Game Design

With Mathieu, my boss at Telaxo, we had been drafting browser-games concepts for a while, with, as a common denominator, the social and collaborative aspect. I then came with a personal concept I had shortly worked on before: a game permitting to manage a museum showing monsters after having caught them in a quirky Victorian universe. The initial project was single player-oriented and more complex to provide enough entertaining elements because he would just play by himself. So I worked to simplify it while integrating the collaborative aspect we absolutely wanted.

Identity

The target of this website being mostly teenagers wanting to show themselves and to make friends, the identity had to create a flashy, glossy and social identity. I also searched for a name which would flatter the target’s ego: theVIPz sounded good, with a final ‘z’ which is repeated across the features’ name (Boyz, Girlz, Duelz, Duoz, Topz).

I chose a colorscheme related to parties and night-clubs, and used several good-looking silhouettes for the header. The logo and header navigation elements are shiny like party-accessories.

Identity

As Concourissimo, Prizemaniac is a ludic way to win prizes. The identity then needed to reflect this ludic aspect, but also to look trustworthy, as the players has the possibility to buy extra tickets. The colorscheme had to be bright, and a smiling mascot could make the whole very engaging. The choice of a gift as a mascot finished to give an identity to the website by telling its purpose.

I created the name by associations, and Prizemaniac.com was available, then why not? It sounds good to me…

Game Design

Telaxo had a small stock of promotional gifts for My e-farm, and my boss wanted to give them away. I suggested we create a Flash game to select the winners of those prizes, and then started to design the game: it had to use the main ‘characters’ of the game, and to be related to Eastern. Why not managing the workshop of the Eastern Rabbit, with all his sheep-fellows preparing the Eastern chocolate-delivery?

• each delivered chocolate makes you earn 1 Point for your total score,
• each delivered chocolate makes you earn 1 Bell,
• you can spend your Bells to boost the staff and the characteristics of the production line to make it as efficient as possible.

On the deadline, the players who have delivered the more chocolates win prizes, and that’s it!

We wanted to keep the numbers handlables (levels, stocks, scores…), so I made some simulations to have a balanced game-engine.

When I started to work at Telaxo, My e-farm was already there. It was the main website edited of this small company, and already had a quite large community of players. My boss had developed the game, with interesting features like a progressive gameplay and a virtual but realistic economic system.

Identity

I graphically explorated different symbols of the luck Concourissimo was supposed to bring, such as the clover, the Leprechaun, the ladybird… Those lucky symbols would represent the website’s purpose. A friendly mascot would be engaging and give more personnality to the identity: the ladybird appeard to be more simple-shaped to become a logo, better recognizable and a more obvious symbol of luck.

Webdesign

The website had to be video-centered, so the graphic had to be quite light, and the social features around the videos only show when you need them.

Pirates! was first a personal roleplay game I was developing, then it became my student project for my Bachelor of Design at Michel de Montaigne University (Bordeaux, France).

I had just one foot into that kind of game, having played a couple of times with friends and dice, but it had always fascinated me, probably they matched the kind of alternative universes I was imagining when I was a child, even a teenager. Even not playing that much, I was following the market’s news to get inspiration.

After having tryied to shortly describe a couple of universes I was not really convinced by, I finally chose to develop a quirky Carribean archipel. I am a huge fan of the Monkey Island videogame saga, and there is still the ‘pirates’ niche to occupy in roleplay games: only a few games are centred on them, and none has the Monkey Island’s special feel.

Here are a few illustrations I made for Pirates!…

The young web agency 1001 Marketing asked me for logos for 3 websites they were about to release, within them: Les-Hommes, a portal for men.

I had to give it an identity through its logo. I suggested we use a silhouette of a good-looking man in a cool position, matching the target audience. I found a celebrity picture and have redrawn its outline…

(Note that the website has since been closed.)

The young web agency 1001 Marketing asked me for logos for 3 websites they were about to release, within them: Business PME, a portal for SME’s managers.

I quickly went to this simple idea of cubes: the different colors for the diversity of SMEs and the cubes symbolizes the constructive aspect of SMEs.