Great Big Kentucky Adventure
Art direction, character design, pixel art, and animation for a playable Kentucky Tourism campaign built around 12 real destinations.
A Tourism Campaign You Can Play
Kentucky Tourism and Coomer wanted to turn family trip planning into something kids would actually want to engage with. The idea became Great Big Kentucky Adventure, a side-scrolling browser game that transformed 12 real Kentucky attractions into playable levels. The challenge was making each destination recognizable while giving the whole experience enough personality to feel like a game, not a tourism brochure.
I developed the visual direction around the 16-bit games many parents grew up with, creating custom pixel art, character designs, animation, illustrated environments, and promotional artwork. Each level had to work as both a recognizable Kentucky landmark and a place players could run, jump, and explore. The finished campaign expanded beyond the game into digital ads, social content, stickers, and large-scale outdoor installations.
CLIENT
Kentucky Tourism
AGENCY
Coomer
STUDIO
Weirdo Works
YEAR
2024
ROLE
Art direction, character design, illustration, animation
Justin Gammon
DEVELOPMENT
Denys Chebotaiev
MARKETING DESIGN
Bennie Wells
DELIVERABLES
Browser Game, Pixel Art, Character Animation, Illustrated Environments, Campaign Artwork, Social GIFs
RESULTS
12 Kentucky landmarks built as playable levels
Custom pixel art, animation, and illustrated environments
AWARDS
National Addy Gold Consumer Website
National Addy Silver Animation/Motion Graphics
Gold — Digital, 2025 Traverse Awards (KTIA)
Great Big Kentucky Adventure | Pixel Art and Gameplay Showcase
Turn Your Family Vacation into a Gaming Getaway!
Retro Gaming Reinvented
The game needed to appeal to kids without leaving parents behind. A 16-bit visual style gave us a useful middle ground: familiar enough to feel nostalgic to adults, but still close to the pixel-based games younger players already know.
I developed the character models, environments, collectibles, enemies, and animation system around that look. I also helped shape the sound and music direction so the whole game felt like one cohesive world rather than a collection of unrelated tourist stops.
Kentucky Counties Collaborate for an Epic Adventure
Beyond Screen Time!
The game was designed to do more than entertain kids in the back seat. Each level introduced a real Kentucky destination before families arrived, giving younger travelers a way to recognize places they were about to see in person.
That connection between the digital game and the physical trip was central to the idea. The campaign wasn’t asking kids to stop playing games. It used the language of games to make the actual destination feel more interesting.
Great Big Kentucky Adventure | Mobile Game
Great Big Kentucky Adventure | Forest Giants Attraction-to-Illustration
Turning Real Places Into Playable Worlds
Pixelated Postcards
One of the hardest parts of the project was translating 12 very different Kentucky destinations into a consistent game world. Each location still had to be recognizable to the county it represented, but it also needed to work visually as a side-scrolling level.
I combined custom illustration, pixel art, photo reference, and AI-assisted image generation to build the environments within the project’s schedule and budget. Those elements were then heavily edited, redrawn, and composited into finished scenes, with each county reviewing its level for accuracy before the game launched.
Tiny But Mighty Pixel Art Heroes
The playable roster included 10 kid characters designed to give players a range of personalities and appearances to choose from. Alongside the human characters were a few stranger additions, including a pancake kid inspired by Hopkinsville’s connection to batter and an alien visitor who was very literally from out of town.
Each character was illustrated and animated pixel by pixel. One of the playable heroes was Kentucky creator Zaza, whose real-world look was translated into the game and featured across promotional artwork, digital ads, and the character selection screen.
The Battle Against Boredom Begins in Kentucky
Monsters of Monotony
The villains were built around the campaign’s real enemy: boredom. Rather than creating traditional monsters, I designed four strange creatures that each represented a different flavor of monotony, from sluggish and sleepy to jittery and restless.
Their exaggerated shapes and simple animation made them readable at a tiny pixel scale while giving players something satisfying to chase, avoid, and squash throughout the game.
Great Big Kentucky Adventure | Postcard Billboards and Promo Stickers
Kentucky Tourism Gets Playful
Beyond the Screen
The visual system eventually moved well beyond the browser game. Kentucky Tourism and Coomer turned the game’s opening screen into oversized postcard-style photo installations placed in regional markets including Indianapolis, St. Louis, and Nashville.
The same character and game artwork carried into stickers, rack cards, social posts, digital ads, and animated GIFs for Instagram and TikTok. That gave the campaign a consistent visual language whether someone encountered it online, in a park, or while planning a trip.