Playtonic has announced that former Rare designer Kev Bayliss, best known for designing the modern Donkey and Diddy Kong, has joined the team in developing the spiritual successor to Banjo Kazooie; Yooka-Laylee.
Bayliss was one of the earliest employees of Rare, Inc., working for the studio during its heyday developing for the Nintendo consoles. As graphics director, he made the character designs for such games as Battletoads, Killer Instinct, Diddy Kong Racing and StarFox Adventures. He also collaborated with Shigeru Miyamoto on the look of Donkey Kong Country, which led to the aforementioned design for Donkey Kong that is still being used to this day as his official appearance.
He wrote in a Kickstarter update yesterday, ”After working at Rare for nearly 20 years (since the 80s!) it was nice to be able to take a break from games when I eventually left in 2005. I’ve worked on a few music and art projects since then, but I also missed being part of a video game team.”
Bayliss went on to note that he’d ”built a variety of silly characters for the game, from concept sketch right through to the final models and animation.” He also teased he had some ideas that he’s interested in bringing to life. ”In the future I’d love to rekindle some of the ideas I’ve had since leaving Rare, and help bring to life some of those even bigger, bolder character concepts that have been brewing in my head. I’ve so many ideas, old and new, so it’s going to be great fun filling that little logo-flask with more stars.”
Yooka-Laylee raised over $3M in its Kickstarter campaign last June 2015, and is expected to see release October 2016.
