What Is The Vortex In Animation Throwdown
Working with Intellectual Property: It's Freakin' Sweet, I Tell Ya H'what
This article by Katrina Wolfe was originally posted on Kongregate'due south Programmer Blog .
Over the last 7 years I've worked on a variety of Facebook and mobile games; a handful of them were with different celebrities and intellectual properties (IPs). I've been working on Animation Throwdown: The Quest for Cards at Kongregate for the past ii years. I joined during pre-product, saw it through launch, and continue to support information technology through live servicing. Animation Throwdown is a card-battling game that incorporates the worlds of 5 animated properties from Fox: Family unit Guy, American Dad, Futurama, Bob's Burgers, and Rex of the Hill. Before Kongregate, I was a producer on Family unit Guy: The Quest for Stuff at TinyCo. Before that, I worked as a designer and producer on a diverseness of projects with celebrities and brands at Take hold of Games: Baby and Me(working with Brooke Burke and ModernMom.com), Brad Paisley World for Facebook, and a few other games that were never released.
Partnership
First of all, these projects are partnerships. You get to work on amazing properties that have a fan base of operations who cares deeply about that belongings and, if yous're lucky, you also go to work with the creators. For Animation Throwdown it was incredible working with 5 different shows. We got to sit down with the different bear witness runners to talk story, gameplay, and figure out how to bring all the worlds together. Each group participated in unlike ways, but I would definitely encourage anyone who works with an IP to get creators/show runners/etc. involved in some form. It tin help make a game that's more authentic and really speaks to the fans.
For Blitheness Throwdown our solar day-to-twenty-four hours interactions were primarily with Fox, only many of our conversations (especially early on when deciding how to bring all the shows together) included the creators and/or the show runners for each show. They helped usa craft our introduction story and option our launch cards, islands, and characters. 1 of the bigger challenges nosotros faced was providing players with content that is fun and special to each testify without alienating fans from a unlike show. We were always a little worried that within jokes might not connect with the fans of the other shows and struggled to know what that remainder was. Working with the shows helped, merely even so it was hard to please everyone. We ended up starting with more well-known parts from each show, and now, in live servicing, nosotros are excavation deeper into each show.
Vision Holder
Working with the creators/license holders/stakeholders is valuable, just it's also important to accept a vision holder who can take everything and bring it together to deliver a cohesive final piece. Don't forget that this is your game, your vision. The creators/license holders/etc. tin can be a groovy influence, but it's the programmer's job to ensure that you end up with a good game and not get lost in their ideas. Take their ideas and determine if they meld with the game well. In the beginning, some of the stakeholders suggested nosotros craft specific narratives for each show that the players could then choose to collaborate with. It was an interesting thought, only it was also both technically challenging and added a lot of complexity to the Adventure manner, which would have probably ended up more confusing than fun. We spent quite a fleck of time trying to make ideas like that one piece of work because we thought their ideas were concrete directions rather than simply suggestions. We ended upwardly scrapping a clamper of the game narrative considering it didn't quite work for anyone, then we pitched an idea we liked that was simpler, funnier, and more thematic. It's a hard residual, but that's why remembering information technology's also a partnership is important. The developers bring the vision for the game experience and then work with the creators/stakeholders to keep it authentic.
The story we were working with for a long time was this vortex concept. All the different show worlds were sucked into a mysterious vortex. There were some really cool visuals for it, but it never felt quite right.
If you lot accept an idea, don't fear pitching it. We occasionally had internal conversations about game ideas or marketing ideas that nosotros sometimes didn't follow through on since nosotros were worried it would be hard to approve or that the shows might non be willing. Out of almost everything we did bring to them, nosotros constitute a fashion to practice what nosotros wanted.
Fine art Resources and Approvals
This bit is more specific to animated shows, just request for and collecting whatever resources available to utilize from the belongings will exist helpful.
Blithe shows can have lots of references and model sheets, but many don't proceed all their model sheets 100% up to date (practise you have game documentation that is always perfectly up to date?), then don't expect to be able to trace something and have it approved immediately. Older shows like King of the Colina and Futurama had lots of scanned model sheets that they were able to transport usa. It was a really useful starting point; for the characters/buildings/etc. that we didn't get references for, the artists merely had to take hold of screenshots from the shows and work from at that place. For celebrities and live action information technology's a bit easier since the fine art style will exist the one you created, and you only demand to match the person to the style.
Hitting Brand Quality
The small details affair. Getting to work with the shows is what takes the art in game from fan art to brand art. Getting characters on model, using the correct colors — all of those things might seem like tiny differences, but they are what defines the brand. Particularly for animated properties, where y'all're matching the art way, all of the show content will by and large need to be sent for approval. This can mean sending fine art to the show's artists to get redlines and make sure our drawings are matching their models and their standards, or this tin be sending your rendition of a existent person to them to make sure that it represents them in a way they like. For example, on Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff we would work with celebrities to get them in game and sent over our renditions of them to both the Family Guy team and the celebrity for approval. Family unit Guy's squad would make sure our rendition of the person was on brand and the person would make sure that they were happy with our representation of them.
To give an idea of the type of approvals we got in Animation Throwdown, here are some instance redlines nosotros received:
Artists
When there are multiple artists working on a project, make sure they accept access to (and empathize) previous notes and apply those notes to each subsequent piece. It will make the procedure go significantly faster, since you don't want to waste matter a round of approvals on changes you already knew needed to be practical. This tin can lead to frustration both by the IP owners and the artists.
When nosotros started working on Animation Throwdown, nosotros didn't know what the shows were going to comment on, and then our early fine art submissions took quite a while (weeks) to get canonical. Once nosotros understood the rules and internally tried to hit their quality bar, everything went much faster. We at present have many avails that become through 0–ane reviews before they are approved.
One thing that is very helpful when getting lots of assets canonical is fastidious condition tracking. Nosotros have assets at all different stages of approval, including different types of avails (card, characters, etc.). I have spreadsheets galore to keep track of all the assets we've gotten approved, and we've created processes for all our artists to ensure that we know which pieces are canonical and can exist used. This was extra important for our team, since we had lots of different parties all trying to use the same assets, and releasing unapproved avails is not something yous desire to do. However, the sheer volume of assets alone required significant tracking to make sure everything was moving through the process and didn't get left behind. We've gotten almost 1000 cards approved, over 250 characters and poses, more than than 100 boxes and banners, 35 islands, and all sorts of other bits and pieces!
Alive Operations
During pre-production, we spent so much time creating all the base assets that we weren't able to get ahead and create art for futurity events. Game development moves fast, and frequently we'll come up upwards with a program and want to ship it immediately but get slowed downward because approvals are time-consuming. Correct after launch we were prepared for the first event (we release new cards weekly that have a specific theme which are boosted in battle for the duration of the upshot) and had started preparation for the second, but approvals tin can take a 1- to 2-week turnaround fourth dimension for assets, and so we had a lot of approvals that came in last-infinitesimal. This acquired a lot of stress when preparing server pushes because we would exist uploading and testing assets very close to when we wanted to release them. Now we're ahead, and we get-go creating cards ~2 months in advance. We had to get meliorate at planning ahead, anticipating the work, and building in buffer fourth dimension for everything.
On Blitheness Throwdown, at that place was more complexity since we had five shows. Content that involved multiple shows' art had to go to all of those studios for blessing. Occasionally, one bear witness's notes would impact the design/composition of another show's character — this required even more back and forth than with just one show.
Conclusion
Working with unlike properties can be a wonderful add-on to a game. It allows for players to immediately connect with your globe in a powerful way. That connection helps with user acquisition (make recognition = lower CPIs) and can positively bear on KPIs. Depending on the property information technology can add to product times, but with a little training and good processes, it's a challenge worth tackling.
Source: https://medium.com/@kongregate/working-with-intellectual-property-its-freakin-sweet-i-tell-ya-h-what-a172a5d706d
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