🎙️ 📮 We have their answers!! Exclusive Q&A with our CCS Art Team

How cool that you are building it from scratch! If the Candy artists were to choose any of our favourite designs in Candy Crush, the answer would be different from every one of them! But recently we have been turning to old episode art and creating wallpapers out of them for the Community. Maybe one of those, like the Crunchy Comet one, would fit very nicely on a PC?

Find the list of all the Exclusive Community wallpapers HERE and the Crunchy Comet Wallpaper HERE

Thank you for your feedback! For us in the Candy team, it's a great effort to redesign old blockers.

The ideas to make the changes come from the team that has refreshing and creating all new blockers as a main priority. We noticed that some of the very first blockers weren't matching in style with the newly designed ones.

For example, the Deadly Spawner visual had quite the steam punk vibes, which we realised doesn't fit very well in our colorful vintage Candy Crush world. The Icing was also made partially of chocolate, but didn't spread as regular Chocolate - which is the mechanic our players are used to. So next to creating a more cohesive visual style, we are also always aiming to avoid this inconsistency in behaviour and are making the changes for a clear game. Happy that you like them!

Normally, level designers or artists have a vague idea of a new blocker in mind. For example, they might be thinking of some sort of blocker that explodes like wrapped candy once it's destroyed. Then, those ideas get pitched to the team that works with new features and the best, most necessary ones get prioritized. If we run out of cool ideas, we've had it happen quite some times that the whole team gets together, goes to nearest candy store and buys all sorts of candy. With all those candies, we head back to the office for quite the tasy and inspirational brainstorm meeting! It’s a great way to generate a lot of new ideas.

We do have map out how often and how many new features need to be released per year, so Candy players can be sure new features are going to be released regularly. Even so, the artwork gets done mostly in the same way. Sometimes, artists create first sketches by hand in a sketchbook, but most of the time we work directly on a computer and draw everything in software like Adobe Photoshop or Autodesk Maya. We use digital tablets and pens for drawing, which are almost like paper and pencil if you get used to it! You can call it a different medium. Digital art just as laborious and time consuming process as traditional art, but at the same time it opens up a whole new world of creativity.

We are so glad to hear you like the episodes so much! From the get-go, the visuals of the Saga map have been imagined and created by an ever-changing team of solely artists. That even includes the episode titles! Over the years, we’ve had many artists rotate into this team, because everybody loved making episodes. We all tried to match our own visual styles to the Candy style and keep things consistent – and with that hurdle covered, having such a diverse team brought a lot of fun and fresh ideas every time!

There were many ways to get to this final episode idea. We would try to think of stories we hadn't shared before or simply things we would feel like drawing. This varied from the (quite straightforward) existing sweets and foods (‘Hey, do we have pretzels in the game? No? I’m on it’) - but it could also mean trying to challenge ourselves artistically. Drawing a spider web out of bubblegum for example, or trying to imagine what a tornado would look like if it was made from cotton candy. We would then find a matching character and setting to fit those graphics in.

Sometimes we imagined the aforementioned story or scenario from the get go. For example: what if there’s a sword stuck in the stone (a tale as old as time) and the character needs Tiffi’s help to get it out? Tiffi’s all for that, but being the bubbly go-getter she is, she comes in and saws it in half instead. Solved, right?! We had a lot of fun having Tiffi 'help' characters this way. When you have a set up like that, you know you need to focus the episode art on a big rock with a sword in it. You know Tiffi’s going to be holding a saw – and the mysterious forest surrounding it practically draws itself! As time went on, it became a challenge on its own to try and think of new elements we could translate to the screen.

Last but not least, as mentioned before, the episode titles were also thought up by the artists. We would get together with a coffee and brainstorm for half an hour, at least once every two weeks. We'd be thinking of words matching to our episodes, always trying to get the first letters of the two words to match as well. It was hard to find unique combinations as the amount of episodes grew! Sometimes, we also thought of good names that didn’t match any of the episodes we were working on. We saved those and used the title as an inspiring starting point for the art instead.

For the new Saga map where we revisit locations, we tried to have each episode theme differ from the other for nice visual variation. We made sure to use our favorite assets and looks from all the years past. The artists worked with narrative designers for this too, as they have a great overview of the use of characters and stories in the game and franchise as a whole. It was very useful to collaborate and see which characters and elements we wanted to highlight most, as we wanted to make sure the map tells a story even when it loops!

All art for CCS has to be made digitally! As you may have seen in other answers, we use drawing tablets to create our artwork in software like Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. We do everything on the computer this way; from sketching and painting, to creating 'vector' images that can scale to all sizes without losing quality. We animate our characters and elements with code or in software like Spine. We also create 3D elements in Autodesk Maya, like the level pins. Lastly, all of the art is put together in King's in-house editor called Fiction Factory, which is similar to tools like Unity.

That being said, most artists in CCS still have a love for good old pen and paper. Whether it's on post its or in sketch books, many designs are sketched out by hand before we recreate them on the computer.

When the very first version of Candy Crush was created, the game designers had the mechanics nailed down, but not the look. As you may know, it originated in Sweden - and Swedish people are notorious for having a sweet tooth! Every super market or kiosk has rows and rows of candy dispensers, referred to as 'lösgodis' (bulk confectionary). It seemed like a natural step for the artists at the time to create a sweet shop, with a game board full of their favorite candies! 🍬🍬

They then decided to include a character to introduce players to this Candy world, and this is how our Tiffi entered the game. Due to both Tiffi's designers personal art style and the desire to create a nostalgic world for the players to immerse themselves in, the artists started looking at the western art deco type of style from the 30s and 50s. They decided to create a puppet theatre to match this vibe, which is why all characters have paper cut outlines, pins and sticks/strings to move with. Board games were also a big inspiration, which is why initially the characters on the Saga map were shaped like pawns.

Over time, as the team grew bigger and more artists joined, we've never stopped trying to honor that look. Even with our characters, we try to make sure they are not be typically cute, but wonky and memorable personalities that match the crazy Candy Kingdom they live in. We are always looking to build a bright, happy environment that revokes a sweet and simpler time.

Thank you so much for the generous praise! We always aim to create that sweet, nostalgic place, where everything is bright, happy - and of course, tasty looking! We will keep doing our absolute best to expand and perfect the world you love. ❤️

All art for Candy Crush is designed by hand, yes - but it's done on a computer! As you may have read in some of the other answers, we use drawing tablets to create our artwork in software like Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. We have to create everything on the computer this way; from sketching and painting, to creating 'vector' images that can scale to all sizes without losing quality. We animate our characters and elements with code or software like Spine. We also create 3D elements in Autodesk Maya, like the candies and level pins. All of the art is put together in King's in-house editor called Fiction Factory, which is similar to tools like Unity.

That being said, most artists in CCS still have a love for good old pen and paper! Whether it's on post-its or in sketch books, many designs are still sketched out traditionally before we recreate them on the computer.

Many of us indeed play the game! Even those who prefer other game genres in their free time (we have lots of console fans for example), still have to play it on the job, haha. With every feature we implement (whether it's art related or not), we need to see what it would look like if it appears in the game. So we tap through the game almost daily. We even have some shortcuts in our test version to get through the levels quick.. But we all know nothing will be as satisfying as finishing it on your own!

After all, no matter how involved you are with drawing characters or coding new features - a level can still be tricky to beat! That feeling of satisfaction when you finally finish the puzzle is hard to beat.. Maybe only the level designers don't have that rush anymore, haha!

Thank you for the great compliment! From other answers in this thread you might find out more details on how exactly designs come to life (from sketching on post-its to using software for digital art and implementation).

As for the good work: we try to keep the quality as high as we can by hiring artists based on their previous portfolio and artists, so we know they can bring their strengths to the table for Candy. When working at King, we continuously try to improve our skills as well, whether it's following courses, going to art conventions or sharing knowledge amongst each other in internal workshops.

As for supporting each other: we also put a lot of importance on bringing people in who are a great match personality-wise and come from diverse backgrounds to boot. We feel it's key to share the same values and share as many different perspectives as possible to create a fun and inclusive game experience. By now, King has 75 nationalities amongst its employees!

It all makes for a really exciting group of people to work with, and many of us consider each other friends, meeting outside of work too. When you're all getting along and share the same passion for your craft, you become a stronger unit to move forward with.

As you might glean from other answers, we are always doing our best to keep Candy up to date. We want to aim for an experience that not only looks cohesive and with the times, but also bring fresh content to players who've been with us for a while! When we had to rework our Saga map, it was the ideal opportunity to focus on what we'd like our main characters to look like.Casey (and a revamped Licorise the cat for that matter) are indeed newer additions we are very proud of. So if a proper opportunity allows it, we won't shy away from additions to our crazy Candy cast!

Ooof, that is another tough one!

Many of the artists think Tiffi’s design is really fun. She has quite the unique shape, so we often affectionally refer to her as our little ‘thumb’, haha. The Candy style was set over 8 years ago by artists who are no longer with the team, so it’s always been fun to adapt and expand into this unique way of shaping characters and worlds.

My personal favorite design I got to do myself was Rami the Candy Pet. It was really fun to pick one of the original candy characters, Ramsay the Ram, and imagine a ‘baby’ version of this design – and then a grown up version to boot! Everybody really loves drawing characters, especially in our wonky Candy style.

The custom avatars have quite an interesting history! Years back, some of our players were visiting the King studio in Stockholm, Sweden, were Candy is made. The team wanted to make sure they would have a great time and were brainstorming what we could do for them to make the experience memorable. That’s when one of our artists offered to sketch portraits of the players in the Candy Crush style.

It was a big hit and with more visits came more artists who offered to do the live sketching. The portrait activity became more well known in the studio and was then also coined as a gift for the Community members. This way, we were not limited to people visiting Stockholm only!

They are made solely by various artists from the actual game team, which is why they are a bit rare - there’s always so much going on in Candy that it’s hard to fit them in the game development schedule. It's also very hard to estimate a number of portraits, as we have done so much live for our visitors as well! And since it's been several artists, I think everyone has their own favorite too.

We have no whole team working on pics for the Community site, they are usually made by me only lately. I am no graphical designer or artist, but love being creative and play with different assets in Photoshop.

Since I have access to loads of pics from the game's art studios here at King, I can easily use their work and put them together or edit them so they fit with the purposes on the website.

The inspiration comes from my love for the different characters in our games, but also browsing through the massive bank or assets gives me loads of new ideas and inspiration. When I made the new Community avatars earlier this summer I simply picked the characters I thought look cute and that players would love have as their avatar. My favourite avatars are all the pets from Pet Rescue Puzzle!