Strandingsmuseum St. George
Games and installations for new exhibition
Strandingmuseum St. George tells the story of the numerous shipwrecks off the west coast of Jutland, and the unique connection the locals shared with sailors from across the world. The North Sea has always been a well used and dangerous passageway, which has resulted in many sailors meeting their fate in the murky depths. This has resulted in diverse collection of artefacts, that through the years have washed ashore and been collected by the locals. These artefacts have become the foundation of the of the collection the museum displays today. The name itself derives from the famous shipwrecks HMS St. George and HMS Defence, which were wrecked in 1811 close to the shore resulting the loss of 1300 sailors.
In 2017 Strandingsmuseum St. George was expanded and an new exhibition was designed by Event Communication.
No Parking was hired by MMEx to create several installations for the exhibition, which included a children friendly game and a interactive floor projection.
My role was primarily design, animation and asset creation. I designed the look and feel, GUI and character in the “cat game” as well as did all the illustration and animation work. For the projected floor I assisted with art direction and created animations and assets.
Our process here was generally straightforward in the sense that most concepts and requirements were already defined when we landed the project. We would work off already established guidelines and documents, with regular meeting with MMex and Event Communications. One installation would feature a short animation showing the sinking of HMS St. George. For this I helped in the design of the canvas screens and assisted with some minor animation work. I also assisted with with some comping and assets for video screens featuring live action actors in period costume. My main workload would be in a short interactive game aimed at kids.
Installations
The interactive floor was created in Unity, with assets made in Photoshop and After Effects. M2Film created a three story projection which would serve as a backdrop. The game is simple, buried treasure appears randomly around the sand, and you gotta try to reach it in time. Random crabs and fish also react to motion and will dodge out of the way. Above is a projector and Kinect sensor that tracks motion and feeds a signal into a compact PC which then sends the signal to the projector. Multiple tests were made with projections on sand to determine the correct hue and saturation in order to match the floor seamlessly with the background.
This was a great little project to do. Since I was working on multiple projects at the time, my responsibilities were fairly limited and I got to focus on refreshingly simple things. Like animating a cat and making assets for the floor projection. I managed to finish the game way ahead of schedule, and this gave us a window to set up the endurance test. This helped us iron out some audio issues, which meant the game ran flawlessly from day one. Working with Character Animator was a great addition to my toolset, and definitely a quick and cost-effective way of making your drawings come to life.
