MM recently put up a fascinating (for me anyway) article about the making of Sackboy (they interviewed two of the people on the four man team that designed Sackboy). Of course, the story starts with Yellowhead and ends with the adjustments MM made as they realized all of the stuff Sackboy would have to do in-game.

There is a hilarious video of death animations (a bit more violent than anything that made it into the game, but not quite as violent as the illustration below), two additional illustrations and lots more text at the link below.

http://www.mediamolecule.com/blog/article/from_yellowhead_to_sackboy/

"There was always a concept of a place where you play, and a place where you build that eventually became the Moon. But at this stage various ideas were flying around - an extra room in the pod, a warehouse somewhere. But then Mark came up with a crazy concept…"

"Maybe the place where you go to create is… in yourself. Let's put this zip on Sackboy, he opens the zip, folds in on himself and goes and creates inside himself, because creativity and ideas are all inside you."

"I'm kind of glad to say that this idea didn't manifest" laughs Kareem "it's a legacy part of design, but it makes him really distinct."

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"It was quite far along into the project, and I'd really started to hate Sackboy at that point, so I kind of relished the idea of coming up with ways of killing him."

All sorts of horrible ways for Sackboy to expire were created, some were way more extreme than others.

"I really liked to describe the way his material behaved, so some of them involved his thread being caught and him unravelling, or his fluff spilling out everywhere.

Glancing at the collection of sketches, I see Sackboy impaled on spikes, horribly squished or burned into a heap of ash. In the end the decision was made to make it a bit less gruesome, kick up the loveable, cute aspect.