Family Pluym

ROLE

Art Director, Designer

DESCRIPTION

Educative publisher Malmberg developed an online homework platform for elementary school called ‘Familie Pluym’ in 2012 to 2015.

I acted as principle designer (character and sets) and art director over the final phase, the last 1,5 year span of the project.

PROJECT DURATION

2013-2015

CREDITS

Client: Malmberg

Project coordinator: Gavin Esajas

FORM

online homework platform for elementary school

with 2D animated animated segments

Designing a cast

We had to create a narrative framework for children to do extra math and language practice at home. The premise of a weird and fun family unit was chosen to be the best fit to get into lots of situations to do exercises. I had the challenge to design this cast of characters.

Character design

I like to start with pencil and paper. Here are a few early sketches of the inventor dad and explorer mum character.

Iconic vs realistic design

Quite some time was spend to determine how stylised the characters would work best for the youthful audience.

Final look

A middle road was found - these were my final design after a few weeks of development.

Thinking up a brilliant hamster

Especially fun was M.I. Hamster The son's pet hamster that functions as a helper for the fledgling father with his inventing.

Hamster fun

The hamster character also functions as an indicator if you give the right answers in the assignments.

Early game concepts

An interesting process was developing the software structure within the narrative

Math problem concept

A way a math assignment could work.

Exercise intro concept 1

We also researched if we needed narrative introductions to the assignments.

Exercise intro concept 2

Here's another one in rough sketch style.

House with character

The characters house should be an exciting place, placed in the midst of a normal typically Dutch neighbourhood. Al the rooms of the characters then again served as 'arenas' for different tasks within the software. I had a lot of fun developing this house.

An extraordinary house

House by night

Thinking out the rooms

Welcome!

Lisa's room

Lisa's room concept

assignment environment

Daan's room

Airship

Expanding the world

For the animated story introductions that would give meaning to each week of assignments, I had to design the whole town around the family. Here are a few examples.

S.O.C.K. school

A school in the shape of a sock.

School final art

This is an exceptional school for very bright students. With loads of interesting things - like a huge mammoth.

Classroom concept

The classroom setting was also chosen as a situation for assignment's setting.

Animal hospital

The animal hospital should - of course - be more then just a standard building.

Hospital interior

The interior was filled to brim with interesting animals.

Flower shop

For assignments with money there had to be a few shop settings.

Cheese store sketch

The lady behind the counter would animate to show if you are right or wrong in figuring out what to pay.

City center

The whole town of family Pluym had to be designed - this was main square that was featured in the animated story bits.

Somewhere connected

Lots of these kind of places were designed for assignments and show how they connect to the rest of the world (you see the church tower in the back for instance)

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