Dance & Share

Strut Your Stuff!

Upload your face and choreograph your very own dance, alongside your favourite live action Nick characters, then share it with your friends with Dance & Share!

Brief

Nickelodeon were looking for something funny and irreverent that players could not only enjoy themselves, but also share with their friends. Their initial thoughts were very much along the lines of the ubiquitous ‘Elf-Yourself’ Flash game, re-imagined for the modern era of HTML5. Part of the appeal was the personal aspect of the experience where players can use their own face and choose their own options.

Our Response

Nickelodeon were looking for something funny and irreverent that players could not only enjoy themselves but also share with their friends. Their initial thoughts were very much along the lines of the ubiquitous ‘Elf-Yourself’ Flash game but for the modern era of HTML5. Part of the appeal was the personal aspect of the experience where players can use their own face and choose their own options.

The Challenges

The key challenge inherent in Nickelodeon ‘Elf-Yourself’ style proposal was that iOS powered phones won’t allow video that is real-time composited with animated elements (like Flash used to) and also forces video to run full-screen. We proposed moving away from video as a result and instead animating everything ourselves, compositing the players face into the animation. This was green lit but in itself presented some challenges!

How would we create dances that not only looked great, but could be programmed to apply to any character, be controlled live by the player, smoothly flow into one another and be recorded at minimal file size so the dance could easily be recreated on a friends device?

Another challenge was to make all of this both extendable (so that Nick could add as many brands and as many dances as they liked) and re-skinnable so that seasonal visual styles such as valentines day or Christmas could be applied to keep it feeling fresh and relevant? 

The Results

Dance and Share proved to be a huge hit with kids on the Nickelodeon site, allowing them to upload their face, pick their favourite live-action characters from top Nick shows such as ‘Game Shakers’, ‘Bella and the Bulldogs’, ’Every Witch Way’ and ‘School of Rock’ then hit record and build their own live action dance in realtime. They can then share this with their friends – and the world via the built-in gallery system!

Dances were animated using skeletal animation tools that rendered out via HTML5 canvas. This meant we could have lots of difference dances for very little file-size, smooth 60fps motion and feature dance moves that could react to player inputs and seamlessly blend together. It also meant we could record player’s inputs to a database and then easily recreate the dance on a friends computer.

Dance and share was originally launched in November 2015, but was so popular Nickelodeon came back to us to update it in March 2016 with a valentines themed skin, new characters and a full set of new dance moves for players to try! We also added the gallery feature. This would allow a Nick-curated selection of user-generated dances to populate an in-page gallery that would sit below the game on the Nick website and showcase a section of the latest dances, helping create buzz and a feeling of community around the game.

A further three versions of the game have subsequently been made for Christmas 2016, spring 2017 and Christmas 2017 (with a fourth on the way) helping illustrate the continuing popularity of this fun format!

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