Welcome back to Behind the Journey, our ongoing peek behind the scenes at how Club Penguin Journey’s parties come to life.
Over the past few months, the island has been busier than ever. From the dusty trails of Western Party and the fiery showdown of Card-Jitsu Fire to the massive 20th Anniversary celebration and the spooky chills of Halloween, there’s been no shortage of adventures.’
It’s been a wild ride for the team. So, let’s take a closer look at what’s been happening behind the scenes these past months!
WESTERN PARTY
We’ll start at the beginning, with Western Party and its Welcome Room, built to welcome every player stepping into the Wild West for the first time. Let’s hand it over to the designer behind this wonderful room, who better to explain how it all came to life?
‘‘Hi! I designed the welcome room for this party. As you can see, I had to deeply channel my inner cowboy to create such a masterpiece. Also I totally forgot to add that black puffle on the roof, please forgive me black puffle fans. I had such a fun time with this one, and got so excited when I thought of the little windmill animation at the top left! It really drove me to keep going and get this done, because I absolutely had to see it through’’.
‘‘I wanted to also share some of the silly notes I left for the developer, who has to go through and actually implement all the different details and moving parts. communication is very important for the team, no matter how silly it may be!’’.
‘‘Oh, and here is a little close-up for a better look at the small Town and Plaza details!’’.
Here is a look at a few more concepts, ideas, and sketches from our beloved team, we know you loved these items! You’ll find this section at the end of every party featured in this blog.
More about the Western Party
It’s time for something special in this super edition of Behind the Journey! We’re introducing a new section called ‘‘In Detail’’, a closer look at each party from the past few months and the unique feeling each one brought.
In Detail: Western Party
Before moving on to the next party, we must take a moment to remember when we reached 500,000 players! Remember that wonderful background and glasses we released to celebrate the milestone? Here’s a look at its concept arts!
CARD-JITSU FIRE PARTY
Next up, it’s time to step into the heat of Card-Jitsu Fire, where the island turned up the flames and the team faced some fiery challenges. Time to hand it over to the designers themselves!
Concept Art & Early Designs
‘‘For the Puffle Park we went a little crazy and redrew the room theming it on an Oriental Bath House, but this one is for puffles. Apart from the pond, it was a challenge figuring out how to translate the elements of the original to this new design, we came up with a dock where Puffles and Penguins eat sushi and ramen, and an odd kind of trampoline based on some beds made for cats. Lastly the Puffle Launch cannon got turned into a bamboo slingshot!’’
‘‘Additionally here’s a close up look at a trick we use for drawing 3D looking structures! Here with the Tori Gate from the plaza as seen from the Puffle Park we had an odd angle to work from so we decided to first make its shape out of blocks and then carve out the detailed result! You can do this using perspective techniques or by first building it in a block game and then moving it over to your drawing program!’’
“Here’s another WIP from when shading was being implemented. Something funny to note – for the other rooms in the party, most objects were colored and shaded then tinted using a filter. for this room, however, we had to color it and shade it from scratch. There doesn’t exist a version of this room without the tint. Almost every asset is entirely hand drawn and hand shaded’’.
‘‘I looked to the Fire Dojo for what direction to take the Welcome Room, using lots of steel and grates alongside lava. Most of the snow had been removed from the Town and Plaza, so I removed much of the snow in this room as well. This party was also originally made on the tip of the modern era in the original game, with the rooms being more detailed and heavily shaded. I opted for more complicated architecture and shading as a result. The perspective of the curved roofs and the tiling on top were quite a challenge’’.
Testing mechanics
The whole team spent several weeks testing and polishing every detail to make sure everything was ready for you. It wasn’t always easy! We faced a few challenges along the way, and we will tell you a bit about them.
When we first started testing, we noticed something weird; Red Ruby jumped onto same spot with Yellow Penguin and Green Penguin, and after 20 seconds, nothing happened for any of us, completely frozen.
So Quantum Penguin and the dev team jumped in, trying to figure out what was wrong. After spending some time testing and fixing… hooray, they nailed it!
We pushed the game to its limits with Hydro Hopper, Pumpkin Puffle and Blue Puffle too. A player left, turns shifted, cards stacked when they shouldn’t, timers froze at zero… the whole thing kept bending and breaking in ways we didn’t expect.
But every time it crashed, the devs stepped in, fixed it, and sent us right back into the action. We laughed, we played, we broke it again, and guess what? They fixed it again!
If anyone asks what the best part was, we know it: sharing it with all of you!
More about the Card-Jitsu Party
In Detail: Card Jitsu Party
20TH ANNIVERSARY PARTY
Now we move on to the 20th Anniversary Party. From the moment players arrived, they were greeted by a giant cake that no one will ever forget.
Town Rooftop: From Sketch to Reality
You wouldn’t believe how much work went into this room, here’s an exclusive look at what was going through the designer’s mind!
Rugs Vision
‘‘For the 20th anniversary of Club Penguin we wanted to celebrate everything the game had to offer, and by that we meant EVERYTHING! From the Beta to every anniversary party to Club Penguin Island and to the community that kept it going for many years after!
That’s why our theme for this anniversary was every previous one combined! From the rugs that extend all around town to the cake and even the hat we’ve combined every party penguins celebrated to look back and embrace those memories to get us ready for what’s ahead.
Although using a very colorful palette seems great it comes with its challenges, we had to find balance on how to represent all colors equally and also keep the rooms visually interesting as one wrong step and we could have ended up in a rainbow mess!
As you probably noticed we introduced a new and big room during this party, the town rooftop! Well not new entirely, you already knew the Night Club’s rooftop and part of another if you’ve solved any cases relating to coins… ANYWAY! We wanted to have a large surprise waiting for penguins this year round and since the Town has been the most lively room throughout the game’s history we thought on exploring it from another angle! And wow what a high angle this one was! And since we were at the highest point of the central area of Club Penguin why not go even higher with a 20 years worth cake! Some even say it has twenty layers even though I counted twelve!
The cake tries to play homage to what most important events happened throughout club penguin years’ through time, you might find one or two you recognize! And to top it off you can get some old items from before the game’s release! How? I’m not sure!
This was a big party but a short one too! So we hope you got the opportunity to explore it to it’s fullest! And who knows… perhaps the Town Rooftop might show up again in the near future ;)’’
Fun fact: the tracks selected for the Rooftop are the ones the designer listened to most while designing the room!
This party was short, but what a blast… seeing the team’s ideas being enjoyed by all of you was something truly special.
More about the 20th Anniversary Party
In Detail: 20th Anniversary Party
HALLOWEEN PARTY
We hope you’ve enjoyed the journey so far, because things are about to get a little spooky… Last but not least, the Halloween Party!
Concept Art, Early Designs
From the very beginning, we had one idea in mind: the Spooky Steamboat. That was one of first things we brought to life. Fun fact: one of the scary stories is actually about the boat, so you can visit the very place it talks about! That’s why the music you hear on the Spooky Steamboat is the music box mentioned in the story, all connected friends!
We wrote four Spooky Stories to guide players alongside Rockhopper: Jack-o’-Lantern (Hydro Hopper), Steamboat (Red Ruby), Spooky Island (Green Penguin), and Scarecrow Stories (Hydro x2). One of the newer team members got to see something they had written with so much care come to life in the game, and it was the most satisfying feeling imaginable!
The Penguin Band & Cadence Concert
‘‘For the concert, I’ve been thinking about it for a really long time, we do a lot of concerts on CPJ and they are almost always edits and variations of what OG had already made, but I love Halloween and I wanted to go big. I started working on the animatic for the concert at the start of August and didn’t fully finish the concert until October. It’s based on the Ghosts Just Wanna Dance music video, with the stage set matching the haunted mansion in that video, it’s always been one of my favourites growing up.’’
‘‘The hardest part was all the ghost transformations, it ended up being so many layers to get the effect right of them transforming. Then the other thing I kept struggling with was the timing of cadence’s choreography, it needed to match the timing of the song, what I ended up doing was creating a few different loops of her movement and trying to line it up as best I could. And then I also had the challenge of how to get the band to appear on stage, I didn’t want to use a curtain because it just didn’t fit the vibe, that’s when I thought of the smoke machine entrance.’’
‘‘There was also the challenge of the ghost tails, as that’s a very important factor of what makes the ghosts look like they are flying, it’s almost like animating a wave, it needs to flow and loop perfectly so it doesn’t break the illusion of movement. The whole performance was animated frame by frame in various character movement loops, all inspired by the animation of the original music video, and they become much more alive when they turn into ghosts, which is ironic.
My testing folder with all my wip exports is over 24gb, that shows how many times I went back to make adjustments. Overall I put everything I had into making this concert and I’m glad people enjoyed it!’’
Custom Items
Not everything has to be so serious, as we mentioned at the start of the blog, it doesn’t matter how silly it is! So here we have some oooooOOOoooOOOoooOOO000 files we have to share with you, along with some silly graphic names. Fun fact: Whimsical Puffle was just trying to save one but it accidentally saved all the color options, oops!
Testing mechanics
Watch Quantum Penguin in action as they test out the Spooky Stories mechanics!
More about the Halloween Party
In Detail: Halloween Party
Wrapping Up…
That about wraps up this behind-the-scenes look!
Thank you for being with us through all these incredible months and unforgettable parties. Your support and excitement make every challenge possible… the best is still yet to come!
Until next time…Waddle On!
– The Club Penguin Journey Team
