Interactive media installation for The North Face.
Paralworld is an interactive media installation for a new waterproof jacket from the famous outdoor brand, The North Face. The content of the interaction is related to the jacket’s characters, such as waterproofness, warmth, lightness and colorfulness. So we designed three different stages which allowed customers to experience those characters through the Xbox Kinect. Additionally, we designed a set of animations and screensavers to enhance user experience when they were engaging in this interactive program.
In this project, I participated in the form design of the installation and 3D animation design.
Softeware: Rhinocero, Adobe After Effects, Cinema4D, Processing.
Photos and videos from Super Nature Design.
Art projection mapping for Elevator Strategy.
Elevator is a projection mapping for the Vancouver-base advertisement agency Elevator Strategy and TCAAN Event. The projection location is the reception wall on the second floor, after walking through an around 20 steps stairs. The objective is to provide the fantastic view once guests go upstairs and convey their brand concept. The size of weight is limited in a short range which is the biggest challenge for this project.
I design three pieces animations for this concept. The colourful glowing particles compose enthusiastic and positive spirits to lift up the branding by Elevator and form to the Elevator lab's logo and TCAAN's logo at the end. Additionally, we have an initial interaction idea about triggering the elevator's door open and animation play by guest's position in the stair. This interaction design idea will be used to some future events.
Softeware: Adobe After Effects, Cinema4D.
Future wave was a sound visualisation projection work which focused on challenging the different possibilities for different style electronic music in one performance. My objective was to cooperate with a local electronic music group organisation called I/O by combining multiple style sound visualisations under one week in China. This project provided an opportunity for me to learn about Touchdesigner, which is an interactive node based visual program, and worked with different sound artists in the real-time immersive performance.
I created more than three different version sound visualisation for six sound artists in the concert. Each visual and audio style was matched toward to enhance the synaesthesia experience for audiences.
EAU is an indietronica band who lived in France. Their music sounds like a combination of Trip-hop and Ambient pop style. Also, it can be referred to a peace version of some French sound artists, like Air and Telepopmusik. And they played modular synthesiser as a live performance in this concert. Base on the idea of the 2D spectrogram, the different zone showed the change of high -frequency to low-frequency sound from the middle to the left and right on the screen. The colour was an idea related to Aurora, multiple colour's traces dances in front of people, bring calm and peace to the audiences, which correspondences with their music style.
ZHI and Tim are two DJs who are enthusiastic about Techno music. They prepared a full Techno set list for the concert. The idea for their visual identity was the "metal liquid" which can express the cold and dark feeling of techno music. By applying 3D spectrogram geometry with metal texture made by Substance designer, I created a metal sound wave for their performance.
Kuki is a famous minimal techno sound artist who can handle multiple styles music and make smooth transition among one performance. It is hard to predict what kind of music he would play in the next song, which is a challenge for visual design. The very original sound wave is not only can match with different style music but also create strong empathy to the audience. The two separate sound waves showed the static and dynamic movements of music which are located in up and down the side of the screen respectively. They moved toward to the middle and separated each other by the boundary, built the relationship between contrast and harmony of the music.
TinTin and Pink played a live set of techno music by recomposing classical Rock N Roll music. I took part in their live set visual design which including multiple 3D objects and PBR materials.
The biggest challenge of this project is the short learning curve of software with high expectations of visual performance in a short time. To make the performance works on time, I created a tight schedule and time boxing for each different visual effects. The lessons I learnt were required more rehearsal time with sound artists and prepared more time to debug in the venue, which can avoid the more accidents happened. Moreover, the optimisation is significant to improve the frame rate and increase the real time performance.
Software: Touchdesigner, Substance Designer.
Interactive animation for Nike stage of Beijing strawberry music festival.
NIKE Run! is a sub-stage of the 2014 Beijing Strawberry Music Festival. As the major visual and interaction design team, we installed pressure sensors under the carpet of the stage, so that we were able to receive the data and count the number of jumps on the stage. We visualized the data into media art, and displayed the number of jumps on the screen, which made the participants more delighted and excited.
The visual interaction included several sections. “Particles” attracted people into the atmosphere and “Tunnel” would lead people to the next stage “Landscape”, which guided people away from realities to explore the unknown space. “Wave sphere” and “Wavescape” would interact with music of the stage and “Weaving” was the most remarkable and wonderful animation in the interaction. At the end, another “Tunnel” would bring players back to the reality. In the whole process, participants could see their traces and immerse into the game totally.
In this project, I was mainly responsible for the animation production.
Software: Adobe After Effects, Cinema4D.
Photos and videos from Super Nature Design.
Interactive media for Puma ”Ignite” running shoes launch exhibition.
“Ignite” is an interactive projection event for Puma’s new running shoes launching Conference. We used Kinect to capture players’ movements and created 4 interactive stages to illustrate the sense of speed and the brand spirit. I had major responsibilities in the making of 3D animation for the projection.
Stage1:For the theme “Energy ignites”, we used a particle system to create an energy storm environment. The light blue or red traces would follow players when they move their bodies left or right. And according to the timer, players can raise their hands to control the particles’ ups and downs.
Stage2: The Universal Nebula was created by players’ locations. When players stop moving, the energy would focus on the same place and crash constantly in order to form new nebula shapes. It expresses the power of energy concentration.
Stage3: The Energy Field was composed of many vectors. Players’ movements are captured by Kinect and the data is transformed into the vectors’ directions. And according to the time, the field would change its shape constantly.
Stage4: This interactive stage was made with floating and bouncing balls. When players raise or lower their hands, the energy balls would contract or expand as if energy is released or gathered.
I was majored in the 3D animation for the projection of this project.
Software: Adobe After Effects, Cinema 4D.
Photos from Super Nature Design.
VJ set for CNDY and DJ Pink in PLANET Electronic music festival.
The PLANET musical festival was held in Beijing and we, a group of audio visual artists named Soul Seeds, were invited to perform there in September 2012. I prepared two sets of visual performance for this festival and call them Hazy Light.
CNDY is an electronic music band that plays house and techno electronic music, and their signature is adding human sounds in real time performance. I chose various color samples to construct rainbow or watercolor paintings. Besides, smokes, polygons, curves are also suitable for their live music. I combined all those elements as an integrated visual art work.
DJ Pink is a friend of mine. We organized an electronic music band called Soul Seeds in 2012. He has strong music appreciation ability and plays various music styles, like deep, deep house and minimal techno. I chose two different source video materials like particles and liquid which could represent his hard and soft music styles. And I created a huge background, the universe, to imitate the feeling when astronauts travel in the vast space.
Software: Resolume, Adobe After Effects, Cinema 4D, Processing, Ableton Live.