Rube Goldberg Machine — Direction & Design by Mr Kaplin

A complicated way to have a little fun.

Supercell commissioned me to design and direct a short Rube Goldberg loop for Clash of Clans: a playful chain reaction built around the game’s characters and their personalities.

The brief brought together a few things I particularly enjoy — character, visual storytelling and making something unnecessarily complicated look rather satisfying.

The Brief

Create an animation that felt fun and as realistic as possible, while keeping the aesthetic minimal.

The challenge was to give the action a convincing sense of weight and movement without losing the humour and personality of the Clash of Clans world.

The Creative Approach

I wanted the characters to be at the centre of the idea, with the machinery giving them a reason to interact.

A minimal setting helped keep the focus on their personalities and the chain reaction unfolding around them. The aim was to make the action easy to follow, with enough playful detail to reward another watch.

Character, Timing & a Little Chaos

A Rube Goldberg machine is a small story told through cause and effect. One thing happens, sets off the next, and suddenly a simple action has become an elaborate performance.

For this film, that structure gave us a way to bring a playful narrative to life through movement, timing and character.

Working with Voxel Wolves on animation and Box of Toys Audio on sound, the focus was on bringing those elements together into a loop that felt lively, coherent and fun to watch again.