ROBLOX ART DIRECTION 4M+ VISITS

e.l.f. Beauty x CHIME

A social story game focused on light-hearted gameplay to teach Gen Z financial lessons.

THE BRIEF

How do you make financial literacy feel like something Gen Z actually wants to engage with?

With 50% of Gen Z expressing a desire to become entrepreneurs, but 1 in 3 not feeling confident in money management, our partner eGen set out on a mission to create the first branded Social Story game on Roblox with the mission of creating an interactive and lighthearted game that would teach financial lessons.

The Game Designers proposed a four chapter story game where players start out as old, and then revisit key moments in their lives, where they had fun together, grew as individuals but also learnt valuable financial lessons.

The Chapters:

MY ROLE

As the Art Director, and one of my first projects kicked off when I first joined the company, I led the visual direction of the experience and worldbuilding from initial concept through to delivery, translating the game designers vision for the four key chapters into narrative spaces.

My initial challenge was to translate the four chapters into a combined universe, set within an island. Putting together initial floorplan for the overall island, I translated the game progression into a clear User Flow, and designed initial floorplans and moodboards to differentiate the mood within each zone.

ART DIRECTION & FLOORPLANS - CHAPTERS

After defining the overall island floorplan, I then started to plan for each chapter gameplay zone.

The client’s original direction had been that they didn’t want the world to feel too ‘e.l.f.’, and that it should have it’s own visual identity, whilst still feeling playful and imaginative, to appeal to both genders.

I designed the sections with the level design and player flow as the first priority, and then layering the worldbuilding on top of it through moodboards to identify the art direction.

DEVELOPMENT RESET

As I had joined the company within the new role of Art Director, part of my challenge was learning how the 3D team were used to working. This became clear as the team started to build the initial greybox which progressed very quickly into adding in detailed assets and environment design before playtesting the overall sizing and layout of the space. Reviewing the overall design, I felt that there was no clear composition, and that each environment lacked the personality that I envisioned so I decided to take the tough desicion to scrap the work that had already taken place and start afresh.

Creating a new sketch of the island, with clear levels zoned of for each chapter, I enforced an initerative approach, where the greybox was playtested to understand it’s sizing continuously before progressing to asset development. Once I was happy with the sizing and layout, and had sought the feedback of the game designers too, I then directed the team to build rough versions of the key assets for each zone so that we could again playtest the space with these elements in mind. This allowed for continuois iteration and refinement of the overall layout and composition that carried through the rest of the development as more granular elements were added in.

3D DEVELOPMENT

As the world started to fill up with the key game play assets, I continously sought to refine the layout by shrinking areas down to allow for a more purposeful player flow. At the same time, the client changed direction and started to ask that their products be included in surreal ways as part of the asset design. They did not want their products to just be placed in as part of the world, but to become integrated as part of the storytelling i.e. their eyemask placed on the teddy bear in the toy store, and a lipstick that becomes a geyser on the mountain hike obby (obstacle course).

BRAND INTEGRATION

As the world became filled out with environment details and assets, the client doubled down on their product integration by transforming whole sections to match the colourways and product aesthetic so that each chapter became even further differentiated. For example, the Town Square moved from a brightly coloured design to match their Camo Cove collection with yellow, peach, orange, green and blue areas.

KEY STATS

The social story format proved engaging, turning learning into a participatory and empowering experience.

4M+ Visits

95% Approval Ratings

13 Minutes Average Session Time 

88K Average Daily Visits

Follow on integration within partner game experiences

SARAH RICHARDS