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Art & Creative Direction
Art & Creative Direction
This is a selection of work from 2016-2021
The Candy Crush Saga team is very big with ca 250 people in 12 sub teams. Most of the teams are in Stockholm and a few in Berlin and Barcelona. Ca 30 are artists and user interface designers.
The art director role is not very hands-on creating final art, i.e. I haven't created most of the artwork I'm showing below, it is created by different artists who have followed my directions.
In my role as Senior Art Director I worked both strategically with Candy's creative vision, future guidelines and brand, and tactically giving daily direction and feedback to artists and designers.
Logo revamp pitch
Logo revamp pitch
For long time the Candy Crush Saga logo has been difficult to work with because of the clumsy Saga-tag, which also looks outdated. I carefully revamped it and created a pitch to sell in the change.
Revamp became very appreciated internally but is not implemented live yet .
CCS logo facelift 2021 pitch.pptxCreative Vision 2021
Creative Vision 2021
Candy Crush is an old game, soon 10 years, and many different people have been working on it. In the beginning team was small and it was easy to communicate and be aligned, but during the years team have been growing with a fast pace. Candy Crush has lacked style guides and clear creative guidelines, and tech has been very difficult to work with for the designers. This has created the un-coherent look and often un-smooth functions we can see today.
Candy Crush is still a very successful game and the ambition with the creative vision was to align the teams to be able to clean up the game, make it fresher, more coherent, functional and logic.
CCS Creative Vision 2021.pptxI have been working very closely with the Narrative Director (but their content is removed from deck) and together we had several presentations about our Art, Creative & Narrative guidelines.
The Creative Vision was very well received, the content resonated across all departments and the teams have already started to follow the guidelines.
Start screen
Start screen
The 3D candies ARE the CCS brand, therefore they should be more enhanced whenever possible and it's important to show them directly when the player enters the game.
Another thing I recommended was to start changing the start screen much more often and also change to different characters and locations.. This will bring novelty and freshness to the game and raise the players interest. There are many different already existing characters and environments to be used, which also will be beneficial for establishing a narrative.
The standard start screen
This is a typical seasonal re-skin as they used to look – static with same character and location, only season is changed
This is the direction I recommended – use different locations and characters and bring in the 3D candies (here I also switched to the revamped logo to sell it in :)
...and following the direction – this is the start screen made for Crush is Real campaign 2, with a Candy Factory theme. Very happy that game and marketing campaign was very synchronised in content and style.
In-game assets · New rules & revamps
In-game assets · New rules & revamps
During the years different people have had different ideas about the gameplay assets. Style has been going from the original glossy 3D candies to cartoon and steampunk and non-candy objects have been added. This has given the gameboard a very mish-mashy style.
When I worked with Candy Crush Franchise I created clear guidelines for the new games, for instance Candy Crush Friends. The theme to follow for the in-game assets was ”In the same Candy bag”, i.e. all the assets should belong together and match with the core 3D candies. They should have same scale, level of details, lighting, rendering and be candies rather than other sweet things.
When I started in Candy Crush Saga I brought this with me and we started to create all new assets with these guidelines in mind, we also started to revamp old assets. I worked very close with the artists and level designers to align on clear rules for the assets, like categories, behaviour, material, colour and shape.
In-game screen before revamp
After revamp of the background, candy cannon machine and layered frosting blocker
As you can read in the Creative Vison, I established and expanded the theme for the game board to "In Candy Factory".
I recommended to change all backgrounds to factory environment to keep theme consistent and made background monochrome with less details for better readability.
Machine assets: Assets with machine function, i.e. spawning or moving candies, are revamped and aligned in style to fit the factory theme. The old assets were all over the place in style.
Below some more examples, revamped assets at the top and the original assets below:
Layered frosting: Old frosting was too detailed and in wrong scale and had dull colours. It also had two different graphics for the first layer, white fluff and an empty tray. We removed tray and build on the white fluff which looked nice. I have inspired the artists to think differently about layers, layers don't have to be on top of each other.
Waffle: Waffle was too detailed, in wrong scale, is not a candy and had chocolate on without having chocolate behaviour. It was remade to a toffee roll. It has also another approach to layers and reminds a bit about licorice roll, which is good since they both have gravity and can be switched.
Colour bomb: We took existing asset from CC Friends (re-cycling for the win!) and made it slightly bigger to make it look more powerful.
Popcorn: Popcorn had wrong style and too many details. It was also completely random and didn't at all follow the rules for materials and their behaviour. It was remade to a licorice surprise since it has licorice behaviour. It also shows the colour bomb reward it has inside.
Multi-lock: Sometimes less is more. Old lock (on top row) was a too detailed chest with different sweet coatings as layers, had a cartoony misplaced style and was difficult to read.
With new lock the function got enhanced since it's much easier to see the locked in asset behind the barrels. The barrels disappear one by one. On the keys we made indents with the candy shape to help the colour blind players being able to match.
With new lock the function got enhanced since it's much easier to see the locked in asset behind the barrels. The barrels disappear one by one. On the keys we made indents with the candy shape to help the colour blind players being able to match.
Accessibility · Colour blindness
Accessibility · Colour blindness
Most of the in-game assets has except different colours also different shapes or patterns, which makes it possible for colour blind people to see their difference.
But some of the assets look the same except their colour, ex Fish, Pepper bomb, Lucky candy and Mystery candy. If the players can't distinguish the colours it will become very difficult to match them accordingly with the candies.
This was my suggestion how we could solve the problem in the least time consuming way.
Crush is Real campaign & live op
Crush is Real campaign & live op
In 2020 a big campaign called The Crush is Real was released. Usually things from outside world are candified in style before they enter the game, but this time I decided in close collab with Marketing that we should use the colourful stylistic style and the realistic candies from the TVC in the in-game live-op. I was curious to see if breaking the original style could spark an interest with our players and give positive impact, and it did.
Below the design progress, how I art directed the artist from their first concepts to the final result:
Artist's 1st design in ordinary CCS style.My feedback: Use the marketing design and their assets.
Artist's 2nd design with a mix of marketing assets and CCS ordinary UI assets.My feedback: Many different small shapes creates a scattered and lame impression. Background competes with interactive area.
My sketch to explain how to make screen less scattered and more energetic.To make it personal and interesting I suggested polaroid photos on the featured players. Bigger interactive assets will also make function clearer for player.
Artist's 3rd design, it's not possible to have photos on top of each other and we have to use the level pins or it will become complicated. And there's not enough room for big title.My feedback: Alright! Well done, just some minor tweaks.
My sketch to show how to get better harmony in the purple nuances and that fewer and bigger candies in background will give photos more attention but screen will still look powerful.
Matching start screen!
Royal Pass feature
Royal Pass feature
Everyone agreed that train travel was a great metaphor for the Royal Pass. A travel theme makes perfect sense for the golden ticket and with this theme feature will be easy to re-skin to different destinations and to different seasons and holidays.
Train travel theme got a bit lost in artist's interpretation, train track looks almost like a ladder up in the sky with the floating speech bubbles. Layout is a vey crammed at top, and it has unnecessary complex shapes.
Very often the UI-heavy screens in CCS features look outdated and dull and very similar to each other. My goal was to create a clear difference between different features and at the same time start to facelift the UI style and enhance the layouts.
Below a sketch I made to challenge the artist and give some new ideas:
Artist's concept
My feedback sketch
Some of the feedback:
- Emphasize train travel theme more!
- Use real train signs for header and levels
- Play with perspective to give a stronger I'm travelling forward feeling
- Casey the Conductor's role is to keep track of time, could be fun if she shows time left
- Better if free ticket is in paper and not in silver
- Doesn't it look a bit odd when buttons are outside the signs?
- Screen looks overall a bit dull, use more vibrant colours in background and on panels
- Show better where the player is
- By having just one destination image in the bottom makes it possible to do it bigger and later easier to differentiate different skins
- It will be easier to click Play button if it's not at the very bottom
Candy Crush TV-show
Candy Crush TV-show
2017 CBS created the TV game show Candy Crush in US with the host Mario Lopez. The competitors were a mix of celebrities and funny Candy Crush players who had been casted. Teams competed towards each other by co-playing custom made Candy Crush levels on the biggest touch-screen in the world and also some other candy inspired physical games.
My role was to feedback on the set and staging, including the touch screen game, to make sure it felt like Candy Crush and followed the style guide as much as possible. I also feedbacked on assets, especially the candies, used in trailers and videos.
In-game we created a TV show live-op with a backdrop that resembled to the studio set and of course with a candified version of Mario Lopez as host.
Emoji Movie
Emoji Movie
2017 Sony created the Emoji Movie where one scene took place inside Candy Crush.
My role was to feedback on the Candy Crush game board candies in the movie and make sure they looked as authentic as possible. I also feedbacked on the candies for commercials created in King's in-house agency.
In-game we created an Emoji Movie live-op where I took the decision that the characters weren't gonna be candified. The idea was to really mirror the story in the movie, plus the characters looked great and matched the environment with their cartoonish style.
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