PARTNER: McDonalds | RELEASED: APR-MAY 2008
CREATING THE GAMES
With the character designs finalized, it was time for the 3D, gaming, and programming teams to bring the adventure to life. But how do you make a game that kids in forty countries can play right out of the box? Simple: you take away the need for language. Children are naturally very intuitive, so creating a design that invited them to explore was very important.
After a number of concepts, Fuel's designers finalized a system where an animated cursor would guide the children through unlocking the games and interactions available to them. Once the character springs to life on their desktop, they are rewarded for exploring each of the interactions. Activities like feeding their fairy an apple or sending their dragon swooping skyward are simple to discover and reward the player with entertaining visuals. Best of all, guidance is provided without the need for text.
Included on each disk is a simple character game that comes to life across the desktop. There is also a fully-rendered, side-scrolling game that brings children into the lush world of the fairies or the forbidding and mountainous world of the dragons.
THE TELEVISION SPOT
With the details of the product finalized, the focus turned to giving the product the launch it deserved. Collaborating with Leo Burnett Worldwide on the project, Fuel worked with one of the most lauded agencies in the world to create the television spot to support the campaign. As a digital shop, this was Fuel's first major television commercial, so the creative team was energized to bring their concepts to the television screen.
Fuel's animators started working on storyboards for the spot. Once again, because of the international focus, the commercial would have to attract children without the need for language. Karbon Arc, Fuel's film and video production arm, produced a richly rendered world and brought the characters to life through fluid 3D animation.
Since the personality of the characters is not tied to dialogue, each country could include narration in their own language, but the core commercial could remain the same.
CREATING THE AUDIO
When Rob Plowman, Director of Audio for Fuel, composed the theme for the television spot, he had some big ideas. "When your music is going to be playing through computer speakers, synthesized instruments are great, but when your music is facing international television play, you need to pull out all the stops," said Plowman. "McDonald's understands the importance of top quality, and gave us the latitude to push the music as far as we could." For Fuel, this meant ensuring that the quality of the audio equaled the quality of the product they were delivering.
After perfecting the composition in his own studio,
Rob travelled to Toronto to meet up with friend and renowned composer Donald Quan. Their mission was to bring the theme to life using a live orchestra, with Donald's expert hand helping with the arrangement.
"When I work with Donald, I know I'm getting the best-in this case, we had twelve members of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra playing 32 different parts," said Plowman. Recorded in Quan's state-of-the-art Toronto studio, the theme came to life under the masterful touch of the concert musicians on cello, viola, violin, oboe and clarinet. "The dynamics and feel that only a live musician can provide took the audio to the next level and brought out the whimsical and magical nature of the characters."
THE FINAL PRODUCT
As children begin flooding to McDonald's restaurants across Europe, they will reach into their Happy Meal box and find a plastic clamshell case containing a CD-ROM with one fairy or dragon. When they return home and place the disk in their drive, the character will spring to life on their desktop and begin interacting, playing and asking to be fed.
McDonald's is betting that this will be the next big step in the history of its famous kids' meal, and Fuel is confident that its characters will delight international audiences, paving the way for its upcoming licensed properties.
In the two years since Fuel and McDonald's met, a lot has transpired and it's proving that, when you blur the lines between brand, agency and content creator, it's the audience that benefits.
