Role: 3D Art Direction, Creative Direction
WHY AM I SHOWING YOU THIS PROJECT?
Digital worlds are a new frontier of creating experiences and breaking rules. I worked with our team to create a virtual interactive worlds for both ESPN X-Games fans and Acthar staff to engage with assets such as videos, pdfs, and links. The real power of a digital world is the ability to add-on experiences or react to current cultural events. We could, for instance, add a street festival to celebrate Hispanic Heritage, or bring a festive holiday cheer to the setup with little effort.
X-Games - What is it about: We were tasked with creating a novel and unique way for visitor to engage with the X-Games in a virtual way. We created an online world, first in virtual Aspen inspired ski lodge for the 2020 winter games and then in a made up beach front town called Nollie Landing for the summer 2021 games. We designed and created the first-person explorable world with numerous interaction points. Including a skate and BMX game in a crossover park, sticker placement zones, a skateboard deck builder in the town's local skate shop, interactive tower viewers that linked to sponsor content, a pop-up Wendy's, a stage and LED video truck that played YouTube content and finally, a pop-up ESPN store that linked out the the real Amazon ESPN shop. My role was art director for all visual 3D elements and helped work through UI and story design.
Acthar - What is it about: We were tasked with creating a novel and unique way for staff to engage with internal assets. We suggested using the virtual world-building approach. We leveraged off-the-shelf digital assets that were purchased from 3rd party vendors and adapted to fit this context. We worked within the 3D Vista platform to host our work and give a backbone to the development. Our developers built custom add-on's to create unique experiences and tailor the platform to the client requirements. This novel use of 3rd party software and assets saved us time and cost in the end. My role was 3D architect generating the renders.
The Key Learning: The digital world is infinite. While the experiences do not engage as many senses as physical experiences, the laws of physics can be challenged, and the world built upon ad infinitum.