Character Campaign for Solitaire TriPeaks
Solitaire TriPeaks “George & Jane” Campaign
When the UA team’s ads stopped converting, the studio didn’t need another format, it needed a heartbeat players could feel. After several high-cost agency experiments failed, I proposed a simpler, smarter solution: bring humanity back into the brand.
I created George & Jane, two original in-house characters who captured the humor, competitiveness, and frustration of real players, but without actors, sets, or inflated budgets. Built in just three weeks, they became the emotional anchor the brand had been missing.
The first test, “Choke,” outperformed every previous campaign, proving the value of character-driven storytelling.
George & Jane evolved into a creative system: scalable, emotionally intelligent, and fully contained within our team. It unified design, animation, and narrative strategy, letting us test ideas faster and spend smarter. The campaign dominated ad spend for months and laid the foundation for Tiki 2.0, the next-generation animation framework inspired by this process.
Expanding Theme Testing Through Character-Driven Animation
As TriPeaks’ creative strategy matured, George & Jane evolved into a flexible storytelling language. Shared rigs and reusable assets let partner teams explore new tones: romance, frustration, competition, comedy, and all within one cohesive visual system.
What began as a single idea became a repeatable, scalable model that redefined how TriPeaks tested emotion in advertising.
“I’M ON FIRE” (30S)
George & Jane
Role: Director, Writer, Animator, Voice Actor
Studio: Solitaire TriPeaks
Senior Content Manager: Allegra Garabedian
Voice Talent: Jonathan Bolster, Stephanie Leifer
A Valentine’s Day sequel capturing the same chemistry and humor that made the holiday parody so successful. Fast Paced, filled with playful emotional energy, and designed to feel as addictive as the game itself.
Theme: Charm - Social “real people”
“Behind the Scenes”
“PELOTON PARODY” (30s)
George & Jane
Role: Director, Writer, Animator
Studio: GSN Games / Solitaire TriPeaks Studio
Senior Content Manager: Allegra Garabedian
Artists: Chimera Fuller, Iliana Alvarez
A rapid-turnaround parody inspired by Peloton’s viral 2019 holiday ads.
I wrote the script, recorded scratch dialogue, and built an animatic to establish tone. To meet a five-day deadline, I directed two artists: Iliana focused on animation, Chimera on rigging and VFX. I handled design, compositing, and editing which included audio and lip-sync integration. The finished ad dominated creative spend for months, driving measurable lifts in installs and DAU.
Theme: Charm - Social “real people”
Storyboards and layout explorations
“CHOKE” (30s)
George & Jane (PITCH)
Studio: GSN Games / Solitaire TriPeaks Studio
Senior Content Manager: Allegra Garabedian
While analyzing competitor ads, I saw a gap in emotional storytelling. I pitched George & Jane as a recurring narrative framework for relatable, dramatized “real-player” moments. That pitch became the backbone for multiple high-performing campaigns and proved that relatable storytelling could thrive within mobile-ad constraints.
Theme: Charm - Social “real people”
Storyboards and layout explorations
Character System & Partner Expansion
To keep campaigns consistent across studios, I built modular rig guides and flexible After Effects templates, rotation-based rigs, reusable controls, and adaptable environments.
These systems let internal and partner teams produce new ads quickly while staying visually aligned with the TriPeaks brand.
The success of this framework made it contagious. Partner studios adopted the same storytelling and design logic to push new ideas further, all while maintaining unified tone and identity. What began as one campaign grew into a shared creative ecosystem.
"TO BEE OR NOT TO BEE"
George & Jane: External Partner Production
External partner production applying the TriPeaks framework to physical comedy.
Same characters, new rhythm—proving the system could scale across tone and execution style.
Theme: Charm - Social “real people”
“GET IN THE GAME”
George & Jane: External Partner Production
Partner ad leveraging the motion-driven humor and pacing rules from our internal playbook. A test in kinetic storytelling built on the same creative DNA.
Theme: Charm - Mastery - Social
“PLAY NOW: RELAXTION”
George & Jane: External Partner Production
A cross-studio collaboration blending live action and in-game integration—showing how the framework could flex from absurdist energy to calm immersion while staying recognizably TriPeaks.
Theme: Charm - Social - Relaxation
Creative Impact & Legacy
These campaigns proved that design systems aren’t just efficient, they endure. By developing reusable rigs and adaptable environments, I turned short-term ads into a long-term creative framework. The George & Jane campaign sustained top-tier engagement for weeks, a rare lifespan in mobile advertising, and directly inspired the Tiki 2.0 character initiative built on the same system. It showed that when you design for flexibility, your work keeps paying dividends long after launch.