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Art Direction, Super Cute Zoo (2009)
The executive team at GameLayers (myself, the Chief Executive Officer, and the Chief Technology Officer) decided to use our Social RPG engine to make a game to target the over-25 female demographic. We wanted to come to market with a “cute animals” nurturing theme instead of the female power fantasies common in titles for the demographic like “Diva Wars” and “Fashion Wars.” I felt strongly that games like “Pet Society” motivate engagement and monetization better than games that ask women to compete with each other.
I found supercutezoo.com was available. After researching online I found that hugely popular YouTube videos and websites like CuteOverload.com centered around exotic baby animals. I thought that a sensible way to combine all these stories of cuteness would be to have the player inhabit the role of a zookeeper. I took a day and toured the San Francisco Zoo, then spent several more days paging through DeviantArt.com to find a vector-based artist who could pull off the concept of Super Cute Zoo.
When hiring, I initially look at work that freelance artists do on their own. If an artist is making something that she otherwise creates for free, she approaches the assignment with a developed taste for the material and can deliver nearly-perfect pieces quickly. The human characters and animal characters for Super Cute Zoo were done by the artist Phil Carnehl. Phil was a joy to work with as he was passionate about games and drawing cute animals. He drew 81 animals and 34 human characters for me. I facilitated the communication between Phil and the freelance Flash animators we contracted to build the interactive pets feature you’ll see in Slide 2.
Art Direction, Super Cute Zoo (2009)
The executive team at GameLayers (myself, the Chief Executive Officer, and the Chief Technology Officer) decided to use our Social RPG engine to make a game to target the over-25 female demographic. We wanted to come to market with a “cute animals” nurturing theme instead of the female power fantasies common in titles for the demographic like “Diva Wars” and “Fashion Wars.” I felt strongly that games like “Pet Society” motivate engagement and monetization better than games that ask women to compete with each other.
I found supercutezoo.com was available. After researching online I found that hugely popular YouTube videos and websites like CuteOverload.com centered around exotic baby animals. I thought that a sensible way to combine all these stories of cuteness would be to have the player inhabit the role of a zookeeper. I took a day and toured the San Francisco Zoo, then spent several more days paging through DeviantArt.com to find a vector-based artist who could pull off the concept of Super Cute Zoo.
When hiring, I initially look at work that freelance artists do on their own. If an artist is making something that she otherwise creates for free, she approaches the assignment with a developed taste for the material and can deliver nearly-perfect pieces quickly. The human characters and animal characters for Super Cute Zoo were done by the artist Phil Carnehl. Phil was a joy to work with as he was passionate about games and drawing cute animals. He drew 81 animals and 34 human characters for me. I facilitated the communication between Phil and the freelance Flash animators we contracted to build the interactive pets feature you’ll see in Slide 2.