3D animation for Little Scholars Maths for Mobile games

At the end of 2014, I designed and developed a mathematics mobile game, enriched with detailed 3D animation. The simple idea was a Maths Game for kids, aged 8-12 years, named ‘Little Scholars Maths’. It was available on iPhones and iPads (iOS only). The game attracted over 1000 players from around the world and a large percentage used the game for more than 10 minutes, and a few, more than one hour.

I wanted a visually rich environment for this educational game. The basic premise follows the story of two kid-scientists wanting to reach the moon. By the player helping them with the maths, the player helps them achieve their goal.

I researched colour palettes from contemporary cartoons like Adventure Time and also (because I am a fan) Futurama. The animation below was divided into 3 segments, each segment being unlocked at the successful completion of a stage in the game. Each segment in the game gets more complex; Level 1 is addition and subtraction, Level 2 includes multiplication, and Level 3, brings in division.

After completing all of the 3 stages of the game you were shown the complete animation of the two characters making it to the moon. Here’s the entire Mobile In-game 3D animation from start to end.

The 3D animation was created with Cinema 4D for all modelling and rendering, and character animation was created in ToonBoom’s Harmony software, which is an incredible piece of software. The final composite was done in After Effects.