Rodney Alan Greenblat is an artist born in Daly City, California, August 23 1960 and is best known for being lead designer on the PaRappa the Rapper series, working closely with game creator Masaya Matsuura and writer Gabin Ito to develop the characters.
Rodney moved to New York in the 1980s and became very involved in the East Village art scene at the time. In the 1990s he produced a series of interactive CD-ROMs, which eventually led to him being involved in the video game industry, specifically Dazzleoids, which caught the attention of Masaya Matsuura and his wife. PaRappa the Rapper inspired a whole line of consumer products and even a TV show in Japan. Rodney has since produced work for Sony, Toyota, The New York Times, The New Yorker, and currently in Japan with Dentsu agency and Japan Railroad Kyushu. His original "Thunder Bunny" series is still popular in Japan, where he owns and has designed a café known as "Café Rodney", located in Tokyo.
Trivia
- Has designed an album cover and a video for Shonen Knife and an album cover for They Might Be Giants.
- Sings the Jet Baby theme in the opening moments of PaRappa the Rapper.
- His favourite character he has ever designed is PJ Berri.
- Has all 24 Godzilla movies on VHS.
- Designed "Marty Bagel" for a Japanese chain of convenience stores in 1998, and then went on to design 15 more characters for the stores over 10 commercials.
- Designed Sunny Funny, Katy Kat and PJ Berri before being approached to design PaRappa the Rapper.
- Wants to make movies.
- Claims to have 543,210 unpublished characters in his head.
- Thinks video games are bad for children.
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