14 DAY TRIAL // Doodles may seem like lighthearted fun, but there's a lot of work behind them. As this behind the scenes video shows, a lot of people work on the doodles that end up on Google's homepage. What's more, they go through several steps for each one, honing in on the final design.
Yesterday Rossini/leap year 2-in-1 doodle was simple but quite interesting. What you ended up seeing was quite different from the first ideas laid out by the artist that created it, Google's Ryan Germick.
"Every so often two things happen on the same day that we'd be remiss not to celebrate. In the past there's been St. George's Day and Shakespeare's birthday in the UK, Fourth of July and Rube Goldberg's birthday in the US, and Valentine's Day/Figure skating for the 2010 Winter Olympics," he wrote.
"In this day's case it's the 220th birthday of Italian composer Gioachino Antonio Rossini and leap year. (Or, if you're only counting actually leap day's for birthdays it's something like the Gioachino's 53rd.)," he added.
He started out with a very different design, on a stage with the barber's chair taking center stage. But that didn't really work for the theme, so he moved the characters to a swamp, a more appropriate location for a frog, or four.
But that ended up being too busy for the small area that a doodle can cover, so in yet another redrawing, he removed some of the details and used a more unified color scheme.
But he wasn't done yet, in the final design, that you got to see on the homepage, he brightened the colors up a bit, but also added a stand out element, the leaping Rosina. You can check out all of the stages below.
