Wilbur Scoville’s 151st Birthday Doodle

Jan 22, 2016

Wilbur Scoville’s 151st Birthday

This interactive Doodle game celebrates American chemist and pharmacist Wilbur Scoville, who is widely recognized for the development of his eponymous Scoville Scale.

About the Doodle

Wilbur Scoville’s 151st Birthday

Wilbur Scoville was born on this day in 1865 in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

Behind the Doodle

Wilbur Lincoln Scoville was a chemist, award-winning researcher, professor of pharmacology and the second vice-chairman of the American Pharmaceutical Association. Scoville's book, The Art of Compounding, makes one of the earliest mentions of milk as an antidote for pepper heat. He is perhaps best remembered for his organoleptic test, which uses human testers to measure pungency in peppers.

Doodler Olivia When has been thinking about Scoville and his test since last summer. From the start it was clear it was going to be a chance to do something fun. She writes:

Spiciness is somewhat of a universal, comical experience, which I think opened the door for us to do something we usually might not be able to, like a fighting game. I started making storyboards for how the game could unfold while engineers worked on building prototypes. Then I started sketching and making draft art to put in the prototype, so we could see what the experience would be like in interactive form.

After that I started working on backgrounds, boss characters, meters, and then all the character animations, and ending animations. At some point we thought about setting it in a human mouth, to clarify things, but then realized that was probably too weird (thankfully). Designing the boss peppers and animating Scoville's reactions to eating them were probably my favorite parts.

Happy birthday, Wilbur!

Illustration of personified milk and ice cream fighting red peppers
Early concept art and character designs
Behind the Doodle

About Wilbur Scoville

People have known about the tongue-burning, tear-inducing qualities of peppers long before Columbus reached the Americas. Before Wilbur Scoville, however, no one knew how to measure a pepper's “heat”. The doodle team thought his work in this field—and the development of his eponymous Scoville Scale—deserved some recognition.

GIF of personified ice cream throwing ice cream at personified green pepper, trapping it in ice
Ice cream win: draft and final animations
Making the Doodle

Early draft

The Team

Art

Olivia When

Brian Kaas (design assistance)

 

Engineering

Corrie Scalisi

Tom Tabanao

Jordan Thompson

Kris Hom

Jk Kafalas (prototyping)

 

Production

Gregory Capuano

 

Extra Help

Manuel Clément (music/sound)

Andrew Chavarria (blog post)

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Where this Doodle appeared

The Doodle Wilbur Scoville’s 151st Birthday launched Jan 22, 2016