was one that I selected personally.

The idea of taking Bayonetta’s design and using that as a starting point for a brand new concept was a rather unusual experiment for a contest, and all of the entries obviously showed a lot of passion, each one amazing in its own right. Because of this, there were works that we weren’t able to include in the contest, but were so good that we just couldn’t get them out of our heads. That is why we would like to point them out and recognize them here on the blog.

First up is a work by Michael Hiscott. Our concept designer Ikumi Nakamura picked this one. The cherry blossom trees in the background mesh well with Bayonetta.

Shimazaki picked a work by Chuan Ju Lee. Bayonetta started with the idea that witches had to be black, but this image boldly threw black right out the window.

Shimazaki also picked another work, this one by Alexander Gordon. It’s fancy, like it could be an illustration in a fairy tale collection.

Next is a work by Brent Patrick Wilson. This one is incredible… It was a design contest for Bayonetta, but Rodin and Jeanne are so prominent that they are the only thing we really noticed.

Actually, this work by Joshua Meeks was the most popular among the team. It looks like it was created with colored pencil on drawing paper (?), but posing Bayonetta in such a dynamic drop kick is the work of no mere amateur.

Finally, we have a work by Randall Louis. The design, expression, and pose got stuck in our heads and we just couldn’t forget it. If there were a CD with this image as its cover, I would buy it without question.

So what do you think? For all the works that we picked up in this post, we are going to send the artists a copy of the Bayonetta soundtrack, which is currently on sale only in Japan! Because of the differences in markets and the such, we aren’t sure if the Bayonetta soundtrack will be released officially overseas; however, this 5 disc set is a gem, filled with what we feel is only the best content, so I think that you will find it enjoyable.

Well, that wraps it up. Until next time!

Picture: A promotional item that will be given out in Germany. Here is a picture of the back…

Picture: It has a Gates of Hell logo. What could be inside?

Picture: A lollipop! Cherry flavored, I think? But it’s got a kick to it. Definitely not that kind of flavor you would encounter in Japan. (LOL)

Happy New Year, everyone!
I’m the head of the PlatinumGames Weapons Development Division (No. of Employees: 1), Muneyuki “Johnny” Kotegawa here.

I’ve seen on the web lately that some fans have been creating Scarborough Fair and All 4 One models. As a member (and leader) of the PlatinumGames Weapons Development Division, I am quite pleased to see these efforts.
I decided to lend my little bit of support by preparing multi-direction and exploded views of the guns in question. Print them out, line them up, and get a taste of how much fun it must be to be Rodin himself. The charms are also included, so I suppose you may want to make these as accessories as well.

So please accept these as a token of my gratitude, and enjoy your lives as witches!

These images are also available on the PlatinumGames Flickr page.

Hello everyone. Character designer Mari Shimazaki here with some good news.

It has been something like two months since Bayonetta saw release in Japan. For those of you still playing Bayonetta, or those of you taking a little break, we’ve still got more Bayonetta to give you, so stay with us just a bit longer.

Which brings me to today’s announcement.

As Hashimoto-san mentioned on the Xbox Live Park broadcast here in Japan, we are going to put out a book collecting the design materials we used for Bayonetta. Woohoo!

It will be a little while until it’s released, but here are the details:

Bayonetta Design Collection (Temporary Title)
Release Date: Q1 2010 (Planned)
Price: TBD
Publisher: Enterbrain

It’s going to be a really thick book, as we are going to include almost all of the images we’ve used in promoting Bayonetta! (We were unable to get rights clearances for a few of them…)

Japanese gamers will get a chance to see art that we’ve only released in the West (which there were quite a few we made behind the scenes), as well as peeks at unreleased character, enemy, background, and weapon designs. There will also be CG illustrations and some new easter-egg illustrations (that I’m working on right now) amongst others. Overall, there will be more than 500 pieces of content to sink your teeth into! There will also be tons of comments from the development team (which they are working on now) to round out this monster collection! Look forward to it!

Whenever I end up working on one of these expansive books, I always end up feeling like, “This is sad. I have to show off all of these designs that got shot down… And they are from years ago as well.”
Even though I love looking at others people’s stuff… this poses a real dilemna for me.

Well, enough of my grumbling, I’m going to stay focused on working on the book for now, and even though it will be a while until it is in your hands, I hope you all look forward to it.

Well, I guess the world is all wrapped up in Christmas colors now.

How did you all spend the Christmas holidays? December 25 was actually our last work day here at PlatinumGames, but I am sure plenty of us went out drinking after we wrapped up.

Until next time.

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Hi all. Producer Yusuke Hashimoto checking in again.

Happy New Year!

I decided to draw Bayonetta on a New Year’s Card. The more I drew, the more I was surprised by how detailed the design was becoming, and even though it was too late, ended up saying “Wow, this is how this turned out…”

Today also marks the start of Bayonetta’s worldwide release!

I am happy to see her spread her wings and fly overseas, and I really hope that everyone let’s go of time and has fun while playing the game.

So I hope that this year you all support Bayonetta, and continuing supporting us here at PlatinumGames.