Storytelling, Simplicity, and Silliness.

One of the most exciting aspects of doing what we do at Hornbill FX is having the opportunity to work with other creative minds and explore and develop all manner of ideas. Our collaboration with some of the best and brightest minds in game design, the folks at Bigfatphoenix Interactive, is one such engagement – exemplified by the art development exercise that our team worked on

The Brief

The challenge: tell short, engaging stories to children through a simple art style that’s quirky, distinctive, and laugh out loud funny. As creative briefs go, they don’t get more interesting.

Short gameplay loops, coupled with razor-sharp writing, required art elements that would support them and engage players – and the final little detail was that they needed to be created with a stick figure style art only. Within a well-defined world bible and highly specific guardrails set by the BFP team, our artists went to work.

Rough Sketches

The process began with a verbal brief on the idea, which we quickly translated into rough sketches

 

Idea Development

Through an iterative process, the illustrations were fleshed out to “find the fun” – capture the idea and convey it in a manner that was engaging and memorable, yet as simple and with as few elements as possible.

 

Final Output

Did we pull it off? You be the judge.

 

If you’re looking for the right team to help develop your ideas into engaging learning content, contact us today.