The Lion and the Mouse
The Lion and the Mouse was the first Kid-Mind Studio (China Melonking) App. My role was in Consulting on the Art Direction and UI/UX. I was also Mentoring a student at the time (Sam Balyejusa) as he worked with the team on the project. The PM came by the design college to explain the project to prospective interns. You can see the article (in Chinese) on the website here.
The Project Manager (Albert Song) wanted to make an app that would be comparible to the quality and interaction of Morris Lessmore. The target for the app was to be the US market, but with a push for more localization, it turned out to be successful in a few Countries. From the beginning there was no story, so I proposed Asops fables to start with something known as well as a copywrite-free soltuion we could adapt to.
The video (above) was produced by Sam and the Kid-Mind team. Me and my kids got to star in it, which was fun.
Online Reviews for The Lion and the Mouse
The pictures (above) are from the iTunes App store:
City Mouse Country Mouse
Just before launching The Lion and the Mouse, work started on the next title "Country Mouse and City Mouse". This title was set to have even more interaction than the first. More mini games were included along with a point system, where the points could be used in a customization game. There was also app-appropriate ads which could be watched to gain points in the customization game, and a lot of care in making it unabtrusive was discussed and implemented.
Like the first app, I was involved in a lot of consultation, and with all the new features I was involved in even more of the Art Direction with a great deal of time working through the UI/UX with all the features we were implementing.
The pictures (above) are from the iTunes App store: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/country-mouse-city-mouse-hd/id574376511?mt=8
It should be said that the projects wouldn't have happened without the team. The Illustrator was amazing. On the first project I pushed the limit of how much detail and style we could get into the backgrounds and characters, going for a "Studio Ghibli meets Disney" approach, and he nailed it. The animator took the brunt of trying to colorized and sequence all of this, which was where we simplified it down on the characters to make it faster, and to make the characters pop more in the scene.
The timeline on both projects was 6 months, and give or take on either side, it was accomplished!
