How a Game Studio built an Alexa Video Game using Krikey AI Animation

Summary

Krikey AI helped power a new animation pipeline for HUGO.FM, a game studio that builds experiences for Alexa Games. For the first time, they incorporated AI Animation into their creative production pipeline to build an Alexa game. Using Krikey AI's Video to Animation tools, they brought a custom 3D alien character to life with lip synced dialogue.

• Description: HUGO.FM Director James Holland was looking for an animation solution to help him produce more customized animations at scale. He had a vision for what he wanted his alien character to do and how his Alexa game could surprise and delight players - he just needed to find a cost effective animation solution that gave him creative control.
• Krikey AI features used: AI Video to Animation process, custom 3D Avatars, camera angles, backgrounds, lighting, MP4 export

"As a game studio, we knew our creative production process had bottlenecks. We were using freelancers to create animations. It was a timely process having to scope freelancers and for the work to be completed, sometimes taking weeks! When we found Krikey AI we realized we can make custom animations in minutes and quickly added them to our game. Krikey AI has transformed our content production process and expanded our potential." ~ James Holland, Director at HUGO.FM Games

Challenge:

• Animating a 3D alien character without expensive software and freelancers
• Maintaining creative control over the animation output
• Speed and quality of animation creation

Solution:

• Krikey AI's 3D video editor tool enabled the HUGO.FM team to quickly use AI Video to Animation and see their animation output in minutes. The Krikey AI tools don't require any special technical skill or prior animation experience.
• Krikey AI gave the HUGO.FM team creative control over different camera angles, light settings and backgrounds for their character. This made it easy for them to quickly make and export videos - including lip synced dialogue. The Krikey AI Character Upload beta program automatically rigged the alien character and had lip sync functionality so now the Alien character could speak in multiple languages.
• Krikey AI let HUGO.FM quickly test and iterate different animations. They were able to hire a dancer and generate different AI Video to Animation outputs in minutes. This gave them more animation content for their Alexa game and helped them keep users engaged.

Time and Cost

• 3x faster to publish a video game using Krikey AI Animation tools. Normally, the process might take several months with the bottleneck being animations. Now, a full game with a variety of engaging animations can be produced and published in a shorter timeline
• 2+ weeks saved per animation by using Krikey AI Video to Animation tools. Once a base animation has been generated, it can either be used directly in the game or given to an animator for polishing (which now takes less than 1 hour and less back and forth discussion)
• Priceless: Unlimited cute alien dance animations made for an Alexa game using Krikey AI Video to Animation tools

Creativity and Customization

• Within a month, the HUGO.FM team was able to generate 40-50 animations for their Alexa game. Half of these were made using the Krikey AI Video to Animation tool, the rest came from the AI generated animation library. The exponential growth in creativity came from the ability to convert video to animation in minutes, now the team could do a lot more than before.
• In the first few days, the HUGO.FM team decided to hire a dancer on an hourly rate and asked her to perform specific dance moves that would look good on the 3D animated alien. Each bespoke, unique dance move kept arms and legs far away from the body. The results were impressive and exciting for the team to have such quick turn around on animation production.
• With the new AI Animation tools and video editor, the HUGO.FM team is exploring the possibility of building more 3D games in the future, for platforms beyond Alexa, including PC and console platforms.

About the Customer

HUGO.FM is a games studio based in London. They build voice controlled AI games for Alexa. They have some of the most popular games on the platform, including Mini Games, Big Fart, Animal Sounds, Zombie Racing and the recently released Alien Friend! Alien Friend is playable on all Alexa-enabled devices. Just say: Alexa, open Alien Friend! You can find HUGO.FM here:

HUGO.FM: https://hugo.fm/
Alien Friend: Link to play game

Alexa, Open Alien Friend (Audio)

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About Krikey AI

Krikey AI Animation tools empower anyone to animate a 3D character in minutes. The character animations can be used in marketing, tutorials, games, films, social media, lesson plans and more. In addition to a video to animation and text to animation AI model, Krikey offers a 3D editor that creators can use to add lip synced dialogue, change backgrounds, facial expressions, hand gestures, camera angles and more to their animated videos. Krikey's AI tools are available online at www.krikey.ai today, on Canva Apps, Adobe Express and on the AWS Marketplace!

The Challenge

These are some of the challenges the HUGO.FM team encountered before they found Krikey AI Animation tools.

Amazon Alexa and the AI challenge

As an AI-focused games studio, the HUGO.FM team were looking to innovate with the latest LLM and generative AI technology. They wanted to use the most cutting-edge tech to produce delightful user experiences. They wanted to find a productive and cost-efficient way of producing high-quality experiences for their players. They began searching and experimenting with different AI tools. One of their google searches, for an AI Gif Maker tool, lead them to Krikey AI Animation. The HUGO.FM team used Krikey AI Animation features to build a new, cutting-edge AI Alexa game.

Cost and Operational Complexity of producing animation

Before finding Krikey AI Animation, the HUGO.FM team would hire an illustrator and an animator to draw a concept and make a prototype. This whole process at it's fastest might take a week before a single gif was created. This meant that every game only had a few motions and fewer characters. The more characters the greater complexity to add animations. In an earlier exploration to build a 3D game, they were asked to pay $300+ for a single animation of their character waving. The cost could easily go into the thousands to produce the game with animations. With Krikey AI, the subscription was $30 / month and they could generate 40-50 animations or more within that cost.

Gif Maker tools and Gaming

The Alien Friend Alexa game is entirely built with interchangeable gifs of the Alien performing different motions. With the Krikey AI Animation tool, the HUGO.FM team was able to generate or select animations and place a green screen behind the character. They then exported a video file and removed the background and made it transparent. This gave them more creative flexibility to use the animation in their game.

The Solution

Here is how the HUGO.FM team solved their challenge to bring AI tools into their creative production workflow for Alexa Games.

Hiring an Animator

With AI Animation tools the HUGO.FM team can quickly generate 40-50 animations in a month. As they look forward to future games, they are now, for the first time as a game studio, considering hiring a 3D animator to add polish to every animation. Producing the animations from scratch takes too long but having an animator polish the animations is more efficient and impactful for their business. The raw outputs from the Krikey AI Animation tool work for their games – these raw animations also help them quickly build a library of animations for their next game. Polishing now takes less than an hour per animation and results in very high quality animations, accelerating time to market for their next game.

Adding Levels and Characters to Alexa Games

The Alien Friend game opened up a big opportunity for the HUGO.FM team and served as their first AI interactive game. In user tests they could see how wholesome the experience was for players and how meaningful it was for them to interact and talk with a character via Alexa. The team now has the space to consider adding additional alien friends to the game – all they need are new FBX files for each unique character. Character upload in the Krikey AI Animation tool is easy and HUGO.FM now has the freedom to contemplate adding characters to animate for different games. They are no longer restricted to a single character game set up.

Social Media and Future Gaming Use Cases

As a game studio, HUGO.FM wants to promote their products on social media. Creating content can be onerous and time consuming. Now, with Krikey AI Animation, the HUGO.FM game studio has the opportunity to produce social media content with a custom character, AI Video to Animation and Voice AI tools. This can significantly begin to impact their user growth as people become more aware of their new Alexa Games.

How Krikey AI was used by a game studio to build a video game for Alexa Games

The HUGO.FM team used different Krikey AI Animation features to build their new Alexa game.

AI Video To Animation

Krikey AI has a video to animation feature that enabled the HUGO.FM team to upload dance videos and convert them to 3D character animation on their alien friend character in minutes. The immediate gratification of a 3D character animation was impressive and exciting not just for the game developers, but also for the end customers.

Gif Maker Tool

Originally seeking a 3D gif maker tool, the HUGO.FM team was happy they had full creative control over animations, lighting, backgrounds, camera angles and lip sync in the Krikey AI tool. This enabled them to create a more engaging game with 50+ gifs. The interactivity of the alien is elevated when it has different body motions and animations and not just the same repetitive set. The Krikey AI 3D Gif Maker tool helped power HUGO.FM's My Alien Friend Alexa game.

Custom Character Upload

When the HUGO.FM team first approached Krikey AI, they were uncertain if their alien character would work in the Krikey AI Animation tool. After a quick test, the Krikey AI team was able to confirm that they could automatically rig and add facial blendshapes to the alien character. This meant it could be animated using AI video to animation and the animations in our library of assets. The Alien character could also speak in 20+ languages using Voice AI and it's eye could blink realistically. These achievements were only possible with the Krikey AI Animation maker character upload tools.

"Everyone on our team has been really impressed with the Krikey AI animation tool. It's a concept that has inspired us to innovate and helped us build a really cool game that is interactive and powered by AI tools. We are so happy we started to use this AI Animation tool now to build our games, we want to build 3D games in the future and this tool can help us achieve those goals." ~ James Holland, Director at HUGO.FM Game Studio