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 to perform, I proposed a simpler, smarter solution: bring humanity back into the brand. Instead of outsourcing more cinematic videos, I created George & Jane, two original, in-house characters who could express real player emotion without actors, sets, or inflated production budgets.
Built in just three weeks, these characters simulated the humor, competitiveness, and frustration of real players. The characters had unlocked a way to test emotional storytelling at a fraction of the traditional cost. The first test, “Choke,” outperformed every previous campaign, validating the power of relatable character-driven ads.
George & Jane became the blueprint for a new creative system: scalable, emotionally intelligent, and fully contained within our team. The framework unified design, animation, and narrative strategy. This allowed TriPeaks to test bold ideas, build consistency across campaigns, and spend smarter.
The campaign dominated ad spend for months, revitalizing Facebook performance. The “real People” role out became the creative foundation for Tiki 2.0, the next-generation animation system inspired by this process.
Expanding Theme Testing Through Character-Driven Animation
Because Tripeaks’ creative strategy had matured, George and Jane became more than “characters”, they were instead a flexible storytelling tool
Their design system allowed us to test new tones quickly across romance, frustration, competition, and comedy, without relying on expensive live-action shoots.
By sharing rigged puppets with partner teams, we gave multiple studios the ability to explore emotional storytelling within a unified visual language. This turned a one-off idea into a repeatable, scalable creative model.
George & Jane — I’m On Fire (30s)
Role: Director, Writer, Animator, Voice Actor
George & Jane “I’m On Fire” (Valentine’s Day Campaign)
Studio: Solitaire Tripeaks
Artist: Jonathan Bolster
Senior Content Manager: Allegra Garabedian
Voice Talent: Jonathan Bolster, Stephanie Leifer
For this Valentine’s Day “Real People” campaign, Allegra Garabedian wanted to capture the same chemistry and humor that made the previous Christmas/Peloton Parody ad so successful. I directed, voiced, and produced the entire spot, developing a story that balanced relationship comedy with an emotionally charged metaphor for how addictive Solitaire Tripeaks can be. The result: a playful yet intense short that hits both romantic parody and mobile game addiction satire in one clean 30-second loop.
“Behind the Scenes”
George & Jane — Peloton Parody (30s)
Role: Director, Writer, Animator
George & Jane “Peloton Parody” (Holiday Campaign)
Studio: GSN Games / Solitaire Tripeaks Studio
Lead: Jonathan Bolster
Senior Content Manager: Allegra Garabedian
Artists: Chimera Fuller, Iliana Alvarez
Voice Talent: Stephanie Leifer, Thomas Kular
This “Real People” Peloton Parody was a rapid-turnaround creative experiment inspired by the viral reaction to Peloton’s 2019 holiday ads, and made a priority by the Marketing Director, Ryan Pierce.
I wrote the script, recorded scratch dialogue, and built a rough animatic to establish pacing and tone. To meet the tight five-day turnaround, I brought in Chimera Fuller and Iliana Alvarez. Iliana focused on character animation under my direction, while Chimera handled rigging, VFX, and the electrified “skeleton George” variant. I designed the layouts, handled compositing, and finalized the edit, including audio design and lip-sync integration from Adobe Animate.
The finished ad not only met the aggressive deadline but went on to dominate creative spend for several months, driving a measurable lift in installs and DAU.
Storyboards and layout explorations
George & Jane — Choke (Pitch Video)
Role: Director, Concept Artist, Editor
George & Jane “Real People” Pitch
Studio: GSN Games / Solitaire Tripeaks Studio
Artist: Jonathan Bolster
Senior Content Manager: Allegra Garabedian
While analyzing market trends and competitive puzzle game ads, I identified a gap in how emotional storytelling could connect audiences to the Solitaire Tripeaks brand.
I proposed creating two recurring human characters: “George & Jane”, to serve as a narrative framework for experimenting with relatable, dramatized “Real People” moments that exist outside the game world. This pitch became the creative backbone for several high-performing campaigns, allowing our team to explore humor, irony, and character-driven storytelling within mobile ad formats.
Storyboards and layout explorations
Character System Documentation
To maintain consistency across multiple internal teams and outside vendors, I developed detailed documentation for George and Jane’s rig systems. These modular guides outlined rotation-based rigging, precomposed parenting, and reusable control structures. This created a foundation that other studios could easily follow.
External Partner Collaborations
Scaling Creative Systems Across Studios
Following the success of the internal TriPeaks Character Initiative and “Real People” campaigns, I developed production systems that enabled external partners to create new, high-performing ads quickly, without sacrificing quality or brand consistency.
These systems included rigged 2D puppets, flexible After Effects templates, and reusable gameplay environments that could be adapted for any tone or theme. Several of the partner campaigns were based directly on my creative briefs and rigs, while others were independently executed, yet still visually and tonally aligned with the TriPeaks brand.
The result was a sustainable creative ecosystem where multiple studios could explore new emotional angles, comedic setups, and thematic worlds. All while maintaining a unified visual identity. This scalable approach not only expanded the brand’s storytelling reach but also proved that a strong design framework can extend far beyond its original creators.
The following partner campaigns highlight how those systems performed in action expanding the George & Jane and TriPeaks universes through new stories, tones, and visual styles, all while staying true to the core brand DNA.
External Partner Production
Creative Context: Using the success of “Choke”, the “peloton parody” and “Im On Fire” our marketing team created several briefs to continue the idea of George in a disaster situation while Jane stands idly by playing her Solitaire. This partner spot turned up the physical comedy. George’s frantic panic versus Jane’s calm detachment. to exaggerated new levels.
Concept Summary: George runs from a swarm of bees, shouting bleeped expletives, while Jane lounges safely in a full beekeeper suit, too absorbed in Solitaire TriPeaks to help.
Tone & Theme: Over-the-top slapstick paired with the recurring “can’t stop playing” motif.
George & Jane “Get in the Game”
External Partner Production
Creative Context: This ad leaned into the sporty, kinetic energy of your original “addiction as motivation” idea.
Concept Summary: George sprints on a treadmill at breakneck speed while playing Solitaire; Jane, acting as coach, blows her whistle as a bomb card countdown explodes him off-screen. She calmly catches his phone, orders him back on the treadmill, and he resumes running mid-air.
Tone & Theme: Fast-paced absurdism; a tongue-in-cheek metaphor for perseverance and competitive play.
George & Jane “Play Now: Relaxation”
External Partner Production
Creative Context: This ad demonstrates how flexible the Real People framework became. The partner studio not only used the George & Jane puppets but also integrated a full gameplay segment from a previous mock-game environment. I created “the Mystery Jungle sequence” to heighten immersion and achievement.
Concept Summary: George and Jane relax on the couch as she plays; the scene transitions seamlessly into my animated jungle gameplay segment, ending with an explosive treasure reveal before cutting back to the couple celebrating together.
Tone & Theme: Cozy and rewarding, blending real-world calm with the fantasy of exploration and discovery.
Creative Impact & Legacy
These campaigns proved that smart systems design is more than efficiency, it’s creative endurance. By developing reusable character rigs, adaptable environments, and scalable animation pipelines, I helped transform short-term campaigns into a lasting creative framework.
The “George and Jane” holiday campaign went on to outperform expectations, sustaining top-tier engagement for several weeks, an uncommon lifespan in mobile advertising, where creative typically decays within days. Its success validated the shift toward character-driven storytelling and directly led to the Tiki 2.0 character initiative, built on the same production system.
The continued use of these assets across studios and teams wasn’t just a sign of consistency, it showed that when you design for flexibility, your work keeps paying dividends long after launch.