Gadgetory

if you've been to Google's homepage then you've probably seen the Google doodle these are animations or images celebrating national holidays and historical figures but this year the doodle team has done something a bit different they've made a game for Valentine's Day called Pangolin love we're here at Google to see how it was made I have a lot of fun developing those like how the like main character would look like I was the lead engineer on the game I build the initial prototypes I fill in the gaps between design and engineering there are two penguins who are in love and because they're endangered this is a very rare chance that they get to be together and so the Penguins are native to Africa and Asia so one Pangolin is traveling across those continents to the other we came like through like a bunch of like different animals version of like what animals could roll and I was like maybe I could have like imaginary rolling elephants or bears I made a bunch of research of like pill dogs salamanders like any animals I could roll and we came up with like a whole game idea for like a little armadillo which we really liked in the desert but but then Kevin came up like with the idea of like a penguin which was actually really smart because it's like an endangered species it was super simple at first like trying to get the idea that this little main character would go like through different countries having different sized penguins like doing different things like dancing playing instruments making cakes then I spend more time trying to develop this main character so in Philippines level I believe you can swim and then there are other levels where you can attach your tongue because penguins have these really long tongues you can attach your tongue to it like in the China level to a lamp and swaying and stuff like that so the dynamic is changing for every level once I animated like in my software I will export the sequence transparent sequence and give it to the engineers that would they'll put it directly in the game the challenge of a video game compared to animation is like usually you can't have too many textures because the more color you have like the heavier it is so and I love working with textures so for me when I first and they're like no texture no boiling effect nothing goes but then they found a way of like making it work started work on Pangolin which embodies a lot of the art style that helen had created one of the easter eggs is if you type the name of the doodle Hangul in love you get a special glyph a lot of people that have played this have told me it resembles Sonic it's this really Wheaton phenomenon I've like you're working on something you've got to keep it super secret super secret super secret and then one day literally everyone in the world can see it like you know you're crossing your fingers is that people are gonna enjoy it you