The 12 Days of the Spiral have once again come to Wizard101 and Pirate101. As with previous years, this festive event kicks off with our charity mount the Noelephant. While I actually loved the Fa La La Lama from last year, I still vividly remember one of our designers coming up with the idea of the Noelephant. I actually laughed/snorted out loud at the comedic idea of an elephant dressed up in Christmas garb and the wonderful play on words. Something that I really love about our creations at KingsIsle is the humor and the light heartedness of their personalities. But there is a serious side to this event, just as our characters in game take themselves very seriously. At the end of this year’s charity drive you, our players, will have helped raise almost $400,000 for charities targeted at improving the lives of children. Our hats are off to all of you for your generosity in helping improve the lives of so many that these charities touch!
Over the last few years we have been thrilled to work with two great charities here in central Texas. The Children’s Medical Center at Legacy in Plano is an award winning facility that provides excellent care to children in the greater Dallas area. The Austin Children’s Shelter provides critical resources and services to children, youth and families recovering from abuse and neglect. We are thrilled to continue to support these two organizations through your generosity.
This year we expanded the charities in the program to include Make-A-Wish® Central & South Texas. All of us at KingsIsle were extremely touched when Ryan and his family came to visit. We saw firsthand what kind of impact Make-A-Wish has on families and wanted to expand our support beyond visits. As a complete coincidence, we are actually hosting another child and his family today. We received this request less than two weeks ago and it seems fitting that the schedule worked out so that they are here on the kickoff of the Noelephant charity event.
I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season as we head into 2014. Happy holidays from everyone here at KingsIsle!
Now, back to the fun of showing a very enthusiastic child and his family the inner workings of the Wizard101 world…
Fred Howard
Vice President of Marketing
When we started KingsIsle in 2005, I saw a need for a family friendly game where players of all ages could connect online in a safe and fun environment. After starting with a handful of employees, it’s a little surreal now to walk around the office eight years later and see three hundred people working on KingsIsle Games. What an adventure this has been!
The creative people who work here brainstorming, designing, testing, and supporting our games have put in countless hours to bring you Wizard101, Pirate101, Grub Guardian and more. Even so, they’re not the only reason for KingsIsle’s success. If you were to ask me something that I’m thankful for as we enter this year’s holiday season – I would have to say you. All of you. I’m so thankful for all of you amazing players.
When you walk through the offices of KingsIsle, the love of our fans is apparent everywhere. There is fan art decorating cubicle walls, stacks of fan mail piled up on desks, and even memories of hosting Ryan’s Make-a-Wish day. Everywhere you look, the outpouring of affection from our players is evident.
Ryan’s Make-a-Wish Visit
What I want all you players to know is that we are so thankful for every picture, every letter, and every time you login to play one of our games. We love hearing about how Wizard and Pirate helped you do better in school in math and reading, or how it helped you connect with your family more. Those are the reasons why we make these games, but you are the reason we continue to do so.
So from myself and the rest of the KingsIsle family, thank you players! I can’t wait to see what the next year brings us all.
Elie Akilian
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
A while ago, one of our fantastic Pirate101 players and KingsIsle blog reader left this comment on the blog:
My little sister and I play all the time and we are from Wales. We have always wondered if the actress that voices Sarah Steele is from Wales too? We love her accent as it is close to ours. Ours is like a cross between hers and Bonnie Annes but more Sarahs.
We do our best to answer any questions you guys post to us, and when Ashley Spillers, the voice of Sarah Steele, was in the KingsIsle offices recently to do some recording we had a chance to ask her these questions! Here’s what Ashley had to say:
Hello there, Greetings from Los Angeles, California!
Thank you so much for your sweet note all the way from Wales! I would be very happy to answer the questions you sent for you and your sister.
My name is Ashley Spillers and I am the voice of Sarah Steele – I am so happy that you enjoy her! I have a blast playing her so I am happy to know you’ve found a friend in her. Regarding your questions: I am in fact not from Wales, but actually from Texas! I am so glad to hear that Sarah’s accent sounds somewhat authentic; as I am always concerned it’s not!
I am now living in Los Angeles, California pursuing my acting career, where I get to work on film, and voiceover work! I love theater as well.
I came into voice acting via theater and film acting! I have always been told I have a “funny” voice, so now I can finally put it to good use! It’s not always easy to land jobs, but I just continue to audition and record just like all the other actors, and hope someone chooses me.
Thank you again for your interest in my work and Sarah Steele! I wish you the very best and hope you continue to find lots of joy with Sarah and all the other wonderful characters in the game.
Cheers! and be well,
love Ashley Spillers
– and may you always find joy in whatever you do – and don’t give up on your dreams!
Here’s a photo of me waving to you from LA! 🙂
Ashley’s hard work in acting has paid off as she’s recently starred in Hollywood movies with Academy Award winners like Robert DeNiro. You can read more about Ashley’s film roles here. Thanks for answering our questions Ashley! You can learn more about Sarah Steele in Pirate101 by watching the Rogue’s Gallery video below!
Here at KingsIsle, we’ve had pets on the brain lately… I wonder why that could be? Regardless, we wanted to showcase some of our furry (and not so furry) friends on the blog!
This is my pet tarantula, Rosie. She’s an Orange Knee Tarantula, very friendly and a great companion. She loves the finer things in life like fine dining on Texas crickets, listening to her favorite band Rush and basking in the warmth of our Texas sun.
Fred Howard – Vice President of Marketing
Benny only moves at two speeds: asleep and lightspeed. He’s a Boston Terrier and knows a variety of tricks in both English and Korean, such as twirl, roll over, and high-five. He also loves eating lettuce and carrots.
Carl McKevitt – Game Designer
Meet Elvis, a 50/50 California King Snake. Her favorite thing is swimming in her pool. Also, meet the twins, Maui (back) and Moscow (front). Maui’s favorite things are brushing his Mom’s hair and nibbling on wheatgrass. Moscow’s favorite things are snuggling with his Dad at bedtime and finding new ways to sneak food off plates.
Leah Raymer – Purchasing & Inventory Specialist
This is Simon, my best buddy! He helps me travel 40% faster than walking 😉 Simon is a seven year-old OTTB, which stands for “Off the Track Thoroughbred.” That means he was bred to be a race horse, but was too slow! I am training him to be a hunter/jumper show horse. His favorite thing to do is jump fences and make silly faces at me!
Lauren Mauldin – Marketing Website Producer
Charlie is my little yellow tabby bobcat and is probably the funniest cat anyone could have adopted. He’ll come up for some love, and meow his thoughts on the world and life and such, and then bolt off to do backflips from the bed. He’s a purr machine, too. Kirby is the regal one in the family. He sleeps under the covers, enjoys a good belly rub every so often, and is one handsome little devil, to boot. They’re pretty much best pals. They’re my little furry buds, and it’s nice to come home to them every day, enjoy a short one-sided conversation, and get some relaxing couch-time in together.
Chris Kokkinos – Sound Designer
IguanaDonna is her name. She is about 5 or 6 years old, a little more than 5 feet long and just under 10 lbs. She takes a bath in the tub almost every day and loves to swim in it, although she is getting so big we might need a tub upgrade. Her enclosure is about the size of twin bunk beds and it has multiple levels with lighting toys, a water dish and humidifier. She hates to be on her leash, but occasionally we take her out with us, a few times here in the office even.
Joel White – Senior Game Designer
This is my dog, Zoe. We adopted her from the Humane Society when she was a puppy. She likes walks, belly rubs, and cheddar cheese.
Sara Jensen Schubert – Design Lead
Mirin is a Bambino, which is a hairless cat with little legs! But don’t let that fool you, he jumps and plays like any other cat. His favorite game is fetch, just like some dogs! Mirin aspires to one day have a snazzy suit like Meowiarty so he can be suave and sophisticated too.
Phred Newman – Pirate101 QA
You know, we had sooooo many pets that we couldn’t show them all without including this super collage of cool KingsIsle pets! Enjoy these photos of many more of our wond’arrful pets!
A short while back, I wrote part one on the making of commercials here at KingsIsle which covers how we make our CGI spots. In part two, I will delve into our recent Wizard101 tournaments spot where for the first time in KingsIsle history we used live actors and a real set for a portion of the commercial.
The starting process for using live action in a commercial is almost identical to how we start a CGI commercial. We have to come up with the overall message of the spot, the storyboards and script. However, from there it gets more complicated as it is like producing two separate commercials (one CGI and one live action) that had to work together with a perfectly smooth transition.
We outlined the four Wizards we wanted to use on the “featured” team. Our goal was to use the Ice and Myth Wizards from our last CGI commercials plus two additional ones. In casting the actors it made for a fun duel process. We needed to find a male and female actor that embodied the Wizards from the previous CGI commercials. We then had to find two actors (one male and one female) that would be the foundation to model the two additional CGI Wizards, one Death and one Fire. It is a fascinating process looking at video castings of so many young actors and really trying to pick out just the right ones. I lost track of how many hours we spent looking for “perfect fits” to be the first ever live action Wizards 🙂
Getting the clothing right was another fun effort. I really wanted to make sure the actors were wearing cool clothes that you would see in the halls of any high school. However, they also had to have a close resemblance to the Wizard101 outfits that the CGI characters would wear in the arena. We knew the color combinations but it was really hard to know how it would work until the actor actually has the outfit on. The day before the commercial shoot we all got together and walked through all the details. This was also when we had each of the actors try on all of the various outfits to figure out exactly the right ones to wear.
Another thing we had to really focus on to get right was the actual location to shoot the commercial. I wanted a locker room feel but one that could just as easily be in our world or in the Spiral. This was a harder thing to find than you might think. We ended up shooting the commercial at a really cool stadium in the Dallas area that had great concrete floors and columns. We had the lockers custom built based on how we thought they might look in a real Wizard101 stadium. We also had the stone benches custom built (side note, they’re now a permanent addition to the KingsIsle offices). A lot of the employees wanted fun items in the commercial so I brought a box of items in to act as “props” on the shelves of the spot. I won’t list all of the items but some of them included Marleyben (the marketing team mascot), a bottle of Falmea hot sauce a fan had sent in, and my old school original clapping monkey from the 1950’s.
The day of the commercial shoot was a whirlwind. There was a huge crew there setting up lights and cameras, dressing the actors and getting their hair and make-up done and a whole flurry of other activity. Once everything was in place we started shooting footage. There was a cool “mist” machine that helped set the ambiance. An interesting aspect was how many shots we had to take to get the short footage actually used in the commercial. This is because there is no second chance to get another shot if we find in production we don’t have what we want. I’ll also call out at this point that I got to have my first appearance in a national commercial. Yep, I played one of the door guards for the Wizards entering the arena. I can hear what you are thinking – “Wow, that was one amazing piece of acting that you did…” 🙂
Once all the footage is captured there was still a huge amount of work to do. We had to take hours’ worth of shots and condense it down to the roughly 15 seconds you saw in the commercial. We had to make sure there was continuity to all the shots – if an actor’s hood was up in one cut, it was the same way in the next cut. Of course we also had to do all the sound effects and post production effects. Our internal KingsIsle sound team is amazing and they really did a great job with this commercial.
Truth be told, I was extremely nervous about using live actors and shooting lives scenes for a KingsIsle commercial. There were a lot of additional risks to adding live action for us. Would we pick the right actors? Would the set look appropriate and have a feel that crosses both our world as well as the world we’ve created in the spiral. Perhaps most importantly, would the live action come across with the believability we feel is so important? Overall I think we were able to navigate through all of these risks and create a commercial I was really proud of but I would love to hear your thoughts. Did you like the commercial? Should we consider using live action again in the future?
Fred Howard
Vice President of Marketing
KingsIsle Blog 