Creature Lab
A collaborative drawing game
Role: Project Manager & Designer
Timeline: 14 weeks
Software: Figma, AfterEffects, Lottie
Prompt
Simple: create an exhibit at Imagine RIT to make visitors smile.
Solution
CreatureLab is a drawing application for players to doodle their own part of a creature and combine them with other players to build crazy, silly creations.
With our drawing tool, we provide our users with the opportunity to collaborate in a non-competitive environment to create something unique. Users will get to see how their draawings join together with others’, creating a fun, collaborative experience.
The Dream Team:
The Process
How do you make someone smile?
CreatureLab draws inspiration from childhood creativity and spontaneity. We were hooked by the idea of the drawing game Exquisite Corpse, and sought to reimagine it using digital tools.
The Drawing Tablets
We utilized large touch screen tablets as our drawing screens, where our users were prompted to draw with their fingers.
An imprtant step in designing this screen was ensuring that our users knew which part to draw, (head, body, or legs) and to connect the top/bottom of their drawing to the dots provided, so that when mashed together, the combined drawings would line up.
Our Creatures
We created a team of our own wacky yet friendly creatures to implement throughout the experience, and to guide our users through the steps of creating their own creature.
There were certain steps of the drawing process where the user's success was dependent on their understanding of the rules, such as which body part to draw.
When a user stepped up to a tablet to begin, they were first met with a prompt, shared by our creature team in their friendly tone, easy for someone of any age to understand.
Our marketing materials included several posters of our cute creatures, directing people to where they can find our booth. We created stickers of each individual creature as well, which were a big hit and we ran out quickly!
The Results
Creature Gallery
Our gallry was displayed in the room, adding new creations as users finished them. But people could access them from home as well, and find any creature that used their specific drawing by copying down their unique code.
Lessons learned
This was my senior capstone project, my biggest priority of senior year. There was also the added pressure of presenting this project to real users at the festival. However, the payoff was worth all of the stress and late nights. This project solidified to me how much I thrive in working in a team, and how added responsibility pushes me to be the best teammate I can. It was an amazing feeling to watch people interact with my project and see how much fun they had with it.
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