Making the SpongeBob Skill Crane
When Nickelodeon asked iStrategyLabs for a great way to excite the 44 million Spongebob Squarepants Facebook fans - we decided to create a real-world skill crane for them to control over the internet. The resulting project showcases the broad range of skills and problem solving saavy we regularly employ at iSL to produce never-before-see experiences. See the full story at nick.istrategylabs.com and watch our recap video below:
Building the Machine
Borrowing inspiration for our skill crane design from a popular episode of the show, we prototyped a 3D model of the machine in Sketchup and contracted a set-design shop to construct our physical shell—complete with laser-cut lettering and working lightbulbs. To bring the cartoon aesthetic to reality, we wrapped the shell in vinyl printed from a design we hand-drew using the amazing pressure-sensitive powers of our Wacom Cintiq.
Opting against “hacking” an existing skill crane’s hardware, our engineers chose to build the components that make our machine move, drop down, and pick up prizes—from scratch. With a collection of motors, belts, rods, joysticks, buttons, sensors and a steady stream of 3D-printed components (courtesy our office MakerBot) our team engineered custom hardware to interface with micro-controllers communicating with servers via the web.
The Web Experience
The core challenge of this project was to convince our audience of the real-world impact of their digital actions. We bridged that gap via a live video feed from a camera looking into the prize-filled case of our physical crane. The video was then embedded in a web-based version of the skill crane, emulating the experience of literally standing in front of the machine.
real-world view vs. onlineview
full view of the web interface
Popping Bubbles
To make the process of choosing who cotrolled the crane fair for all players, we created a simple bubble-popping game that folks completed to improve their chances of winning control. It was a late-in-in-the-game solution to a problem we'd been having during user testing and turned out to be one of the most popular features of the experience.
Players earned trophies for numbers of bubbles popped.
Server Saavy
Creating a fun engaging design for the experience was one thing, preparing it for simultaneous interactions with thousands of players was an entirely new beast. Our team developed a sophisticated server structure with built-in scaling solutions that allowed our system to stand up to otherwise intimidating numbers of users.
The Team
We put our best on this project and are happy to have such a broad-range of skillsets and talents to deploy.
