From localization to comics, or how to make handouts memorable
This year, AllCorrect tried its hand at a completely new role - the creator of the comic book, and we want to share our experience with you, tell us why we chose this type of handout and how difficult it was to turn our expectations into reality.
Recently, AllCorrect employees have turned into the real heroes of localization. Rather, it happened much earlier in the process of daily labor. Solving complex (sometimes impossible) tasks for the localization of games and software, our editors, translators and managers had to develop various superpowers in themselves. And finally, the gaming market saw our employees in true guise.
How did it all begin? The idea to create an interesting handout came up with us in preparation for the DevGAMM conference, which was held in Moscow in May. We did not want to print boring flyers with information about the services of the company and about how good we are. Having gathered in the evening in one of our audiences, we discussed possible options, and everyone agreed that we need not just to talk about our services, but to show what we are capable of and, most importantly, poor localization makes players suffer and even refuse to favorite games.
Initially, we did not plan to draw comics. We had the idea of making several separate humorous situations related to languages, using the example of the Babylonian phrasebook.
Soon we realized that fitting a few languages into a small picture is not easy, and leaving only a couple of images in our handout would be boring. Gradually, we came to the conclusion that we need a single story, that it should be in Russian (the main language of the conference), and that this story should tell about our company.
So, the next step was the brainstorming. We gathered our employees - the main creators of the AllCorrectGames department - and began to come up with a comic book plot. In the process of developing a single idea, the plot has changed several times. Our superheroes either overcame caves and rocks, or saved players from captivity, then learned to fly and read secret signals for help.
Our next task was to find the artist and draw a detailed storyboard for the comic for him.
At first glance, the task of choosing an artist seems simple, but having visited several sites of freelancers, we realized that hundreds of specialists offer such services! We have prescribed the stages of the artist’s internal selection:
Thus, at first they chose according to the style of drawing, they looked to see if there was any experience in drawing comics. Also, the ability of the performer to approach the matter professionally turned out to be very important, since it was not possible to find a common language with everyone who we liked in style. In short, the usual problems that may arise when working with freelancers.
However, reality turned out to be far from our expectations. Having already looked through several profiles of artists, we realized that it is very difficult to find a person who has experience in the gaming industry and experience in creating comics. After all, his style should have something in common with our corporate design. Oddly enough, after an internal vote, we chose a talented artist who had never drawn comics before and was completely unfamiliar with the game world! Despite the fact that the girl does not live in our city and we did not have the opportunity to meet, we managed to explain the idea of our comic strip, our expectations and describe in detail the images that we wanted to see. In this case, a person who was not connected with the field of localization was it’s not easy to explain what we do. First I had to give a short lecture on the activities of our company.
The storyboard of the comic went through three stages:
The specifics of the task was the fact that our real collaborators were to become the heroes of the comic, so in order for the artist to be able to faithfully convey the character's appearance, all superheroes presented their photos from different angles. Moreover, the artist was faced with the task of not just copying a person, but of creating a character, conveying the character of our employee.
Then everything depended only on the artist. And two weeks later we got our finished comic book!
That's how our team managed to create an interesting handout that does not advertise the company's services, but reflects the secret mission of our editors and project managers. The task was not the easiest, but this project will be remembered by all its participants, and we hope that the second part of the comic is not far off and we will still be able to use the skills accumulated while working on the comic.
This project not only helped us learn a lot, but also rallied the team, since almost every employee of the localization department was involved in realizing this idea. In addition, based on the comic, we made this video , but this is a completely different story ...
Recently, AllCorrect employees have turned into the real heroes of localization. Rather, it happened much earlier in the process of daily labor. Solving complex (sometimes impossible) tasks for the localization of games and software, our editors, translators and managers had to develop various superpowers in themselves. And finally, the gaming market saw our employees in true guise.
How did it all begin? The idea to create an interesting handout came up with us in preparation for the DevGAMM conference, which was held in Moscow in May. We did not want to print boring flyers with information about the services of the company and about how good we are. Having gathered in the evening in one of our audiences, we discussed possible options, and everyone agreed that we need not just to talk about our services, but to show what we are capable of and, most importantly, poor localization makes players suffer and even refuse to favorite games.
Initially, we did not plan to draw comics. We had the idea of making several separate humorous situations related to languages, using the example of the Babylonian phrasebook.
Soon we realized that fitting a few languages into a small picture is not easy, and leaving only a couple of images in our handout would be boring. Gradually, we came to the conclusion that we need a single story, that it should be in Russian (the main language of the conference), and that this story should tell about our company.
So, the next step was the brainstorming. We gathered our employees - the main creators of the AllCorrectGames department - and began to come up with a comic book plot. In the process of developing a single idea, the plot has changed several times. Our superheroes either overcame caves and rocks, or saved players from captivity, then learned to fly and read secret signals for help.
Our next task was to find the artist and draw a detailed storyboard for the comic for him.
At first glance, the task of choosing an artist seems simple, but having visited several sites of freelancers, we realized that hundreds of specialists offer such services! We have prescribed the stages of the artist’s internal selection:
- Weed out artists by experience, leave those who have experience in the gaming industry.
- Choose artists with experience in drawing comics.
- Conduct an internal vote on the style of individual artists.
Thus, at first they chose according to the style of drawing, they looked to see if there was any experience in drawing comics. Also, the ability of the performer to approach the matter professionally turned out to be very important, since it was not possible to find a common language with everyone who we liked in style. In short, the usual problems that may arise when working with freelancers.
However, reality turned out to be far from our expectations. Having already looked through several profiles of artists, we realized that it is very difficult to find a person who has experience in the gaming industry and experience in creating comics. After all, his style should have something in common with our corporate design. Oddly enough, after an internal vote, we chose a talented artist who had never drawn comics before and was completely unfamiliar with the game world! Despite the fact that the girl does not live in our city and we did not have the opportunity to meet, we managed to explain the idea of our comic strip, our expectations and describe in detail the images that we wanted to see. In this case, a person who was not connected with the field of localization was it’s not easy to explain what we do. First I had to give a short lecture on the activities of our company.
The storyboard of the comic went through three stages:
- Simple version (the very, very first draft).
- Finalization of the first draft.
- Storyboard with drawn details.
The specifics of the task was the fact that our real collaborators were to become the heroes of the comic, so in order for the artist to be able to faithfully convey the character's appearance, all superheroes presented their photos from different angles. Moreover, the artist was faced with the task of not just copying a person, but of creating a character, conveying the character of our employee.
Then everything depended only on the artist. And two weeks later we got our finished comic book!
That's how our team managed to create an interesting handout that does not advertise the company's services, but reflects the secret mission of our editors and project managers. The task was not the easiest, but this project will be remembered by all its participants, and we hope that the second part of the comic is not far off and we will still be able to use the skills accumulated while working on the comic.
This project not only helped us learn a lot, but also rallied the team, since almost every employee of the localization department was involved in realizing this idea. In addition, based on the comic, we made this video , but this is a completely different story ...