- Mar 14
- 4 min read
I love designing games and in the past couple of years, I've personalized two board games for friends that I'd love to share here. The design process is very enjoyable because each personality requires a different game and the process of crafting a game feels like an intimate dive into their lives. Read on to learn how I interview, brainstorm and designed these board games.
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I have already shared before how I am a designer who enjoys making card games (here) and treasure hunts (here and here.) So it's no surprise that I would eventually get around to crafting personalized board games. Both of these games came about in anticipation of special events. I like how each board game honored the person in a very unique way.
Arpita Surprise game design © thesmarti
One of the darlings in my friendship circle loves prank surprises. She's incredibly gentle and sweet, so it was a bit of a shock to learn she finds pranks hilarious. (Think pies in face, midnight birthday pajama pop-ups, surprise visits, throwing a bucket of ice on a friend, etc.) To be honest, pranks make me nervous and sad, but I don't want to yuck anyone's yum and I can respect that it's integral to her cheeky personality.
For her birthday game board, we did a long interview with a whole range of questions about her life, her best stories and her favorite pranks. She pulled back the layers a bit to explain why she finds pranks special: it's the ultimate novelty of the unknown. Reactions and hidden feelings are revealed and the prank lets her share very random moments with family and friends.
After the interview, the game board idea came together rather quickly. A simple path alternating pick-up card for three different stacks - choices, stories, and pranks. Choice cards featured multiple choice answers to guess her likes/dislikes. Story cards listed the components of her best life stories so the player could string a convincing story together and guess the truth of the actual situation. Prank cards featured silly pranks that either propelled the player forward or backward. I made the prank cards gentle (toy soldiers in bed, googly eyes on every picture frame) and they were sweetly funny.
To decide on the card designs I asked Arpita to take a photo of her favorite sari designs. She sent me a bunch of different pictures and I pulled out a color palette from the references. I drew in and colored the game path, a space for cards, and personalized a little portrait of Arpita for the board. The cards were quickly lined up in InDesign with prompts straight from my interview notes. Print, cut, stack and the game board was ready in time for her birthday dinner. In hindsight. I would probably rearrange the path tiles for a bit more variety in the path. (For some reason the dice kept falling on the same number so we all had a bit of deja vu with the game.) In the end, the best surprise was that the person who got prank cards the most was the one who eventually won the game! Pranks for the win, eh?
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How Well Do I Know Dennis game design © thesmarti
The second game came about when a friend called me up to help design something for her husband. She was arranging a tour through Namibia for his MBA colleagues who are known for sharing deep stories and vulnerable moments (hooray for male emotional intelligence!) So she asked me to make a card game that they could play one night together.
I was so intrigued by the idea of a circle of men being interested in each other's stories. (Male friendship research shows very low rates of intimacy in comparison to women friendships.) So for this special group of friends, I thought a board game about his life would be ideal.
Since the board game was a quick surprise, I had very little time to interview. So instead of specific questions, I quickly whipped up a list of 50 open-ended questions and emailed them to my friend so she could cross of the ones she didn't like. The questions ranged from adventures in his childhood, his school years, his adult life and even his current job. The goal of the game would be to see which friend actually knew him the best and could answer the open-ended questions the best.
Then I designed the board with a line of path tiles, a quick portrait illustration, and a block for the cards. The cards were copy-pasted from the email with a simple back cover block color design with the game name. Print, cut, fold and packaged in an envelope. Quick, easy, simple and easy to travel with. The game itself was played at a camp site and my friend told me later that it was a perfect end to a lovely road trip for this friendship group.
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Making a custom board game is a fun way to get close, vulnerable and playful with friends. It helps to build new memories and unlock new levels in your friendship. I love making games like these - especially for deep connection among friends. Let me know if there's a game you'd like to create.
Cheers to crafting unique games to play,
smarti
Updated: Feb 16
Back in 2024, I landed a totally unexpected and wonderful project: illustrating animations for an ecological documentary. The director was looking for an illustrated solution and I got connected as a creative despite having zero experience doing animations. Chalk it up to having really good friends! So, I rolled up my sleeves and the client was gracious. I'm finally getting around to sharing about this special experience. Read on for a real juicy process blog.
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I've never done animations before. Ever. But I had it on my dream project list, and I had played around making animations in Procreate. Which creative hasn't, right? So it was fun to receive a query from a friend who connected me to the project - would you ever be interested in doing illustrated animations? And once I said "ooh yes!" I received a preliminary email of the general brief: title, name plates, locations, credits, explaining graphics for a film on farming practices and soil health. A cool project about the health of the planet? Yes, please!
To wrap my head around the project, I proposed a series of graphic styles just to gauge the client's aesthetic and actual interest. (Isn't it always so exciting in the beginning, when you don't really know whats happening or even if the project will align with your skills?) Having the client give me their style choices gave me some direction, and provided me with limitations that helped me start to see what the project might look like. In hindsight, I probably shouldn't have started with style choices because it kind of forced a style that wasn't as suitable once we got to the end of the project. ::sigh:: But a little naïveté is always best at the start of a daunting project.
Pumped and peppy, I bounced into the first 1:1 meeting wih the producer to talk about concepts for illustrations. Together we tossed a bunch of creative ideas into the air which I turned into some quick illustrations. Afterwards, I expanded the best ones into some colored illustrations to present to the colorist and editor. You can see how I was already trying to bridge the introduction and finale of the documentary - using the same imagery and style. You know, building a full-circle concept to see if the style would really work.
(1) First client call sketches, (2) conceptual ideas (3) doodled conceptual ideas © thesmarti
Colored designs to present to the colorist and editor © thesmarti
Once the team picked the illustrations that translated the concept best, I attempted an animation reel in Procreate to see if this could work. This was one of those scary moments. I mean, who hasn't been in awe of animators. But I suddenly appreciated how the frame rate expands the concept into millions of small line decisions. It humbly took me more than 20 hours to make this silly 5sec thing. And it wasn't even that good. I lost steam at the end of the animation and ran out of time. I cried to my partner that night out of sheer panic that I had no idea if I was actually going to be able to pull this off! Thankfully, the producer saw potential in everything I did (I always seem to luck out with generous clients) and he gave me continual encouragement as I fumbled along.
The first animation test "Deflated Earth" © thesmarti
Eventually, the project solidified and the schedule fell into a groove. The producer outlined 7 separate animations reels, with clear scripts:
1. Introduction: About the Earth
2. Eutrophication
3. Erosion
4. Humus
5. Cover Crops
6. Agricultural History
7. Conclusion: Circular Agriculture.
Every week, I'd finalize one of the animation, do some research (I learned so much about soil health!) and then propose the next week's storyboard for approval. And we moved from one animation to the next over a period of 2 months. I stuck with Procreate, because although I had done some previous work in After Effects, I remember being stymmied by the crispness of the Adobe Illustrator vector designs. In Procreate, I could draw textured pieces faster with my ipad and then figure out how to animate them intuitively.
(1) scripts for the entire project, (2) my illustrated script for "Eutrophication" (3) cleaned up script on "Cover Crops after a video call meeting and (3) closeup on pink notes for the script for "Cover Crops" © thesmarti
Conceptual design illustrations for script of "About Earth" © thesmarti
Elements to animate and illustrate for script of "Agricultural History" and "Circular Agriculture © thesmarti
To be frank, the animations never got easier. It took me whole days to make 3 seconds of material! Crazy. Even though Procreate was intuitive, it broke my head to map out the frames, and decide when lines would need to appear or move or fade. I'm so used to static illustrations that it was a whole other beast to make the illustration move convincingly. Making things speed up or slow down was beyond my calculations. I made loads of mistakes, investing in animating a sequence only to decide hours later that it didn't work. Then I'd have to regroup and plunge back in to try a different idea.
Animated first version for the script of "About Earth" © thesmarti
By the time we finished the first round of animations, I needed a break. This was important because I was getting almost angry with the project. I started feeling dread when I would have to figure out the pieces, and then a strange relief and short-lived elation that I had somehow pulled it off...just in time to start on the next concept! I also think the tension was because I had to drop a lot of other client work. The animations required so much time and energy that I needed to dedicate all my attention on it. I had an "aha" moment on this project that a variety of work keeps me healthy and happy. A lesson well-earned.
But after a 2-week trip (we took a quick local flight to Victoria Falls to gawk at the water and wildlife), I felt refreshed enough to start the second round of animations. This is when the producer talked me through each animations and requested some changes - different colors, replacing some objects, accelerating parts, slowing down others. By now I had the voice-overs which were in Swedish which isn't the same as Danish but I still thanked my lucky stars I had learned some similar key words and phrases! Even better, I also had some estimated time stamps so I could attempt to sync the animations with the voice-overs.
I had learned from previous projects that both clients and I can have unrealistic expectations of the workload with edits. So I try to make sure that at the end of a project I either get priorities or extensions (or both) to make sure I can deliver the necessary changes. In the case of this project, I knew that expanding from 2-frames per second to 8-frames per second was going to literally quadruple my workload. So I had to limit the changes. And the producer did his best to create space for extensions so I could meet the deadline with the best work possible.
By this point, the project was using the animation reels as projected images onto filmed macro-shots relating to the animation reel subject. So I was submitting them on transparent backgrounds and once I saw the mockups - in my horror I realized I needed to solve some visual hierarchy problems! Basically, the moving elements in the macro-shots were more saturated than my illustrations. So it was hard to see or pay attention to the illustrations. And the whole point was to understand the concepts via illustrations! So I needed to oversaturate the illustrations in edits so that they wouldn't get lost in the macro-shot details.
First, I condensed small elements that would get lost in the busy background. Second, I repainted the colors on elements so they would contrast better with the busy background OR add in some visual tricks (like white blocks or transparencies) for the elements that couldn't be repainted because of consistency issues with other animations. Because each macro-shot created a different problem, I couldn't use the same solutions. I had to solve each one creatively.
I barely kept my head above water while churning out two new animations from modified storyboards, and then expanding 5 of the 7 animation reels from 2-frames per second vs 8-frames per second all while attempting to solve the transparency/visual hierarchy problems along the way. Procreate has a limit to the frames you can add, so I ended up making multiple parts for each animation. Parts 1-8 for a single 15 second reel! (They were combined together later as a whole sequence.) I raced to the deadline in time to upload the Procreate in multiple formats - Animated HEVC, Animated MP4, Animated PNG, and finally as PNG files so the colorist could put them in order himself to time-sync it exactly with the voice-over.
Animated final for the script of "About Earth" © thesmarti
I wish I could load all of the isolated files here, but you'll just have to forward to the time stamp to see each of the 7 animated illustrations in the documentary:
1. Introduction: About the Earth (01:36)
2. Agricultural History (05:12)
3. Erosion (07:07)
4. Eutrophication (07:28)
5. Humus (09:33)
6. Cover Crops (13:21)
7. Conclusion: Circular Agriculture (35:02)
Here are some screenshots so you can sneak peek some of the illustrated concepts:
Concept: Over-farming and depleting the soil, screenshot from "About Earth" animation for Lånad Jord © thesmarti
Concept: Cycle of Plants to Animals to Manure to Plants, screenshot from "Agricultural History" animation for Lånad Jord © thesmarti
Concept: Fertilizer Runoff Leads to Deadly Algae Blooms, screenshot from "Eutrophication" animation for Lånad Jord © thesmarti
Concept: How Cover Crops Hold Soil To Keep Farms Healthier, screenshot from "Cover Crops" animation for Lånad Jord © thesmarti
Concept: Decomposition of Animals and Plant Debris Create Humus, screenshot from "Humus" animation for Lånad Jord © thesmarti
Concept: Cover Plants Hold Soil, Push Out Weeds, Improve Soil, Increase Humus, Counteract Erosion, Deter Pests and Attract Good Insects, screenshot from "Cover Crops" animation for Lånad Jord © thesmarti
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In the end, I have no doubt that this project helped me build tenacity. I used Procreate's simple animation software to make a complicated deliverable. One of those "I made what I could with what I had" and I know I tried my very best. Even still, I'm sure it was a headache for the colorist who had to put the pieces together and freeze some frames and reconfigure sections in the editing process. (Ah, editing! I'm grateful to you, Jonas, for taking on that challenge!) All in all, I'm so very proud of what I contributed, and I'm grateful that the whole team was gracious enough to make it work. I'll be cheering on Katagrama Productions in all their endeavors - what a fun team and what an interesting project to collaborate on!
The documentary Lånad Jord (Borrowed Land) is permanently published on the Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry site here as well as on youtube with subtitles in English.
here's to rising-to-the-ocassion and taking on new challenges,
smarti
- Jan 14
- 4 min read
I have always been charmed by the novelty and efficacy of an illustration. So in this post, I want to uplift illustration as a creative, powerful tool within the visual art industry and advocate for the value of my services. In this post, I'll share a couple of the reasons why illustration is a valuable tool, how it has specific powers, why it deserves fair compensation. (Two quick caveats: I'm a visual learner so I suspect that some of my reasoning will be skewed in that direction. And second, AI illus are not in the scope of this post because although I believe it's always going to lack that raw quality that only human-made illustrations evoke.)
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Illustrations are drawings that convey information that could otherwise be written. It can replace words like hieroglyphs or it can complement words like story books. Every illustrator has their own artistic style and their work comes through this lens with a particular look and feel.
Illustrations are just one tool in the visual art industry. There's sculpture, painting, photography, video, animation...yadda yadda yadda . Each of these tools lean towards a specific purpose. Need to see reality? A: photographs. Need to understand space and time of one perspective? A: video. Etc. Illustration is just one other tool, but it is a special tool with personal style and specific charm.
What's so special about illustration's personal style and charm? Well, all visual tools relay concepts, simplify information, increase retention, and enhance focus. But illustration ALSO sows familiarity and repetition through their custom niche style. This naturally sparks visual awareness which is KEY for branding! On top of that, the innate style and charm of illustration creates emotional connections too. Therein lies the magic of illustration that other tools can't capture in quite the same way.
POWERS OF ILLUSTRATION:
Illustrations simplifiy information. Flip open any technical manual and you will see black and white illustrations of the components for your IKEA furniture, your new kitchen gadget or the special gauges from the car dashboard. There's a reason why illustration works faster than photos and it's because of the inherent simplification. It whittles out unnecessary elements (whatever they may be visually) and makes the important features more relevant and easier to understand.
Illustration increase retention. Humans are known to have high visual sensitivity (read here, or here) and most of us remember visual references in memories to recall information. Diagrams are a form of illustration that can lay out a linear process. Lists create the hierarchical relationship of things to each other. Schematics display the arrangement of everything on one level. Illustrations can play with every single one of these visual connections (sometimes all in the same illustration) that can later help us retrieve all kinds of information stored in our brains for quicker recall and better memory retention.
Illustration enhances focus. When you need to bring everyone together about a topic, illustrations can help rally the focus. On a slide presentation, an illustration can bring something straight into everyone's mind. Without using words, it can highlight a problem, change the perspective, show a process, etc. While photos can do this too, illustrations carry a far greater range in variety because every single bit of the image can be tailored for the specific purpose - color for mood, perspective for focus, subject for diversity, etc. The capacity to specifically sync everyone's mind to the same thing is a powerful tool of persuasion.
Illustration sparks visual awareness. I remember as a kiddo recognizing different characters based on the hint of their appearance - Hello Kitty colors vs Snoopy squiggly line. Visual awareness is the immediate recognition of something - it's what helps us see patterns in all kinds of design choices like colors, typography, pen stroke thickness, patterns, etc. It's kind of a super power of visual tools to help people remember a thing, or place. In illustration this is the line-work, painting, coloring of something that extends a personal element beyond just the corporate graphic design. The power to cue associations helps people see and connect quickly.
Illustration creates emotional connections. Illustrations have a unique charm and personal associations that are special for each of us. When we see an illustrations in an app, we build a personal attachment to it. It's a similar reason why mascots become a sweet cherished friend of products or places. (This is especially true in Asia!) We feel a connection with one experience over another when illustrations extend the ethos of a brand, company, corporation. In this way, illustrations create a sense of belonging and emotional link beyond any other visual tool.
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Illustrations spark, simplify, expand, enhance, connect us all in deep ways. The ephemeral beauty of imagination captured in a drawing is always going to be part of a magical space! Yes, there are a hundred other visual tools, but illustration in its static nature gives us the deepest freedom to immerse ourselves and be in the picture for longer. Just like that, illustrations are powerful, wonderful, meaningful.
So if illustrations are valuable, then illustrators are valuable. The time it takes to learn the skills, to practice the techniques, to build the knowledge, to use the tools - all to make the actual illustration...and THEN the endless patience to tweak at it to make it sing visually - well, it's good, hard work.
Please note: since illustrations are so valuable, and my time invested is considerable, I cannot offer my illustrative work for free. However, if you are under the umbrella of social business or social enterprise offering services or products for Animals, Conservation, Culture, Community or Environment - I still honor discounts because I believe in the value of OUR work together. You can send me an email at hello@thesmarti.com and let's see if we can make beautiful things happen.
Cheers to the value of illustrations and acknowledging our worth,
smarti
