“Beat the Boot” is a collection of small but very challenging games racked up in a row to challenge your speed skills. Inspired by games like WarioWare and Mario Party, we developed a sequence of simple games that challenged users thinking and spatial skills under severe time pressure. The purpose is to manifest how little time 8 seconds really is and reflect the super fast Chromebook boot up. Our role was leading the concept development; manage the overall user experience and the execution of tech and design.

CHALLENGE

Three things: securing a high frame rate, creating games very fun to play and, at the same time, getting the message across.

SOLUTION

Users take on the challenge and play through five games, very individual from each other. In the end you get a high score that is published to the global leader board. We also added a multi-player option where users could play against other users, anywhere in the world. The vision was to make all games so fun and playable that they could stand on their own legs. So a lot of the creative effort was focused on the game play development. We also pushed the limits of HTML5, based on our previous experience from developing Bounce Ball to make the most out of the experience; sound effects and animations needed to be very in sync and responsive based on the users actions. And still maintaining a high frame-rate.

Try Beat the Boot here.

In the simplest of terms explaining it – “3 Dreams of Black” is an interactive music video developed in WebGL and optimized for Chrome to showcase its possibilities; written and directed by Chris Milk; based on the song “Black” from Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi’s ROME album; an album that somewhat is a soundtrack to a movie that doesn’t exist.

The music serves to express a story that takes place in a post-apocalyptic landscape where the main characters are played through the voices of Norah Jones and Jack White. More specifically, “3 Dreams of Black” is Norah’s lucid dream where users can partake and gain control of her characters experience.

Together with Chris Milk and Google Creative Lab we took on the role to lead the development across disciplines and serve as one unifying hub to tell the story of ”3 Dreams of Black”.

CHALLENGE AND SOLUTION

Most of what you see during the experience is not video, but is real-time rendering of visual models through WebGL, a technology that brings hardware-accelerated 3D graphics to the browser. Combined with different live action and 2D-cell render animation assets it gives users a vivid visual and compelling musical experience where a story is told with new and ground breaking technology.

COLLABORATION TEAM

Chris Milk, Aaron Koblin, Mr Doob, Branislav Ulicny, Google Creative Lab, Google Data Arts Team, Mirada, @Radicalmedia, Anthony Sheppard.

Visit the site: www.ro.me
See more about the technology behind: www.ro.me/tech

Last October Y&R New York came to us with an intriguing proposition.  They wanted to make a digital billboard for LG Electronics in Times Square – but not just any billboard, an interactive billboard with a digital creature living on it.  The idea was that this creature would be fed on Good News (because, as LG tells us, “Life’s Good”).

CHALLENGE

We only had until about 8 weeks (2 weeks R&D, 6 weeks production). We would have to create a robust solution, integrating with external sources of “Good News” including an SMS service and building a CMS allowing for real-time moderation, as well as design a 3D character.  The character would need to feel really “alive”, requiring hundreds of animations.  The system would also need to be flexible enough for us to expand it in the following 2 years, and the design and interaction design would need to be carefully thought through to attract attention in the clutter of Times Square. Also, the board was huge – and had a curve in the middle, which was another challenge for the design team.

SOLUTION

We decided to use Unity 3D so we could work with realtime rendering and a high enough resolution.  We also decided to create our character, called Gil, in both a “live” mode (using a costume) as well as in 3D.  We then integrated our Unity 3D app with SMS messages, RSS feeds, and Tweets via a custom human-moderated Content Management System.  We also decided to create a “puppetmaster” mode so we could control the character sort of like a video game character for greater flexibility.  We built a web app on an Amazon cloud server that took care of all the sources of Good News and then built a CMS that controlled all that data, statistics, settings and the schedule. And last but not least we split the daily schedule into 5 minute segments, all customisable in the CMS, and mixed them with video “bumpers”  and created a large library of animations and props that could be pulled into the Unity client from “The Brain”, an app we created to run on a local Linux server.

PARTNERS

Y&R New York, Mikael Emtinger, Motiviti/Pangaea, Zoink Games, Tobias Allanson, D3 LED, eModeration, Redrum

Diesel asked North Kingdom to be their agency for the fall/winter BE STUPID campaign. As part of the campaign we were asked to create a TV commercial that would showcase their new range of male and unisex watches.

CHALLENGE

At an early stage the team thought that the very production of the films should be a statement itself. Like a manifesto of Diesels message of ‘Be Stupid’, which essentially means liberating yourself from society’s conformity. So we all worked around one essential question – how to add a different angle to the Be Stupid message?

SOLUTION

We kept the creative process very open and transparent. By reaching out to unconventional production partners and working extremely open and collaboratively with them the process itself lead us to Santa Domingo, Dominican Republic. Everything was scripted, shot and post-produced locally there.

TARGET GROUP

Young urban male/females with a passion for the Diesel brand.

PARTNERS

Rita Indiana, Noelia Quintero, Kalle Gadd.

We worked closely together with Saatchi & Saatchi Düsseldorf to make this Augmented Reality testdrive for the new Toyota Auris Hybrid car. North Kingdom were responsible for the Augmented Reality module of the site, the framework and the rest of the site was designed and developed by Saatchi & Saatchi.

CHALLENGE

How do we let people test drive a car, when we don´t have the car yet?

SOLUTION

By using advanced Augmented Reality we managed to let people test drive the car on their own desks. Via use of multiple AR markers all showing different objects, users are able to build their own car track and have the car drive around in it. The car interact with all the objects in a unique way,  and depending of in what order you place the objects they will show off different key features of the car. The cleanest test drive ever!

PARTNERS

Mikael Emtinger, Edvin Besic, Zoink Animation, Magnus Oliv, Christian Björklund

HIGHLIGHTS

FWA Site of the Day 28 june 2010

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CASE MOVIE

In collaboration with Goodby Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco, we developed an unusual online game for Cheetos. A food fight taking place on websites all across the internet making the Cheetos products come to life. North Kingdom was responsible for refining an early creative concept, doing the technical development and execution. This called for the expertise of our in-house talents in storytelling, design, user experience design, 3D, animation and programming together with some external partners.

CHALLENGE

There were two challenges here. One was how to create the experience of a normal website being transformed into a battleground before your eyes. The other was to create an immersive multiplayer casual game with a low threshold but still complex enough to keep people interested.

SOLUTION

By building a world of Cheetos warriors and weaponry we created multiplayer online game surprisingly rich on cool looking details and with a funny storyline. A lot of attention was also given to the underlying game mechanics in order to create variation and challenges for repeated playing.

TARGET GROUP

18–40 year old snack loving men with a mischievous mind.

PARTNERS

Rallymedia, Dreamfield and MindFunk.

HIGHLIGHTS

Site of the Month (SOTM) at FWA for the month of July 2010 3rd in People Choice Awards – Website of the Year 2010 at FWA Visit site

CASE MOVIE

Credits to Goodby Silverstein & Partners for this case movie.

In this project we worked in close collaboration with Saatchi & Saatchi LA. We transformed their concept into an entertaining and quite unusual car presentation. North Kingdom was responsible for concept development and execution. And as always we worked closely with our great external partners.

CHALLENGE

How can we do an entertaining car presentation entertaining and get away from the typical technical tone? How can we add the right touch of humor to it and still be elegant?
Another challenge was to present the car’s specific features without adding lots of info text and often quite boring facts. We wanted to go away from the very common “hotspot” presentation of cars. And of course another problem to solve was that the new car model wasn´t yet available.

SOLUTION

This is an online experience that takes you for a short trip through five destinations and five features. An exclusive 60´s show where you can interact with the host and hostess or just sit back and relax, enjoy the many features and listen to the sweet soundtracks.

TARGET GROUP

40-55 years old who desire to live comfortably but not extravagantly.

PARTNERS

Stopp (3D and postproduction), Dinahmoe (sound), Direktörn & Fabrikörn

HIGHLIGHTS

FWA Site of the Day 8 july 2010

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We worked directly with adidas Germany,  and lead the entire  campaign. We developed the strategy, concept and execution. As we usually do, we turned to our friends to help us out with this gigantic project.

CHALLENGE

Rather than develop a hard selling campaign for the new jersey, we wanted to create an engaging and immersive experience where the new jersey became a symbol for something greater than just a national team. Our ambition was to establish the adidas national team jersey as a symbol for everything that football stands for; passion, emotions, belonging, expectations and history. Integrating our ideas seamlessly into the global theme/campaign developed by 180 was also a great challenge and was identified as a key to success.

SOLUTION

We created a broad digital platform with a centerpiece in the form of a unique game experience. It takes place in a fantasy world where the user has to go back in time to save the German national team from losing their identity by finding the lost design elements of the new jersey. The platform also consisted of an augmented reality graphic novel, rich media banner campaign, a blog, viral films, Facebook fan page and a Facebook application – ”Be a part of the team”, where the users could see themselves in the new jersey.

TARGET GROUP

Primary group: Football crazy kids 14- 20 Secondary group: Football fans in general

PARTNERS

Direktörn & Fabrikörn, Dreamfield, Artopod, Thomson Interactive, Dinahmoe, ILP, Fido, More Media, Open, Blackbelt Monkey, Neuland & Herscher

HIGHLIGHTS

500 000 visits in first three weeks FWA Site of the day FWA Site of the month (December 2009) 2nd place in FWA Site of the Year 2009 One Show Interactive, Branded Games  – Silver

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CASE MOVIE

In close collaboration with DDB and Jesper Kouthoofd, Inc., we developed and created the website and co-produced the TV spots for the campaign.

CHALLENGE

Grab and hold the attention of a very restless audience by taking them through nine complex personality tests where unconventional thinking and patience is put to the extreme.

SOLUTION

The audience is taken inside a mysterious testing facility that’s located deep underground. In a very dark and atmospheric setting nine test stations are lined up, one after each other – and without any possibilities available to skip ahead. Each test needs to be solved one by one. Not all tests are what they seem to be. Self-knowledge and perception are heavily challenged. Some are even impossible to solve. After the nine tests have been completed, a debrief follows with feedback on the actions the users have taken. The website is basically a single 90 meter long one take that was shot inside Muskö  - which previously served as a secret naval base in the Stockholm archipelago. Almost everything was built on location as part of the set, which was then captured on film. The backdrop itself is a huge dry dock used to store u-boats and other military boats. The post-production involved a great deal of 3D, flash production and design to get the interactive layers in place. Sound design was also a very important part of the experience.

TARGET GROUP

Swedish men and women between 18-25 years old.

PARTNERS

Jesper Kouthoofd Inc (film), Gösta Reiland (DOP), The Producers (film production) Stopp (post-production, 3D and sound), Illianced (flash production) and Dinahmoe (sound) .

HIGHLIGHTS

Maybe the longest continuous take in Swedish advertising history (over 90 meters) served as the foundation for this very dark personality test experience which was filmed inside the former super secret military naval base Muskö. FWA Site of the day One Show Interactive Public service/Non-profit – Silver Guldägget Production – Gold

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We developed the online concept in close collaboration with Coca-Cola Germany. North Kingdom was responsible from concept through filming, production and delivery, collaborating with many of our favorite partners and subcontractors.

CHALLENGE

While setting a unique creative direction for the game experience, our ideas also had to integrate with the direction already chosen and implemented by Coke: “life as it should be”.

SOLUTION

The Coca-Cola Zero challenge is an online browser-based action game where the users will find themselves acting out the adventures of the main character, Tim, in order to experience UEFA EURO 2008 and football as it should be. The story begins with Tim spending his last money on a bottle of Coca-Cola Zero when he suddenly is approached by three beautiful women. The women will show him what life and football as it should be is all about. But then he has to get inside the arena and reach the VIP area in time for the beginning of the match. The overall game objective is to play the game of overcoming the challenges that lay in front of Tim as he move towards the inside of the arena.  Will he make it to the VIP area in time and get the full experience of UEFA EURO2008 and football as it should be?

TARGET GROUP

This was a campaign for the German market. The specific target group was young German men, aged 20-29 years old.

PARTNERS

Dreamfield, Rallymedia

HIGHLIGHTS

FWA Site of the Day FWA Site of the Month Clio Awards – Bronze Cannes Lions – Silver Rolled out in more than ten markets outside of Germany.

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CASE MOVIE