Behind the Collaboration: Odd One In x Google Play
One of the things we think about often at Odd One In is why certain branded objects stay on someone’s desk for years, while others disappear into a tote bag before the event is even over.
Usually, the difference is not the object itself. It is whether the object feels connected to the experience around it. The best ones carry a story, represent a specific moment, and give people a reason to care before they ever take them home.
That was the starting point when Google Play invited us to create the hero collectible for The Auction, its 2026 activation at San Diego Comic-Con. Members would use the Google Play Points they had accumulated to bid on a series of exclusive rewards. Google Play wanted to give its most loyal fans something beyond a digital benefit: a cultural memento that could make their relationship with the platform feel more visible and personal.
Our job was to figure out what that could look like.
Giving Google Play a Character
We began with Hanhan, an Odd One In IP created by Taiwanese artist Shih-han Huang.
Hanhan is a giant furry monster whose color changes with its emotions. Soft, expressive, and a little offbeat, it can feel strange and familiar at the same time. Though technically a monster, Hanhan is never frightening. Its personality comes through immediately, which allows it to enter a new world without losing what makes the character recognizable.
The straightforward approach would have been to dress Hanhan as a gamer and add the Google Play logo. Instead, we started by asking why people open Google Play in the first place.
Sometimes it is to enter a fantasy world. Sometimes it is to follow a creator or find a community around something you love. Other times, it is simply to return to the same game at the end of the day. Google Play may sit behind all of these experiences, but it rarely has a face or personality of its own.
Rather than creating a traditional mascot, we developed three collectible companions around the different ways people experience the platform: imagination, creativity, and exploration.
Three Ways to Experience Play
The Mage became a small guardian of imagination, carrying a wand powered by the Google Play gemstone. Inspired by fantasy games and adventure worlds, it represents the anticipation of opening a game and discovering that an entirely new world has been waiting on the other side.
The Joy character grew from the more expressive side of play. Its colorful outfit and gemstone flower reference the creators, fandoms, and communities that form around games, while its more playful personality reflects the freedom people find in making a digital world their own.
The Explorer represents the everyday player, moving between different worlds and collecting experiences along the way. Its overalls and simpler silhouette make it feel familiar and easy to live with, less like event merchandise and more like a small companion you would genuinely want to keep.
Together, the three characters gave us a way to express Google Play without reducing the platform to a logo. The gemstone connected the collection visually, but each figure still had its own identity and reason for existing. They felt like Hanhan first, and branded objects second.
From Drawing to Object
Odd One In managed the full project, from artist outreach and creative direction through character design, 3D development, sampling, manufacturing, quality control, and final delivery to Comic-Con.
The shift from a drawing into a physical object is where the smallest decisions begin to matter. An expression that feels right from the front can disappear from the side. A costume detail might make sense in an illustration but become too fragile to manufacture. Even the Google Play gemstone had to be treated differently across the three figures so that it felt like part of each character rather than a branding element added afterward.
We developed the collection through multiple rounds of 3D work and sampling, refining the proportions, expressions, colors, accessories, and finishes until the characters worked individually and as a complete set.
The final figures needed enough visual presence to hold their own inside a busy Comic-Con activation, but they also needed to work at a much smaller scale afterward, on a desk, a shelf, or among someone’s personal collection.
The Auction
A total of 1,500 sets were produced for The Auction. Fans bid on them using their Google Play Points, turning something that normally existed as a number inside an account into an object they could earn and take home. Every available set was redeemed.
What made the project work was that the collectible was not treated as an item to be handed out after the experience had already been designed. It became part of the experience itself. The figures gave people a reason to participate, gave the auction a recognizable personality, and gave Google Play a physical presence that extended beyond the event.
By the end of Comic-Con, all 1,500 sets had found their owners. For us, the project showed that when the character, the reward mechanic, and the physical object are developed together, a collectible can become more than a reminder of an activation. It can become part of why people want to take part in the first place.
