PROJECT: Daniel Savio : Nigredo EP
CLIENT: House of Wisdom
TYPE: XR audio visual experience
YEAR: 2016
AGENCY: Potemkin
I set out to bring electronic dance music producer Daniel Savio and his music into my version of the intergalactic future where fogged-out polygonal landscapes, structures, and beat-matched 3-body problem spheres casually hang out with a gargantuan laser-lactating disco ball feeding the sun.
MY RESPONSIBILITIES:
⌁ Idea + Concept
⌁ Creative Direction + Art Direction
⌁ Production Design
⌁ Functionality + Animation
As a mind boggingly futuristic and awesome bonus feature to the Nigredo EP is a semi-interactive virtual world. You, esteemed visitor, are therefore invited to a neverending race on EXDS-2, a inverto-spherical off-world colony built for one purpose and one purpose alone: to keep blasting out Daniel Savio’s NIGREDO EP until the sun burns out for good.
I just wanted to make a fun 360 degrees VR experience utilising the rhythm of a song to animate objects, lights, cameras and colours, featuring “magic-auto-editing-mode”, a behaviour-driven system that randomly selects cameras to the beat. And I wanted it to be accessible for everyone on desktop and smartphones without having to download anything before watching it.
I revived an old racing game idea of mine set inside a cylinder. Some of the inspiration came from the classics – “Rendezvous with Rama” and the kick-ass racing game WipeOut by Psygnosis, designed by the Designers Republic.
I jumped in and started with old-school planning on paper, then started creating everything – 3D models, environments, animation tests, in Maya. Finally, everything landed in our WebGL tool for animation and interaction implementation, syncing lights, graphics, colors, you name it, with the lush electronic beats from Daniel Savio.
It’s not every day you get to turn your own game concept into a trippy VR experience. Honestly, I’m pretty stoked about how it turned out.
Sadly this happy little WebVR experience is no longer online because of a horribly mismanaged company that was hosting the data. But luckily enough I remembered to record a real-time session for posterity.
Magnus V. Östergren: The whole shebang except code because, well, code.
Rikard Herlitz: Code (and moral support)
Rickard Berg: Code
