Google Ramayana Wins FWA People’s Choice Award 2012

Spread across 365 Site of the Day winners and narrowed down to 12 Site of the Month finalists, the decision came down to one international public vote. Fi is greatly honored to have Google Ramayana chosen as this year’s winner of the FWA People’s Choice Award. We are delighted to see how the public appreciated the amazing creativity this experience brought to the masses.

What’s even more exciting than winning this award was hearing the real-life application of the site being experienced by children. On the second Saturday in January every year, Thailand celebrates their youth by hosting National Children’s Day. This year, a Google-hosted exhibition displayed our Ramayana work proudly for the more than 10,000 children who attended. Even the guest of honor, Thailand’s Prime Minister, walked away impressed with Ramayana, stating that this type of interactive media should be used across more government-funded educational initiatives.

The tale of Ramayana is an ancient epic in Asia Pacific that carries deep lessons that reflect the region’s cultural consciousness. When Chrome launched in Asia, Google chose this story of Ramayana as the vehicle to introduce one of the most robust web browsers to a new market. The website tells the ancient story of Ramayana in a modern way using new technology that showcases the power and ability of Google Chrome.

“After a decade of being recognized by The FWA for our creativity in design and engineering, it’s humbling to know Fi has stood the test of time and stood by its founding principals.” David Martin, CEO, Fi

“One of the greatest achievements in the creative industry is to be recognized by your peers. With this award, we had the privilege of enjoying this experience. Great teamwork, great clients and great partners like Fi – that’s what made the Ramayana Chrome Experiment, magic.” Melvyn Lim, Executive Creative Director, OgilvyOne Singapore

“It was fascinating to see all the different passions come together from illustrators, designers, HTML5 developers, and even sound guys working simultaneously and witness each Ramayana chapter come to life like a puzzle being completed. It almost felt magical because every new piece would always make for a perfect fit to the larger project.” - Anton Repponen, Global Creative Director, Fi

“The Ramayana project gave us the opportunity to push the boundaries of Chrome’s implementation of both Canvas and WebGL technologies. Our digital physics implementations were challenging and it was satisfying to see the particle systems, spring-based tail physics, 3D ray casting, collision detection, and inverse kinematics all come together seamlessly to create an engaging and beautiful storytelling experience.” - Karl Herkt, Senior Technical Producer, Fi

Experience again the making of how Fi and our partner OgilvyOne brought an ancient epic to life and launched Chrome in Asia. Check out this promotional video OgilvyOne created as well.

We want to thank the amazing Fi team who worked on the site with such dedication, our partner OgilvyOne and client Google for the opportunity to dream big, and the fans that believed in and voted for Google Ramayana.