Imagine two video game students ready to create 3D worlds, defeat epic bosses and compose the best soundtrack ever heard… only to be suddenly transported to the world of a marketing company.

That’s our story. Hi, we’re Lara Valério and Miguel Cavaco, two students on the video games course at Etic_Algarve who ended up spending their three-month summer internship at B16. Without a tutorial or power-ups, we were ready to take on this adventure (or at least we pretended we were).

Tutorial: Arriving in the Marketing World

The first few days were like entering a new game, where everything is super confusing: “Where can we sit? Sales funnel? Persona… isn’t that a role-playing game?”
Fortunately, over time we unlocked the secrets of the office, including the shortcuts to the best restaurants in the area (core mission) and the daily missions that would turn us into true creative marketing heroes.

Main Missions: What We Did on the Adventure

Our journey featured several quests, each challenging in its own way:

Lara Valério: The Kensei of 3D Arts and Animations

“My mission was to bring clients’ logos to life through 3D animations. Imagine taking a static logo and transforming it into a work that makes anyone think ‘wow! A task that required creativity, precision… and a lot of patience to deal with Blender when it decided to crash without me having saved the progress at the least opportune moments.
In addition, I was given the responsibility of creating all the art for a future game for the company, inspired by the strong influence of Japanese and samurai culture that
surrounds the B16 environment. I designed characters, environments, UI, and even helped with Game Design.”

Miguel Cavaco: The Master of Sound and 2D Animations

“I was responsible for animating the 2D logos of the partner companies and, in some cases, I also edited videos for the social networks. Although these videos were not used, I learned a lot about how to capture the audience’s attention through well-chosen clips.
At the same time, I created various sound effects for B16’s other projects, including the game Lara and I worked on. Fortunately, I didn’t suffer as many bugs as Lara did in Blender, as that wasn’t my thing. But I faced my own challenges when learning Adobe After Effects. In the end, I left with a new skill in my skill tree.”

Secondary Missions: Models (Who knew?)

Between animations and design, we discovered that the world of marketing is full of surprises. We helped produce photos in the studio for a client, which, for someone used to creating digital worlds, was almost a culture shock.

But the big twist was that we were promoted to models for a day for another client. Yes, we can now say that we have a parallel ‘career’ in the fashion world… or something like that.

Day-to-day adventures

In between the main missions, there was always room for everyday challenges, such as:

• Surviving meetings without yawning
• Not getting discouraged when clients reject our work (even after we’ve spent endless hours working on it)
• Struggling with software that crashes precisely when we haven’t saved the file in the last 30 minutes
• Finding creative ways to explain to colleagues why programs were “doing strange things” (when, in fact, it was our fault)
• Mastering the art of looking busy while waiting for final feedback
• Trying to find the perfect strategy for organizing our work folder… and ending up with a pile of disorganized files
• Giving our best smile while someone asks us to “bring more life” to an animation that, honestly, was about to jump off the screen on its own
• Finding a parking space in San Francisco Square

Treasures and Achievements

At the end of our adventure, we left full of loot: we learned a lot about the market, developed new technical skills and gained stories to tell. And there’s nothing more rewarding than seeing our work come to life and receiving praise. It was like unlocking a rare achievement!

The Final Boss: Reflection on the Stage

Now that the mission is over, we realize how essential this experience was for our evolution, both as professionals and as people. We entered B16 as video game students and left as multitasking interns, with one foot in marketing and the other in creativity.

We want to thank B16 for giving us this opportunity, for challenging us and for showing us that work and fun can (and should!) go hand in hand. It will be hard to find another company full of people who are almost as crazy as they are creative and hard-working.

Now we’ll see what our next adventure will be. Who knows… maybe soon we’ll be creating the games you’ll love… or animating the next one that catches your eye!