ROLE | Art DIRECTION, Game ART & Character design
Aiko is a tamagotchi-style digital companion for the Apple Watch and iPhone.
Based on a story create by studio Tank & Bear, Aiko is a character that helps you stay healthy by feeding of your activity level. The more the user engages in an active healthy lifestyle, the more Aiko grows and evolves in its behaviors and abilities.
Concept Art
In the initial stages of this project, we did some environment and character explorations. This allows us to establish a unique aesthetic for Aiko, conceptualize character interactions and to test what was possible to translate into an iOS App development workflow.
Character Design
We decided that the different types of Aikos would be based on a single spherical body shape. Aiko started off being a fluid, glutenous character thats morphed between different states of matter but eventually the design evolved into a semi-solid character that had a lot of stretch and squash.
Patterns
One of the fun things in the app (aside from the adorable character behaviors) were the patterns and the ability to customize your Aiko.
Animation
Since the original Watch OS was quite limited in terms of how much animation and detail it could show, we tried to keep the Aiko character behaviors and game power-ups simple, short and fun.
