Project Overview
Details
Project:
Children’s iOS Game. Interactive adaptation of a Karen S. Robbin’s Children’s Book “Care for Our World”
Studio:
Sunbreak Games
Children’s Book Credits:
Karen S. Robbins: Author
Alexandra Ball: Illustrator
Compendium Inc.: Publisher
Team I directly worked with:
Jason Behr: Creative Director
Amanda End: Amanda End
Kelsey Canaga: Animator
Emily Baldado: Animator
Nemo Nemiroff: Animator
*Many more wonderful people helped in the creation of this game.
My Contributions
My Role:
Animator
Programs Used:
Spine (Esoteric Software)
Adobe Creative Suite
Unity
My Contributions:
Image Editing
Rigging
Animated Assets
Project Goals
Adapt the Children’s Book “Care for our World” into a calming, on-the-go experience for young audiences. This iOS app includes the interactive read-along book, an activity playset and coloring pages.
Care For Our World
Interactive Children’s Book experience, available on iPad.
Image Editing
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Preparation for Spine Animation
Every illustration was edited in order to create the necessary texture “skins” to use for the rig in Spine. This process included redrawing the animals “pieces” from the flattened illustration provided, and pre-planning the basic motions in order to create the right skins. There was a fine balance between staying true to the original illustrations and the need to redraw pieces to prepare the character for motion.
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Kangaroo Skins prepared for Rigging in Spine
Once imported to Spine, I used the skins to create the skeleton rig for the major actions I pre-planned. The idle was a simple breathing and stretching motion, and required very little deformation through the skins. The On-Click Action required more deformation in the neck and tail, as the kangaroo looked down to the Joey.
Animation
This whimsical app's goal is to engage young children in a calm, explorative reading experience that can be enjoyed on the go.
In order to ensure our young players felt at ease while exploring each page's clickable characters, the animation needed to reflect the emotions we intended to create - calmness, gentleness and ease.
We create that calm experience with longer timing, smooth and paced animations, avoiding quick or sudden motions and animating each character with looooong, deep breaths, gentle swaying and soft eye blinking! Every page has a range of playful, caring, tender and cheerful character animations.
Below are a couple of the pages I contributed to the app.
Playtesting
After attending Seattle’s Geek Girl Convention, and monitoring the play sessions of excited kids, I can confidently say that “Care for Our World” was been well received by both Young Players and their enthusiastic parents.
Children took turns playing and were often reluctant to end their sessions. Parents expressed their gratitude to my team for creative a fun game for their kids that steered away from exciting, action packed adventure and battle systems.
Unfortunately, since the publish date, “Care for Our World” is no longer available for purchase.
Media
