North Kingdom

Walt Disney Parks and Resorts Online contacted us after they saw “Get the glass” and wanted us to work on a project with them and T.Rowe-Price. They wanted to create a fun game for kids that also teaches them about finance.
Beyond that, the brief was quite open, and we worked on about 10 different concepts before we settled for one. And then we set out to develop the game together with the creative team at Walt Disney Parks and Resorts Online.

CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT

Concept sketch – This was the first sketch to illustrate the concept that was later chosen. It shows slightly oversized characters fulfilling different tasks in a small town.

Concept illustration – The illustration below was used to talk about the concept further: it would be a board game, there would be three different levels with different visual themes, and different means of transportations between the levels. You can also see that there were to be crossroads to vary the game, and what kind of landing spaces we were looking into.

A bit into the project we were asked if we could make the model into a globe. Of course we accepted the challenge. Here’s a rough sketch of the camera set up.

As many times before, we used the sketcher Anton to find the right look of the model world.

When the style was set we moved on to modelling, to show what modifications come with going from sketch to model. The island, the bridge, the tree and the house in this picture are physical, the water and surrounding landscape is 3D.

MAPPING OUT THE WORLD

Level 1 – Fiscalville

Level 2 – Wild nature

Level 3 – The FAT City

MAKING IT A GLOBE

Our 3D-artist took the scanned sketches and stretched them over a virtual globe, then added buildings and finally sculpting the landscape.

BUILDING THE MODEL

Kenny is posing next to the barrel while it was still missing any landscape.
In the upper right the sketches of the model serves as blueprint for a styrofoam layout test.
Below that, the levels are taken off, leaving the strips between levels hanging, and then comes a detailed shot of the pirate ship in making.
In the bottom left Ted is seen working on the second level. Ted was responsible model maker and director at the shooting.
In the bottom right model maker Rickard is seen placing a bridge, 3D-artist Daniel is watching.

Close up on the pirate ship when ready.

Level 1 – Fiscalville
As you can see, we put physical landing spaces onto the model. The water though, was only painted to be out-keyed so there was more than enough 3D work already. The backdrop painter who did the sky had previously worked with Ingmar Bergman.

Level 2 – Wild nature
The different levels differed in weight, making it a challenge to turn the world at a steady pace while filming. To give us some margin to correct that, and also to be able to choose the exact speed of the turn later on, we filmed at high frame rate.

Level 3 – The FAT City
The city featured a number of details, including a replica of the statue “Lyftet” from our home town Skellefteå.

INTERFACE

Here’s an early version of the interface, made before we even had started on the model. You will see the final version in the character section below.

CHARACTERS

Since 3D modelling is quite time consuming, we start off with sketches.

High polygon characters seen in the interface at game start up.

The high polygon characters were also used in pre-rendered cut scenes in the game.

We used badges with close up portraits between turns in multiplayer games.

Low polygon characters were used for the boardgame, where we used real-time 3D.

Tracking test with moving camera.

Low polygon character as seen during game play.

Being edutainment for kids about finance, the piggy banks were central to the game. They represented investment methods with different risks and the engine featured historical numbers to simulate returns for each one of them.

The sketcher Therese Larsson worked with us on this project, among other things with the P.I.G. who lives in the upper right corner of the interface, giving advice both on the game and on real life finance.

The travelling merchant startet out as a quite shadowy character, but ended up as a rather nice guy.

Alternative sketches of the merchant’s car

Sketch of the merchant’s car opening up to a shop

3D animation of the opening shop, with interactive layer on top

MINI GAMES
MINI GAME 1 – The Truffle Shuffle
The idea of the game was to collect as much money as possible, while avoiding spending it on candy thrown out by the wolf.
We took close up photos of next to every building on the first level, and stitched them together to create one long platform game level.
Click on the image to enlarge it and see the game-ground drawn on top.

MINI GAME 2 – Grab bags
The idea of the game was to collect money and place it in the piggy bank before the wolf got to them first and decreased it’s value – inflation.
We started with a photo of a model waste land – but reshaped it quite a bit in photoshop.

MINI GAME 3 – Hide ‘n’ Peak
The idea of the game was to put as much money as possible in as many different places as possible, to minimize the risk of loosing it all to the looting wolf.
We started with a shot of the model, taking in as much of the city as possible. Then we draw interiors of the buildings in Photoshop, making places to put money in. As a last step we added the coins and points in an interactive layer on top of everything.

That’s about it. Now go check out the game at www.piggybankadventure.com