GOOGLE INTERLAND

Client
Google
Year

2017

Agency

North Kingdom

Type

Browser games

Awards & Mentions
  • European Design Awards
  • FWA Top 100
  • FWA site of the day
  • Awwwards site of the day.
Deliverables
  • Design guides
  • Storyboards
  • Trailers
  • Promotion assets
My Responsibilities
  • Art direction
  • Animation + Motion Direction
  • Production design
  • Visual development
TLDR

In this project, my primary role was collaborating with the creative director to craft character designs and art direction for each game, ensuring they aligned with Google’s brand identity and purpose. I took the lead in directing character animation, camera work, and designing the visual language for the games and their levels.

Additionally, I spearheaded the creation of trailers to promote the games upon release, ensuring they effectively communicated the unique features and appeal of each title to the public.

VIDEO

CHALLENGE

I was appointed to lead a team in crafting the visual identity for the worlds and characters, in game animation style and also promotional material including two trailers for Interland, a series of four educational games being produced by North Kingdom for Google’s Be Internet Awesome program.

SOLUTION

I began by establishing the parameters of the low poly style across all four games, ensuring coherence between the characters and their respective environments. This involved understanding how the gameplay of each game would influence the visual language of its environment. A crucial aspect was maintaining fidelity to Google’s brand identity throughout the design process, ensuring a harmonious integration with their overarching vision.

Furthermore, I allocated the brand colors across the various game worlds and identified complementary colors for the villains to enhance their visibility and distinguish them within the game environment.

A lot of the design work was first done as sketches but as the project got more complex I switched to designing the elements directly in 3D. Last step was to sit with the developers in WebGL and tweak sizes, colours, backgrounds and particles.

Short list of things I worked on:

  • Animation guides for all characters and any technical animation in the games
  • Art direction and design guides for all characters and worlds for each game
  • WebGL look development to optimize the output for a browser game
  • Directing and editing the trailers for the games
  • …and more but I forget now

RESULTS

The project had and has huge success achieving change all around the world and I’m super glad I got to work on, and define so much of this product for so many to enjoy.

For teachers, a curriculum was designed with lesson plans that have received the ISTE Seal of Alignment. In the first four months, the curriculum was downloaded 30 000 times and Interland was played over 163 000 hours.

Since it’s release, Google Interland has been localised in many languages, helping children all over the world to become safer online.

SHOTS

Enjoy some random shots from the project. More to come when I dig up the work files from a hard drive that is currently somewhere, somehow and sometime.