WORLD OF ZOO - PANDA DEVELOPER DIARY
The director of animation talks Panda pinball!
The second developer diary from Blue Fang, this week Director of Animation Leland Hepler takes a look at the Pandas...
How would we differentiate the Pandas from the Bears in World of Zoo? This was the first question we asked ourselves when we started to come up with concepts for the Panda family. Since World of Zoo has both Bears and Pandas, we wanted to make sure our Pandas were more than bears in black-and-white jumpsuits. Playing up this contrast is what drove our search for the “Big Idea”.
If our Bears were strong, in-control, tough-guys, in contrast, our Pandas should be round, cute, clumsy and roly-poly. So we took the term “roly-poly” as our inspiration and ran with it. The “Big Idea” had to show-off this aspect to its best effect.
“Panda Pinball” became this “Big Idea”.
The value of starting with a big idea is that often the design of the exhibit, toys, foods and general behavior begins to easily fall into place around this central organizing concept. As an example, the key poses for the Panda were all designed with billiard balls in mind. This was a simple graphic concept that helped to guide that early work and mapped back to our central “Pinball” concept. The unique behaviors and animations we created for the Panda reinforce the “Pinball” concept and were designed to make the Pandas behave in funny entertaining ways. Throwing a ball sends the panda into an off-balance spin. The umbrella toy lifts the Panda into the air so it can drop him tumbling back to earth. During play, the pandas spend a lot time running, tumbling and ping-ponging off one another. The Pagoda playset was just one more mechanism to send them careening across the exhibit.
It’s even more fun to see different looking pandas in the exhibit. The game comes with the Animal Creator tool, where players can create their very own personalized animal, or in this case, panda. You can change the way your panda looks, its colors, behaviors, size and even the type of panda species. The possibilities are endless. Overall, the end result is a Panda experience that is a lot of fun.
> Watch the Panda gameplay footage on THQ TV
You can read last week's Monkey developer diary, over here. Come back next week for the Penguin diary!
How would we differentiate the Pandas from the Bears in World of Zoo? This was the first question we asked ourselves when we started to come up with concepts for the Panda family. Since World of Zoo has both Bears and Pandas, we wanted to make sure our Pandas were more than bears in black-and-white jumpsuits. Playing up this contrast is what drove our search for the “Big Idea”.
If our Bears were strong, in-control, tough-guys, in contrast, our Pandas should be round, cute, clumsy and roly-poly. So we took the term “roly-poly” as our inspiration and ran with it. The “Big Idea” had to show-off this aspect to its best effect.
“Panda Pinball” became this “Big Idea”.
The value of starting with a big idea is that often the design of the exhibit, toys, foods and general behavior begins to easily fall into place around this central organizing concept. As an example, the key poses for the Panda were all designed with billiard balls in mind. This was a simple graphic concept that helped to guide that early work and mapped back to our central “Pinball” concept. The unique behaviors and animations we created for the Panda reinforce the “Pinball” concept and were designed to make the Pandas behave in funny entertaining ways. Throwing a ball sends the panda into an off-balance spin. The umbrella toy lifts the Panda into the air so it can drop him tumbling back to earth. During play, the pandas spend a lot time running, tumbling and ping-ponging off one another. The Pagoda playset was just one more mechanism to send them careening across the exhibit.
It’s even more fun to see different looking pandas in the exhibit. The game comes with the Animal Creator tool, where players can create their very own personalized animal, or in this case, panda. You can change the way your panda looks, its colors, behaviors, size and even the type of panda species. The possibilities are endless. Overall, the end result is a Panda experience that is a lot of fun.
> Watch the Panda gameplay footage on THQ TV
You can read last week's Monkey developer diary, over here. Come back next week for the Penguin diary!
