An animated series pilot built with born, formerly Slay, a leading German mobile gaming company, taking the Pengu app characters into a story world.
From line art to turntable
The work started on paper. Concept sketches map Pengu's expressions and poses in line art, and do the same for the child hero across outfit variations, the blue guardian with horns and moustache, and a small blue creature with a wide smile. From there each of the four goes through a colorization pass, one by one, before moving into 3D. Each is rendered on a light background and put on a turntable so it can be read from every angle. The pilot closes on a snowy landscape of floating ice islands under a starry sky, with the penguin hero, the blue dragon guardian, the child and the creatures together in a single frame.
A game character reads in a second
A series character has to carry a scene. The pilot had to prove both could be the same character, staying faithful to an audience that already knew them from playing while giving them a narrative they had never had.
