

Tom Gullen

Tom Gullen

It ain't easy to stand out nowadays, especially if you're a small company: you either have to do something crazy enough that the media notices you or market something so wonderfully novel that the media has to write about you. In this case, it seems that London-based software company Scirra decided to go with the former.

The billboard you see above is currently on display near South Bermondsey train station in south-east London, at the intersection of Rotherhithe and Ilderton roads. It was drawn entirely in MS Paint, and at 36 square metres this might just be the largest piece of MS Paint artwork in the world.

We spoke to Tom Gullen, co-founder of Scirra and the artist behind this MS Paint masterpiece, about the billboard. "The picture itself took me about 15-20 minutes to design and I was pretty happy with the result. I'm a Web developer by trade so this sort of advertising is all new to me."

"The most difficult part was drawing it to the billboard company's specification, as they want everything super high resolution, high DPI, etc.," Gullen explained. "They thought I was joking with them at first until we paid for it."

Each of the little digital frescoes is meant to represent the genres of games that you can make with Construct 2, an HTML5/WebGL/JavaScript games creator. Clearly the best portion of the billboard is on the right, where some kind of giant green bogey seems to be crawling out of a toilet and then incinerating Santa Claus with some kind of butane lamp.

By using MS Paint, Gullen said, the billboard more clearly communicates what people are likely to create with Construct 2 and does a better job of setting expectations. "I think a lot of people new to game developing are disheartened because they are overly ambitious," Gullen said. "This advertisement is meant to say to them: your first efforts might not be AAA standard, but everyone has to start somewhere!"

A personal licence for Construct 2 costs £80; a business licence costs £260. Gullen told me that they've paid for the billboard until December 19, but it might still be up until after that, if you want to go and see the paragon of Paint with your own eyes.