Date: March-May 2020
Roles: Sole contributor
Software used: Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop
The Truth About Cub Petting
In early 2020, Netflix's Tiger King brought "cub petting operations" in to the public eye. These are unaccredited zoos that allow tourists to play with and have their photos taken with tiger cubs for a price. The profits are typically used to grow personal wealth, but many of these zoos will lie to their customers and claim that they are donating to vague "conservation efforts." Every year, scores of tourists fall victim to these scams-- without really knowing what happens to those adorable cubs behind the scenes, or where they go when they grow up.
The Truth About Cub Petting is an interactive experience for desktop that allows the user to get to know one of these cubs on a more realistic level.
The Big Idea
The backbone of this project was the idea of the user getting to digitally interact with a tiger cub that is the product of a cub petting zoo.
The user will get to meet this cub as soon as they're born and witness key events unfold in it's life by scrubbing a timeline from "birth" to "death," ultimately creating a "warts and all" report of what life is like for these animals.
Creating Mohan
Because the central part of this experience is interacting with a tiger cub, I found that designing this cub to be a lovable "mascot" of sorts to be super important. I named him Mohan, after the ancestor of all captive white tigers.
I chose to employ a more cartoon-ish illustration style to reflect Mohan's playfulness and innocence. This is also why I chose to make him a white tiger, because the color white is often thought to represent purity and innocence.
Initial Layout Sketches
I always knew that this experience wasn't going to take place on many different webpages. I wanted all the interactions with Mohan to take place on one page, like you were sitting in a room playing with him all this time.
This is an odd contrast with the dark subject matter, I was somewhat inspired by virtual pet games of the early 2000s, like Nintendogs.
Inspiration board
I already mentioned that I made the choice to employ a cartoon-inspired illustration style to emphasize Mohan's innocence, but since I was dealing with the mature topic of animal abuse, I had a fine line to toe between creating empathy and infantilizing.
I looked at a lot of vintage comic books and tattoos, as well as modern spins on these illustration styles, to develop a more mature look.
View full process document (41.6 MB)