hello kitty island adventure: city town dlc

AGENCY: Maverick Media

CLIENT: Sunblink & Sanrio

ROLE: Cinematics Director & Creative Lead

To mark the launch of Hello Kitty Island Adventure’s City Town DLC, I led the creative direction of a City Pop-inspired trailer introducing USAHA*NA to the game. This was a mix of in-engine cinematics and gameplay capture.

Beyond the influence of 80s Japanese city life, it was important to present City Town as a living character in its own right, something to explore and discover. Its vibrant palette also lent itself to a subtle Y2K influence, nodding to Hello Kitty’s impact at the time.

What was personally exciting for me was roughing out early concepts in Unreal to explore pacing and flow — those early sketches ended up guiding the team’s official previs work.

In the end, the campaign rolled out globally, landing in cinemas, at Time Square and landed as a real cultural moment for millions of Pokémon GO players. We also picked up a few awards along the way.