Anya is 5 Years old, she is cute, playful and emotional, like all little girls of this age. We wanted her 3D character to reflect her personality, after several sketches and going back and forth to the drawing board we finalized these three sketches:
Initial sketches for Anya's 3D character
Option 01, was the most appealing: cute, innocent and adorable and expressive face. Option 03 was the other option we really liked, but we decided to proceed with Option 01.
Next came deciding on her clothes and other microscopic decisions such as the color of her eyes, what accessories she would have, early on we decided that with op 01, she should have the barrette which op 03 has. Several weeks were spent in creating her 3D model. After several iterations and fine adjustments we had this cute 3D model that was Anya:
Anya
The iOS devices have limited resources, so loading and rendering a high quality 3D model, was a daunting task. We wanted our users to have the best experience in playing with Anya, fast response time and good frame rate was a must, to achieve this we had to reduce the number of polygons in the 3D model, this meant possibly reducing the quality. The barrette had to go, we used a cute tie instead, textures were used where possible and finally again after several iterations we got the Anya we have in the app, we managed to retain the quality.
Next followed the animations and the big bulk of developing the app, which took over 6 months, there were challenges on each step, but with an ace team of animators and developers we forged forward and were able to release Talking Anya. In hind sight – making Talking Anya was a fun process, we loved every moment of it. This is currently a FREE Universal app in the App Store and the users are loving Anya, in just a few days she has almost 300 facebook fans ( 291 at this moment: 2:38 PM June 3, 2011 ) . This is what her fans are saying about Anya:
AWW :”> SO ADORABLE !! (: ~ Danielle Salem
So, cute! ~ Albert Martinez
What a cutie! ~ Kathleen Moriarty
why should you be so cute Anya? ~ Lina Amalina
Little Sweetie ~ Cynthia Rita Gerard
Comments like the above, give us great satisfaction knowing that we succeeded in creating what our users wanted .. so keep them coming.
