All good things must come to an end, and after thirteen years as one of the UK’s MOST AMAZING creative game & animation studios, we have decided to take our bow and say farewell. As anyone who’s done it can tell you, it’s hard work running a studio, and after a year of ups and downs it felt like the right time to let it go and explore other creative ventures.

Don’t be sad though. We’ve got a soundtrack to this post that may only make sense at the end of this tale.

We want to say thank you to all the talented people that have made this company the success it has over the years; those that have been in for the long haul, those who were there at the start, those that became part of the extended family and those who contributed so much to make Littleloud the place it was.

You were all brilliant. Except you. Only kidding. You were wonderful too.

While we really don’t want to name names, as it’s a long list, a special shout goes to Head of Production, Anna Morris, who over this last year has done a stunning job of looking after all of us. Thanks dear.

We also want to say thank you to all the people we’ve worked with over the years, especially those that kept coming back to us with money to make different exciting things, those that took a chance on us and and our ideas, and those that enabled us to make some of our best work.

You also were brilliant.

However, we are still aiming to get our last game, Sticks and Stones, out in the next few months. Keep an eye on @littleloud or @mrdarrengarrett for news, and you can still catch David, Simon and me on our Littleloud emails for the immediate future as we forge our way into a bright new shiny future.

Finally, we’d like to say good bye to our dear friend Nik Faulkner who died after a long illness in June. Nik was our Head of Animation, 3D, Video, & whatever else the job required, and without him we would not have been able to realise some of our ridiculously over-ambitious ideas. He made the impossible possible.

His attitude, positivity and creativity brought an incalculable amount to the studio. Even when ill he still kept plugging away, unable to let his mind rest, making short films in the moments he felt up to it. And despite that illness, the quality of his ‘tinkering’ meant that Lightwave asked him to show his work as part of their main reel at SIGGRAPH 2013. You can see that work here…vimeo.com/nikfaulkner/videos. We will greatly miss him, the creative bounce and banter, the grounding he brought with his ‘dreams & reality’ board, and let’s not forget the ‘nut’ incident.

So why that tune? Well Nik chose that to make his last exit knowing that it would make us smirk when at our lowest point, and I thought I’d borrow his last idea to sign out on, in tribute to him and all the other people over the years that made Littleloud such a great place.

Adios Amigos.

OKLOVEYOUTHANKSBYE x

Darren Garrett, July 2013