Meet Nadia, Art Director in Candy Crush Jelly

💫 No account yet? Sign up HERE in 2 seconds!

Hi King-tastic players,

Towards the end of October we posted a message asking if you had any questions for Nadia, the Art Director of Candy Crush Jelly Saga, and now we would like to present some of your questions and her answers.

HERE you can see the second part of her answers, in the Jelly Community.

Stay tuned for more Jellylicious answers to come very soon!

DeepshikhaSharan - How is life at King? Was developing one of Jelly's biggest feature that is Royal Champions a great experience? Do you like the game yourself?

Honestly, life at king is awesome. I get to work with diverse, talented and friendly people every day. My colleagues are easily the best thing about the job.

I actually joined Jelly after The Royal Championship was released, but I was already working for King at the time when the Jelly team first started developing that feature. The different teams in the studio would share what they are working on every month in a big Show & Tell session. We would all eat pizzas together and admire each other’s work and ideas. I’ve been a fan of the Royal Championship since the first time I heard of it in one of those Show & Tell sessions. The best thing about the Royal Championship is that the idea for it came from the team itself, and they worked very hard to make it a reality.

I tend to usually play more games on my PlayStation than on my phone, but I do love Jelly! But the Royal Championship is by far my favorite feature out of any king game right now.

Ashraf - Your name is of Arab origins .. Where are you from? And how does your work as a Art Director? Did you design things inside the game? And what are those things?

Yes! My family is from Morocco, but they moved to the Netherlands in the 80s. I was born shortly after. Luckily we visited Morocco every couple of years so I got to know my family there and understand where I’m from. I love Moroccan mint tea and Red Lentil soup (harrira).

The work of an Art Director can be different depending on the plans for the game, the size of the team and the way the rest of the team works. But generally it consist of three main areas: Product, Process & People.

Product: Collaborating with Game Designers to set and maintain a vision and style for the game that matches the gameplay and will be appealing to the players. 

Process: Making sure all the tools are in place so that all the visuals can be created on time and according to the product’s needs.

People: Guiding and mentoring the team in their careers and performance.

I have other questions. I love the character and design of the Red Rabbit .. Is it possible to introduce us to the history of the design of this beautiful rabbit? 🐇🎨 Note .. the way it is designed in the world of jelly is the most beautiful 😍

Red rabbit loves the spotlight. It was his dream to become a famous Rockstar. Being the presenter of the Royal Championship is as close as he’s ever gotten to that dream. 

He fancies himself a ladies’ man, and, um, isn’t.

NamTruong2001 - I want to ask her whether the work in studio is too hard or not. And how is a new background episode made? Oh. I hope my country, Vietnam, would become a part of this game.

That’s a tough question! I think whether the work is hard probably depends from person to person. But it’s definitely work that you need to be passionate about to do well.

The first thing that happens when designing a new episode is research. The team comes up with some ideas and looks for reference pictures. The ideas the team look for are for a “theme” some “sweets” and a “color palette”. Then the artists start creating rough sketches for all the different ideas. That’s when you can really start assessing whether an idea is appealing or not. The team goes through all the ideas and sketches and gives feedback to improve them. The sketches then get refined to” final concepts”. From these final concepts, the “assets” are made. Assets are the final images you see in the game. They get made by 2D artists, 3D artists and animators. After that, the assets have to be “implemented” in the game engine. The artists take the assets from the software where they were created, to the game engine, where developers can attach code to those assets. All the assets are then used to build a world inside of the game engine. When that’s done, the developers can take over and add functionality to those visuals.

We have a very international team, anyone from any country can apply for a job at King! 

Please feel free to check out all 5 parts of the Q&A, in the Jelly Community:

Part 1     Part 2     Part 3     Part 4     Part 5