The National Lottery
Two decades of Instant Win game design & animation on one page
The Brief
My work for the National Lottery represents two decades of immensely varied digital work – from hand-drawn illustration to 3D art. As a young designer this client was the stuff of dreams and ignited my all too brief passion for Flash – with still unmatched animation capabilities for this kind of work. With too much to go into one paragraph, briefs were thick and fast for twenty years, some very challenging requiring ideas from scratch, others literally coming from the newsagents’ shelves to go on to screen.
Working with brands old & new
A game design from scratch means free reign when it comes to branding, and while this means creative freedom for something like a game logo, it’s often celebrated brands such as Monopoly, Cluedo and Pirate of the Caribbean that pose the most challenges. One needs kid gloves to be true to something that is so familiar to so many.Engaging players in a whole process
A big requirement of instant win gaming is to quickly capture the attention of a player. A representation of a game needs to sit harmoniously with many others, but stand out enough to either evoke nostalgia or create curiosity.Responding to the times
My time with The National Lottery has seen instant win games go from the first tiny Flash-based browser ‘click-to-wins’, to fully responsive HTML5 creations. The aesthetics of a game remain the same, if not easier in terms of scale, but animations require a completely different approach.
