Habboween 2016: Behind the Scenes!
Q: Things are getting spooky in preparation for Habboween, designers. Y’all alright though, yeah?
MrCroissant: All good yeah! Gotta keep an eye out for ghosts and ghoulies though...
Cromsnosehair: I c..can't stop sh..shaking, my palms are sweaty, chills are racing down my spine...
Kukuyit: Hi everyone! There’s a sudden chill in the air… is winter coming? Oh wait, there’s still Habboween to come!
Q: Habboween is traditionally a very popular campaign, with Habbos and staff. From a design perspective, what’s your favourite thing about producing for Habboween as a whole?
Kukuyit: It’s not often we get to do spooky furni, so when we get the chance we’re super excited. My favourite part would be adding all the animations to give furni extra ‘creep’.
Cromsnosehair: I think it's fun to design items that looks a little worn or old and creepy. It's a refreshing change from the clean, bright, cheery style we usually work with.
MrCroissant: Habboween tends to be a little more experimental than other campaigns, which is fun for us designers as it gives us a little more freedom to do something out of the ordinary. All of us like brainstorming and concepting for Habboween as it’s no-holds-barred and some of the initial ideas can be crazy. Then comes the hard (and interesting) part, which is making it fit within Habbo while keeping it fresh and interesting.
Q: What’s been your favourite part of the design process for Ghost Hunters? A furni you’re particularly proud of? An aspect of the campaign itself you think the Habbos are going to really dig? Or perhaps some art you’ve had fun working on?
MrCroissant: I’m quite proud with how the crackable Ghosts turned out; it was fun to bring out their character in the animations. Hopefully they'll add a fun twist to the campaign by adding a semi-competitive element (and causing a little chaos) in game. The fact that each furni design has 'haunted' and 'purified' versions is cool too, which means that the line can be very ‘Halloweeny’ but also helps the line fit in with previous ones. The overall theme of the campaign is right up my alley too, I really dig old "noir" and art deco style art. In terms of design the 1920s/30s/40s were a whole lot cooler...
Kukuyit: Out of all the furni I’ve made, I’m most proud of the grand piano. The piano was a tedious task: every four directions had to be redrawn by hand because the piano lid is at an angle. I hope users will get the spooky game reference I’ve added to it (tee hee).
Cromsnosehair: I enjoyed designing furni to fit the art deco style, as it's a design style I personally enjoy. I had a lot of fun working on the haunted version of the Grim Reaper’s Chandelier and animating the little ghosts.
Q: Draw your Habbo with some sort of contraption you would use to hunt ghosts in Habbo, and tell us how it works/what it does!
Kukuyit: Well you sneak up to one of them in a zig zag way, then when they least suspect it, you grab them by their fluffy tum…what do you mean I got the wrong… oh.
Cromsnosehair: My contraption is the spirit bubble gun. It catches ghosts in bubbles and when they pop, the unwanted spirit gets banished to the realm of the dead.
MrCroissant: My contraption is a homemade ghost-vacuum made with stuff that was just left lying around.
The designer's sketches:
Clockwise from left: Spirit Bubble Gun by Cromsnosehair, MrCroissant's Hoover contraption, Kukuyit catching a 'goat'.
And below, you can see a selection of the new (finalised) furni for Habboween!
A preview of the upcoming Habboween furni in their haunted and purified states.