# Hello, we are Studio Helga

Working from our small studio in Chester (up in the North of England), we create work that is viewed
worldwide in many different forms, such as TV, marketing campaigns, web and interactive experiences.

We work with a range of clients, big and small, from local startups to household names. One thing they all share is big ambitions... that we love bringing to life!

This was Studio Helga's second year creating Christmas themed materials for DreamWorks TV and wanted to bring in some fresh new games and channel dressing.

Carol singing, snowmen and gifts of laughter were our main themes this season, with several of the games serving as a vessel to show of Christmas clips from the DreamWorks TV archives.

The snowmen were a lot of fun to make as a custom design was required for each individual character. To keep things efficient we created a snowman building toolkit in Photoshop with libraries of carrot noses, scarves, twigs and giant snowballs. 

A collection of the work created by Studio Helga for the DreamWorks TV channel to celebrate Christmas 2023.

DreamWorks TV - Christmas 2023

The music industry is broken and Stage know how to fix it!

National music societies have collected royalties for more than a century & are responsible for processing over €15bn globally per annum. Today's music industry is being digitally reinvented by the world’s largest tech giants who’s music-using innovations are moving at the fastest speed the world has ever witnessed.

We have helped design, develop and release an app with Stage that puts music societies on the front-foot, transforming them into adaptable and transparent modern operations able to maximise the value of their member’s musical repertoire.

Stage - Music Royalty Collection and Distribution Platform

Stage - Music Royalty Platform

Studio Helga were approached to create summer themed content for DreamWorks TV. 

Beaches, camping, hot summer evenings around a camp fire and playing with your friends were the concepts that drove our game designs. 

The project appeared on DreamWorks TV over the summer of 2023.

The Amazing Race

Dream Deck

Stargazing

DreamWorks TV - Summer 2023

For several years now Studio Helga has been working with Liverpool John Moores University assisting their third year design students launch they’re creative careers by mentoring them in the creation of their portfolio websites. 

Charlotte works with LJMU providing face to face website support to final year Graphic Design & illustration students. This usually consists of several sessions helping with everything from responsive layouts, styling to getting the websites live.

It’s a real privilege to help the next generation of creative professionals take the step from student to professional and to share our knowledge on all things web design and development. It’s also a source of great pride for our Co-Founder Charlotte who is a proud alumni of Liverpool John Moores Graphic Design program.

"It’s uplifting to meet an eclectic group of talented designers with passion for all different aspects of design." 
~Charlotte

Below is a selection of our favourite graduate websites from 2023.






## Agne Laumenyte
_(pronounced: ag - neh   lowmeh - nee -teh)_

Agne's website shows the balance between clean, refined design and playfulness that shines through in all of the visual identities that she creates.

[agnelaumenytedesign.co.uk](https://agnelaumenytedesign.co.uk/)

## Bradley Hurley

Bradley’s website demonstates his comfort in utilizing layout and typography to tell a story. His website is subtle in all the right places creating a clean space that allows his work to speak for itself.

Bradley is a digital designer with his current focus in film making, I'm looking forward to seeing the heights that he takes himself to in his career.

[bradleyhurley.co.uk](https://bradleyhurley.co.uk/)

## Ellie Shirley

Ellie’s website highlights the importance of colour, pattern, shape and typography in her work. It’s full of bright bold work that makes you smile, but what struck me about Ellie was her attention to detail in everything she does.

[ellieshirley.co.uk](https://ellieshirley.co.uk)

## Grace Whelan

Grace blends graphic design and illustration in her work, her website showcases this with a clean layout and a reduced but bold colour palette.

[gracewhelandesigns.cargo.site](https://gracewhelandesigns.cargo.site/)

## Hannah Barry

Hannah is a children’s book illustrator and her web portfolio gives us a glimpse into some of the worlds she has created with her illustrations.

[hannahbarryillustration.co.uk](https://hannahbarryillustration.co.uk)

## Lana Pendleton

Lana is the John Murray Publishers Book Jacket Competition Winner 2023. Her website features some subtle yet fun bits of interactivity as well as showing off some of her most recent work.

Lana’s approach to her work is that if she doesn’t know how to do something, she’ll put in the time to figure it out. This approach has led to some interesting and creative outcomes that surpass expectations.

[lanaillustrates.com](https://lanaillustrates.com/)

## Travis Greenway

Music is a huge part of Travis's life and work, He's made music videos and album covers for bands that he admires and plans to continue working in the music industry.
His films have a film noir and surrealist quality that he wanted to pair against a dark minimalist website.

[travisgreenwaydesigns.com](https://travisgreenwaydesigns.myportfolio.com/)

LJMU - Graduate Web Support

The Mood Nutritional Therapy is a new company providing nutritional plans and guidance to help you live better.
The website is currently in it's first stage in which it was important to represent the brand and give people a place to find out more about the company and get in touch.

[themoodnt.com](https://www.themoodnt.com/)

The Mood - Nutritional Therapy Website

The Mood - Nutritional Therapy

Here is a collection of our work so far for 2023.

Studio Helga Showreel - 2023

We were asked to create a short promo in collaboration with NBCUniversal and DreamWorks to run on DreamWorks TV for the soon to be released Puss in Boots - The Last Wish. The new film had a beautifully stylised look and feel and DreamWorks award winning animation, so playing a part in it’s release was a real privilege for us.

We worked together with the team at NBCU to write and create a short promo that needed to mirror the events of the films trailer which shows Puss using up eight of his nine lives. We decided that a similar countdown could be used to count the near-death experiences Puss has had on the show, such as being crushed by boulders or trampled by giant monsters.

The promo played on DreamWorks TV in all countries before the cinematic release of 'Puss in Boots - The Last Wish' in 2022.

Puss in Boots - The Last Wish Promo

We worked with the DreamWorks team over in Australia to assist in the creation of these brand ambassador spots for LeapFrog and VTech.

The presenters were filmed on location in Australia and the green screen and raw footage was sent to us with a rough edit guide from the team at DreamWorks. We were responsible for all motion graphics, title design and animation and the virtual set.

The project aired in Australia and Asia during the winter of 2022.

Spin the Wheel!

Move It Move It!

LeapFrog & Vtech - DreamWorks Crossover

We created a series of new football inspired games and assets for DreamWorks TV to celebrate the 2022 World Cup. 

A large number of assets were required in both 2D and 3D to bring the games to life such as a collection of footballs, trophies, whistles as well as backgrounds, transitions and effects. Theming the assets for each show was a fun task, as each one presented it's own mini brief, for example, what would a football look like in the context of Kung-Fu Panda? Our answer; it would be treated very much like a piece of martial arts training equipment, carved from wood with iron spikes across its surface!

This was a hugely rewarding project and ran on the channel during the 2022 World Cup in Quatar.


Keep Your Eye on the Ball!

Spot the Ball

Football Match

Assets

DreamWorks TV - World Cup 2022

Jurassic July was created as part of the launch campaign for Jurassic World - Camp Cretaceous on DreamWorks TV and was part of a larger ‘Promo-tainment’ campaign that began in 2021. The concept was to mirror the events of Jurassic Park, except the dinosaurs were now running wild at the DreamWorks TV studio and disrupting the scheduled programming.

We took past promo-tainments that viewers had seen before and had the dinosaurs of Jurassic World sabotage them. A Spin the wheel game for ‘Spirit Riding Free’ for example, see’s the cast fleeing on horseback before the Indominus Rex devours the game wheel and stomps away, knocking over the ‘camera’ on his way. Each segment ended with an emergency broadcast system title card, which also had the dinosaurs mark on them. 

Giving the audience these fleeting windows into a larger unfolding ‘crisis’ was a lot of fun, but we had to be sure we walked the line carefully between the dinosaurs being to scary, but were more of a cheeky and accidentally disruptive presence.

The project aired on DreamWorks TV during the summer of 2022.

DreamWorks TV - Jurassic July

We worked with professional UK wrestler 'The Asset' Steven Cross in creating a brand identity that fits his ruthlessly efficient wrestling style and aggressive persona in the ring. The design needed to be versatile and work across a range of merchandise, print and screen options for web and events.

The Asset - Steven Cross - Brand Identity

The Asset - Steven Cross

To celebrate the launch of the new DreamWorks channels in Australia and Spain, we worked with NBC Universal to create a fun and eye catching awareness campaign to bring attention to their key shows and recently launched streaming service, Universal+.  

The campaign needed to stand out from their main competitors, Disney, Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network and align with the DreamWorks channel branding. The DreamWorks brand often focuses on the sky with a dream-like feel, so it was important that we reflected this in the final design.

We were required to create a design toolkit that included motion graphic elements to feature on the channels themselves as well as animated advertising screen templates to be shown all around Spain and Australia. We also needed to create animated and print templates for NBCU and third party studios to use in the creation of their own content of further ads and social media content.

We knew that this campaign would be shown on screens in everyday places such as shopping centres and train stations so we were hoping to create an illusion that a window to another world had just opened in this mundane places and the viewer had a chance to peek inside before it closed again or was replaced with a window to a different world. 

The campaign launched at the end of 2021 and world windows began appearing all over Australia and Spain. We were very pleased with the final design, as were NBCU and Dreamworks. It was a privilege to work with such creative and passionate clients throughout this project and in bringing such beloved worlds and characters to life with this campaign.

DreamWorks TV - Channel Launch Campaign - Australia & Spain

DreamWorks TV - Channel Launch Campaign

Valculator is an online tool created by Studio Helga. It's purpose is to calculate resources to help players of the popular game Valheim with their in-game projects. We are huge fans of the game at Studio Helga and are in no way affiliated with the game, this was a passion project.

We wanted to create something practical and positive for the community of the game and also use the project as a vessel to sharpen some of our own skills. We had a few coding methods that we wanted to try out using Next JS and Framer Motion. We also had some 3D texturing workflows to try out using Adobe Substance Painter, so we created some supporting marketing materials of various props from the game which were a lot of fun to make.

The app still receives hundreds of regular users every day and we try to update it whenever we can. To try the app for yourself visit: [valculator.io](https://valculator.io)


Valculator - Valheim Resource Calculator

Valculator.io

The infinite coloring book was a project born out of lockdown. A large part of lockdown for us was trying to keep the kids entertained. They love coloring but at times it hard was hard to avert their gaze from the ipad. The infinite coloring book was our attempt to meet them in the middle, they could use their ipads to create their own pattern to print and color in.

It was suprisingly successful in our house so we built it up a bit, made it possible to log in and save designs, then we shared it with the world.

Watch our Showreel

Hello, we are Studio Helga

Selected Works

Who we've worked with

Get in Touch