MONEY MAGIC
MONEY MAGIC
ROLESCLIENT: Next Gen Personal Finance
AGENCY: McKinney
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Mack Garrison
PRODUCER: Meryn Hayes
CREATIVE DIRECTION: Cory Livengood & Mack Garrison
ILLUSTRATION: Andrew Kolb
ANIMATION: Kyle Martinez, Songyi Park, Megan DeMarco, Jay Brown, Dylan Carrow
DETAILSMcKinney reached out to dash to help illustrate and animate the look behind Money Magic: an indie video game that teaches students how to create and keep up with a personal budget. Players take on the role of road manager for Enzo the Magician and must allocate funds towards advertising, trick maintenance, Enzo’s needs, and buying new tricks all while saving money for his big performance in Vegas. The game can be surprising challenging; even for adults! Think you can succeed?
DISCOVERYThe first question we always ask… why? What’s the purpose of creating a financial education video game? Who is the target audience? What do we want them to do after playing? Dash’s discovery phase is where we build the foundation for all the content by understanding its purpose. In this case, we learned the Money Magic video game would be used in high school classrooms to teach students about the importance of budgeting and the consequences of doing it well… or poorly. Using these demographics as a starting point, and building off McKinney’s mood board, we set to work on establishing the style for the illustrations and animation.
IDEATIONTo start we had to define the look, particularly for Enzo, the main character. Throughout the game Ezno would be performing tricks while silhouetted by the lights on stage, so when details were hidden he still needed a very distinctive shape. The last iteration of Enzo (D), and the client favorite, felt just right. He has a large, prominent nose for a clear silhouette and his proportions are closest to mid century mascots and character designs that pair well with the reference imagery provided by McKinney. His hat and cape also allow for a lot of flexibility in communication of his emotions. Last, but not least, we explored a few different directions for Barnabus, Enzo’s trusty rabbit.
Enzo direction “A”
Enzo direction “B”
Enzo direction “C”
Enzo direction “D”
Bunny directions
Enzo color studies
PRE-PRODUCTIONAnimation is a time consuming process. Not only do you have to design the graphics, but you then have to put it in motion. To eliminate any ambiguity of creative intentions, we went through the entire list of assets for the game and began sketching and rendering frames for approval. There were a lot of static assets that only required some simple sketches, while others needed to show a little more complexity through storyboards.
After all the graphics had been approved and mapped out, the next step of the process was to bring Enzo, Barnabus, and their tricks to life! We decided to use a low frame rate to mirror the aesthetic of the old cartoons that served to inspire this look. While subtle, its slightly choppy imperfections make it feel more retro. Each animation offered its own challenges, so we approached each scene differently. Some were rigged in after effects using a flat, 2d vector approach, while others had some cel animation (like the curtain) and even 3d elements (like the twinkle of Enzo’s hands) scattered throughout. A unique aspect to this project was the final deliverable: a video game. Because all these elements would be composed by McKinney and their development team, we had to be cognizant of file size and type. Many of the assets had to be rendered in a way that allowed transparency in browsers, which required some back and forth in the beginning. This project was very collaborative in that way, which was a lot of fun for us.
PRODUCTION
The end result is a fun and challenging game that will help kids learn valuable, real-life skills. We’re very proud of being able to join the McKinney team on this important project.
Final Files