My Role
Lead Game Designer, Level Designer
The Platform
PC + Mobile App + VR
My Tools
Photoshop, Google Draw + Docs, Miro, EngageVR, Trello, Slack
Managed collaborative process with V&A seminar speaker to establish key beats and topics
Storyboarded fantastical immersive moments for a live online audience to share
Designed dynamic level environments from within VR
An amazing opportunity to show off, in this transformative virtual environment, a sneak preview of a major V&A exhibit!
The Victoria and Albert Museum in London partnered up with PRELOADED in 2020 to create a VR installation experience at the Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser exhibit. The exhibit brought together the fascinating history and cultural impact of Lewis Caroll’s famous story, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Even to this day, artists, movie makers, fashion designers and game developers are inspired by the uncommon logic and psychedelic aspects of Alice’s world. The PRELOADED game for Vive headsets, called Curious Alice VR, presented a series of Wonderland themed tasks for the museum visitor to attempt in virtual reality.
In addition to Curious Alice VR, the V&A approached PRELOADED to make a second experience – this time focused on delivering a pre-exhibit seminar to press and eager museum guests. PRELOADED partnered with EngageVR to create a curious online virtual event complete with a live speaker, live audience, an animated virtual museum environment, and dynamic digital examples of the contents of the real exhibit. Audience members could use a desktop based experience or mobile app to pilot an avatar to attend, or use any VR headset to take part in a more immersive fashion, thanks to EngageVR’s technology.
My role was to take the planned seminar talk (originally a powerpoint presentation given by V&A Curator Kate Bailey) and design fantastical VR moments to match each of the presentation’s beats. For example, part of the exhibit is designed with pink flamingos and playing cards and presents a range of art pieces inspired by Alice’s story – this then inspired a ‘painting the roses red’ garden-themed virtual environment that would appear when the seminar reached this particular beat. The art team could then work from storyboards I co-created to imagine environmental props, which were then modeled and imported into the virtual environment.
In addition to Curious Alice VR, the V&A approached PRELOADED to make a second experience – this time focused on delivering a pre-exhibit seminar to press and eager museum guests. PRELOADED partnered with EngageVR to create a curious online virtual event complete with a live speaker, live audience, an animated virtual museum environment, and dynamic digital examples of the contents of the real exhibit. Audience members could use a desktop based experience or mobile app to pilot an avatar to attend, or use any VR headset to take part in a more immersive fashion, thanks to EngageVR’s technology.
My role was to take the planned seminar talk (originally a powerpoint presentation given by V&A Curator Kate Bailey) and design fantastical VR moments to match each of the presentation’s beats. For example, part of the exhibit is designed with pink flamingos and playing cards and presents a range of art pieces inspired by Alice’s story – this then inspired a ‘painting the roses red’ garden-themed virtual environment that would appear when the seminar reached this particular beat. The art team could then work from storyboards I co-created to imagine environmental props, which were then modeled and imported into the virtual environment.
Using EngageVR’s set dressing tools, I was able to place assets within VR to ensure audience members would have an exceptional experience viewing the content and the speaker. Working with audio recordings of the talk also helped to establish a rhythm for when assets would animate in and out as the seminar progressed. Other interactive elements, such as audience member sitting placement, spawning areas, world boundaries and speaker-triggered events were all also designed to create an accessible, clearly defined and dynamic seminar experience.