THE MAKING OF: Litil Divil
Journeying through hell is a classic narrative trope, stretching back all the way to Dante’s Inferno. However, we can’t recall the last time someone did it just to pick up a pizza. Enter Mutt, the unlucky protagonist of Litil Divil, who’s drawn the short straw and must travel through the Labyrinth Of Chaos to obtain the Mystical Pizza Of Plenty for his buddies in the underworld – with extra anchovies and capers, of course.
Litil Divil is something of an oddity: stuffed full of cartoony gags, arcade-like minigames and heaps of quality animations, it lies somewhere between an interactive cartoon in the style of Dragon’s Lair and a surprisingly tough dungeon crawler. Its origins can be traced back to Jerr O’Carroll, art director for NIIT with previous credits on series like Tomb Raider and Heimdall.
Jerr worked for Sullivan Bluth Studios, an animation company established in Dublin by renowned animator Don Bluth, before joining Emerald Software, an Irish development studio founded in the late-Eighties. Jerr began work on – the title came from Jerr’s mother, who called him a ‘little divil’ growing up. He had previously animated demonic characters for a sequence in the film when working at Sullivan Bluth and drew upon this for inspiration.
