Royal Faerie Garden #1 (KinDergarten)
Disney·BYJU'S Early Learn app — HOME SCREEN
Seen below are the notes I gave the art team after they'd submitted the first sketch/concept for the world map I was envisioning and which we were all collaboratively trying to give life to. While the art itself was appealing it fell short of the brief, and the larger rationale, I had shared with them.
What is this vision you ask? Fret not. Here it goes — our task was to find a way to house the content within the app, of which there was a wide variety, in a way that could gel together the Disney inspired pieces along with our in-house ones without muddling the two together in an indistinct way. Disney is usually very particular about how their IPs are showcased and especially particular about how their IPs are showcased with those outside their pantheon. This was a peculiar dilemma since the world housing the two itself would be seen as something that has to manifest itself as distinct from Disney's proprietary worlds.
My solution for this was to envision the world as seen through the eyes of the one and only Jiminy Cricket. For young viewers this may be an unfamiliar name. But for those of us who grew up watching Disney features back during their classical, and in my view golden, era Jiminy Cricket was the character that freely moved from IP to IP subtly influencing the different stories in substantial ways. He was like the Archangels who appear in seemingly disconnected biblical tales tying them all together, or Nārada who often appears in, again, seemingly disconnected tales in Indian mythology; often playing both the role of the deus ex machina and at times the embodiment of the audience's point of view. Thus, the idea to envision the world through what seemed like his eyes was conceived. Now, since pointing to him overtly would, again, muddle the world-separation between Disney and our in-house content, I decided to take the route of approximating his persona via woodland fearies. Conceptually, they're usually imagined as tiny, magical, mysterious and possessing old-world wisdom and depth. See — pretty good fit, right?
Below is the sketch I created to realign the team to a singular, and vision-oriented, approach for the task.
So, now to move on to the next key aspect of this world map — how to showcase the content and give users a way to scroll through, browse and select the ones they want to engage with. My thought was to use astral projections as a way to house thumbnails. The rationale being that these woodland faeries would peer into a world of stories and fun characters via magic which would then influence their cultural memes visible as art and architecture throughout their world. For you Snow White (1937) fans, in case your wondering, yes there is a 'magic mirror on the wall' reference in there.
This would clear us multiple paths — it would help us showcase Disney content without implying direct interaction between the worlds, and give us a clear rationale to justify throwing in easter eggs all across. More on said easter eggs, here.
Of course, with new direction and a healthy serving of creative energy, my team and I were able to create beautiful visuals that brought my sketch and the detailed brief to life. A link to said brief has been included here. The above renders were a team effort. A large tree branch, made up of seamless tileable sections, was employed to give the users continuity as they scrolled to browse the content. This also gave the subject-based building a single and continuous platform to even out the hierarchy. A detailed asset breakdown for this build can be seen here.
Below, is our tech artists' handiwork bringing these concepts into a working mockup via the prowess of the Unity Engine.
Please note that while the direction, end-to-end narrative and creative vision for this project came from me, the visuals, as in art pieces, you see above are a collaborative effort by me and my team. A handful of very brave knights lent me their swords (loosely translated from ancient Aramaic as, 'talented artists who lent me their styluses') to bring this vision to fruition.
100% Organic. This post is HI generated – purely a product of human intelligence.
