After being in the world-changingly awesome beta, I expect big things from LittleBigPlanet. For example, I expect that the box art doesn’t look like somebody’s PhotoShop amateur hour. I’m being nitpicky here, but when a game is as focused on art direction, and is as creatively designed and competently presented as LittleBigPlanet… well, the game’s cover image is no Photoshop Disaster but it’s not a clean, well-put-together piece either.

Hey, LBP is probably the best-received game with the worst luck in recent memory. Between the initial delays, the suicidal servers, and the Qu’ran recall, why not pile on with a deeply agonizing critique of the North American box art?

Here’s the cover in question. I scanned in my own copy because I could not find a good representation online.

Overall, this is muddy. Indistinct. From a distance, it looks like the lead Sackboy has a giant afro. The color tone jumbles everything together. There is no consideration of negative space. It is easy to see that the elements – the planet, Sackboy, floor, and fourteen Sackpeople – and just plopped down beside each other with no attempt to turn it into one, cohesive image.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in the lighting. The shadows across the background characters’ faces are all over the place. Look at the two Sackgirls with identical hair; the blue hair on the right has very thick shadowing, while the purple hair is almost completely flat.

For those of us that have been following LBP’s development, this guy is a total illusion-breaker. We’ve seen him as production art for months. Same pose. We know he’s a paste job. I may be looking too closely, but I suspect his original file is of a much higher detail resolution than the other Sacks.

This is just sloppy. The game has, like, a billion costumes. So why include the same highly visible alligator hat? Couldn’t have used that cute chicken outfit for one of those instead?

I gather this little Sackponcho is intended to be standing farthest back. Nevertheless, he’s sized too small. Having such a tiny head in the line wrecks the notion that they’re all standing together. Poncho here is emblematic of the problem with the entire line: instead of looking like a naturally-placed close crowd, everyone is a copy/paste job. What would it have taken to hop into the 3D poser and situate a bunch of Sackpeople in a real-space environment? One Sackperson should be leaning on the dude next to him. One should be climbing over another’s head. Instead of illustrating the game’s cooperative, silly vibe, this just looks like paper dolls.

Illegible logos are common enough on box art, but always heartbreaking. Media Molecule worked like crazy on this game, and then some dillweed graphic designer turned their logo to unreadable mush.

The only good thing I can say about this design is that the LBP logo contrasts nicely with the Planet. Everything above the Sackboy’s head – including the white-to-blue graph paper gradient – is quite pleasant.

If you’ve played LittleBigPlanet, or even seen any of the demo movies, you can probably tell that the game has an exceedingly strong design aesthetic. It’s all cardboard and stitching, unique and shabby chic, with an intentional you-can-see-the-wires garage band feel. None of that is communicated through this box art. For all the impulse-shopping gamer knows, LittleBigPlanet is some kind of awful new age Smurfs clone from an upcoming CG movie. And that’s if they even see it.

Check out this faux art from the Best Buy preorder box:

Aside from the Sackboy absolutely not actually standing on the Planet, that is a much nicer stab at a cover image. Everything is readable, even Media Molecule (boy, the difference a drop shadow makes!) The negative space frames the Sackboy and the LittleBigPlanet logo. You could see this box from across the store. The use of the stickers instead of the Stepford Sacks indicates something rather than nothing… as a buyer I may not know exactly what it indicates, but it gives me a definite idea that the game has an eclectic, off-center taste to it.

I know I’m being excruciating, but, that box was just a disappointment, you know?