Making a Universe for Toped and Tokopedia
In 2014, Tokopedia uncovered their brand mascot named Toped to the public; it’s a hybrid of an owl and a shopping bag. Well, since the name of Tokopedia stands for ‘Toko’ (shop in English) and ‘encyclopedia,’ we got the mascot right to represent it the best.
A Token of Appreciation for Toped
We love Toped, and we want to give him a surprise along with Tokopedia’s 10th-anniversary. But, what else can we give to Toped?
That’s a big question for us too, so we took a step back and pondered, Who is Toped actually? What would he like to do now?
To answer those questions, we gathered our Nakama (teammates and leaders) across functions to participate in a workshop. We tried to reimagine, sketch, and share our craziest ideas for Toped.
The workshop result was unexpected! We had a bunch of ideas on our hands. We were so excited to take all these ideas like a recipe because each of them was unique, like ingredients. Some are spicy, some are sweet, some are sour! But, how do we start to cook from crazy ideation into a concept art?
Let’s check it out!
Step by Step Cooking The Ideas
1. Defining Toped and Friends’ personas
Firstly, we started with what we already have, and that is our beloved Mascot, Toped. We sought through every workshop participant’s perception about who Toped really is. Mostly said that Toped is a kind-hearted guy who loves to help everyone’s problem. They also said Toped lives close to nature environment, or to be precise, in a treehouse. Another exciting idea is that Toped has a pet. Then, we took those ideas as Toped’s primary persona, and it will be used as a baseline for further concept developments like the story, environment, and new characters.
We also made new main characters: Pedi, Cody, and Dot. These characters are based on some personalities that can represent our product in general; high-tech, trendy, and loyal. However, to build a story, we also need additional characters and antagonists. Hence, we also created extra characters and ‘seemingly’ antagonists, The Citizens, Piko, and Eggo.
2. Going Wild through Exploration
There is a saying that ideas are free, so we went wild on our first exploration, turning the characters’ personas into visible creatures.
Then, together, we sought through our first exploration and found the thematic style that caught on our attention: a fusion of an object and an animal, just like our current mascot. So, we focused on character designs based on that concept.
3. Aligning the characters
Finally, we had the final designs from the alternatives. We refined them so that they suit the style direction in our brand’s mascot. We took consideration for every character very carefully, so they can stand out on their own but still not overshadowing the brand’s mascot, Toped.
Let’s take a look more in-depth into each character.
Toped
Toped is a hybrid of a shopping bag and an owl. He is the hero and the main character of the Universe. He loves to help everyone, solving every problem with kindness, and he’s so friendly.
Toped’s design is not getting any revisions, we only remove his eyes’ stroke, so it is fresh and unified with other characters.
Dot
Dot is a dog and a cardboard box. He is Toped’s best friend and loyal companion. Dot has the ability to expand itself and carry things in it, sometimes he also voluntarily turn into a vehicle for Toped and Nakama to travel the world.
Initially, we wanted to make Dot’s unique point as a dog with some dots on his face, but later we think it looked a bit realistic than the rest of the characters. So we give him a big patchy dark brown around his eye instead, and we keep the green tape as it looks cute, so Dot has a waggy tail when jumping around. Woof woof!
Pedi
A cross between a coin purse and a rabbit. Pedi expresses her emotions through the movement of her ears. She is energetic and quickly responding to anything.
Pedi’s first design is a bit boxy and quirky, but we like to maintain her friendly and cute look. So we turned her a bit more rounded and made her snapping crown a little less obvious.
Cody
This big and soft guy is a mix of a koala and a gadget. Cody’s face is coded within the screen.
When he moves, a wheel will be out from its body to the ground. We want Cody as a futuristic gadget which is not representing any current device. Developing Cody character is a bit challenging, we iterated many times to get the right blue colour that is in tune with the others yet also vivid from the background.
Piko
Piko is a mix of a cat and a plastic bag with a twist of look like a bandit. The naughty yet lonely one always wants to be the centre of attention. Still, the citizens don’t like him due to his prankish behaviour.
Piko is the only character whose floating body and tiny arms, and it is intended to emphasise his naughty nature who loves doing prank to others.
Eggo
Eggos are Piko’s minions. This little creature is a result of Piko’s unexpected experiment with Lucky Eggs. They are mindless and always follow Piko’s commands.
In the initial design, we made Eggos like tiny tribal people. But, then we reconsidered to make it more simple and cute as Eggos will be small ones. Each Eggo has a cracked eggshell stick on their head but the placement is varied.
Citizens
Citizen is an additional character who lives in the society of the Toped Universe. Citizens’ first design is based on bubble chat. We wanted to make them as simple as possible, yet they still represent how people communicate.
Based on that concept, we tried to dig more insights — which eventually led us to pick a thumb or jelly bean-shaped character. That was based on how our users interact with us through their mobile phones. The shape of a jelly bean represents our users’ finger taps that they usually do on their mobile phones’ screen to click a button. On the citizen’s back, you can find a subtle pattern that’s similar to a fingerprint.
4. Building The Environments
Yay! Toped now has friends, but we still got a thing to do, which is making the world for them to live in. Before we started to do sketches, we took a look at the previous environment styles we used to accompany Toped.
We once had outlined designs both for the environment and the mascot design. Then once Toped has been improved into a more 3d look, we changed the background style to pale monochromatic with blue or sometimes green hue (for website/microsites). However, we maintained things on the foreground to be colour-saturated.
Art Direction
As for Toped Universe, we chose a new art direction, “Heartwarming and Lively.”
We collected several references on illustration styles we preferred and aligned with our new direction. On top of our minds, we agreed to choose style direction from Disney Universe, like Disney Toy Company (Mobile Game), Inside Out and Zootopia storybooks. Well, as a leading animation studio, Disney is already well-known and loved by many various people. We hope this art direction will reach Tokopedia users’ hearts as well.
In the first step to building the environment, we did rough sketches with the preferred colour palette. We explored the environment shapes based on the direction and turned it to be the key visual. This key visual will be our guide to develop further assets and styles.
Environment Assets
The next step is providing the environment assets. We got two interesting ideas from the workshop ideation, which we gonna use as the central concept. One, Toped lives in a place close to nature, and two, we love the idea of a universe with floating islands.
5. Creating Guidelines
Let’s create guidelines! so, everyone can explore Toped Universe truly!
This guideline is crucial to maintain our brand illustration’s quality and consistency. It consists of the main story of Toped Universe, characters’ profile, do’s and don’ts, environment assets, colour palette, how to create the illustrations, and the storytelling guides.
We even took care on more detail levels, like how the characters’ eyes should be when asleep and how the environments look on daylight or nighttime. We also made motion guidelines for animation purpose and flat-coloured direction for printing/merchandising use.
Voila! With the characters, assets, and guidelines, this universe is ready to launch for everyone to explore and feel the wonder.
So, the next thing to do is to implement the illustrations in our app and marketing campaigns. But it won’t stop there; we will continue to expand our Toped Universe beyond, maybe, a cinematic movie? A theme park? Who knows… :)
Takeaways
I was so pleased and proud to take part in this initial project, though no one had a background in concept art or game design. We managed to build a concept art for Toped Universe from scratch. Moreover, it went beyond than we expected, this small-step initiative was chosen as the key visual for Tokopedia’s 10th-anniversary campaign.
All these experiences was a huge learning opportunity for me; some of them are:
- Collaboration with other division would give new insights and sharing knowledge as well. It is also vital when we are going to do changes that may impact on the tech side. Here, I learned to take attention to detail while I also need to see on the holistic approach.
- Storytelling is a necessary skill for any designers who was going to build their design with conveying messages.
- In exploration, everyone’s idea is appealing, sometimes the more people, the merrier we will get.
As a UI Designer, I also had to work on other main projects besides this, so I must learn to coordinate with my other team and manage time. However, I must say, doing this project is kind of refresh me from the routine I had with layout and interfaces.
It was so fun! Thanks to the team for #MakeItHappen!
