Halloween Google doodle tells the story of Jinx, the lonely ghost

For this year’s Halloween holiday, Google pulled together its full team of doodlers to develop and produce a ghost story.

The story — told in a YouTube video called “Jinx’s Night Out” — is about Jinx, the lonely ghost, who wants to be part of the trick-or-treating activities, but thinks he must first find a costume to hide his true identity.

“The Doodle team took their time crafting a bewitching storyline, adding a little hocus pocus to make the designs dreadfully engaging,” writes Google doodlers on their blog. “Each sequence has its own color scheme, bringing the characters to (after)life with an entirely new animation process.”

The YouTube video doubles as today’s doodle, and includes a sharing icon, along with a link that leads to “Halloween” search results.

Four doodle team members — Melissa Crowton, Cynthia Chen, Sophie Diao and Helene Lerous — worked on backgrounds and design for the “Jinx’s Night Out” mini-movie. Doodler My-Linh Le was the producer; D.E. Levison did the video’s music, and Paulette Penzvalto was the “Scribbler.”

The Doodle team shared everything from initial sketches for Jinx to the following story board on the Google Doodle Blog:

Here’s the final video that’s being shared on Google’s US home page today, in addition to a number of its international pages:

“No bones about it, this was one of the most enjoyable doodles we have worked on,” writes the Doodle team, offering a few words of advice, “Don’t be afraid to show who you really are or let superstition get in the way of a new friendship and you’ll be a graveyard smash.”