Quin Heins
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Welcome to Fillory

I led design of this richly detailed, world-building companion experience to The Magicians in late 2016, with help again from UNIT9. The follow up to 2015’s Welcome to Brakebills, the experience included a new series of user challenges, this time in the form of quests that must be completed to solve the many crises facing Fillory, the fantasy world that is the setting of The Magicians Season 2. It also included a beautifully rendered interactive map detailing the wonders and dangers the cast would encounter on their journey.

 
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01 | Map

The experience opened with an edge-to-edge video sequence that swept users through views of Fillory’s magical landscape and dropped them into an immersive 3D overhead map. They could learn more about the world by dragging the map around and clicking on points of interest, marked by animated icons, or navigate sequentially from the detail view. The map itself was really fun to help bring to life, surprisingly detailed and impressively rendered in Three.js, WebGL and GLSL.

 
 
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02 | Quests

As in Welcome to Brakebills, users were prompted to complete a series of challenges, released with each week’s new episode and corresponding to a quest the characters were forced to undertake to save Fillory that week. Typically fast-paced tests of knowledge or logic puzzles, quests gave users the opportunity to engage in the show’s drama firsthand, attempting to unlock an ancient relic or cast a critical spell before the clock ran out.

 
 
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03 | Character Guide

We revamped and expanded the carousel experience from Welcome to Brakebills as well, updating visuals and adding a host of new characters, now organized by their relationship to Fillory’s throne. Using a parallax effect on scroll in the individual pages again gave the opportunity for little bespoke visual details to effectively tell each character’s story.

 
 
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Credits

Role
Design Director (client side)

Agency
Unit9

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Recognition

Cablefax Awards 2017
Winner, Online Game/Gamification

Shorty Awards 2017
Finalist, Art Direction

W3 Awards 2017
6x Gold – User Experience, Website | Structure and Navigation, Website | Visual Design (Aesthetic), Website | Video or Motion Graphics, Website | User Experience, Mobile Site or App | Visual Design (Aesthetic), Mobile Site or App

5x Silver – Entertainment Website | Television Website | User Interface, Website | Visual Design (Function), Mobile Site or App | User Interface, Mobile Site or App