Virtual | HPE
Brief
After crafting a CGI brand mascot for HPE’s ‘Tame The Monster’ campaign, we were tasked with creating a live experience featuring ‘Glitchy’ the brand’s furry mascot, for their Discover conference in Las Vegas.
Approach
We didn’t just want to create a series of pre-rendered animated films - we wanted to provide an interactive element to the character, enabling people to truly interact with HPE’s brand mascot in a way they hadn’t before. We chose to use Mill Mascot - The Mill’s proprietary animation system that allows characters to be puppeteered or performed LIVE and in real-time.
Impact
The use of Mill Mascot allowed us to generate three interactive elements for the HPE Discover conference, including a live animated interaction during the Keynote speech, an interactive booth that allowed HPE Customers and attendees to play games with Glitchy, and a second booth that allowed attendees to puppeteer Glitchy for themselves.
Client
Publicis North America
Brand
HPE
Capabilities
Real-time / Animation / Events / Experiential / Direction
“Mill Mascot is a game-changer when it comes to creating content for brands. Never before have we been able to animate high-fidelity CG characters live, offering up an interactive and versatile way to tell brand stories.”
We teamed up with HPE and Publicis to create a one-of-a-kind live experience that debuted at HPE’s Discover Conference. Using Mill Mascot, Glitchy (a fully CG character) we were able to perform live on-stage as well as interact with conference attendees in a custom installation.
During the conference’s biggest Keynote speech, Glitchy provided a comical interruption, bursting onto screen ready to play with the crowd. To prove that this was an improvised performance with no pre-rendered animation and that Glitchy was being puppeteered live backstage, the character interacted, not only with the keynote speaker, but with members of the audience in real-time.
This level of interactivity with further extended across the conference floor, wherein we developed two custom booths that allowed attendees to both play games with Glitchy and even animate him for themselves using simple hand gestures that were being monitored by gestural controls build into the booth.
We hope the use of Mill Mascot for brands such as HPE ushers in a new age of digital storytelling, with the ability for brands to create fast and reactive content on the spot as well as provide new avenues of customer interactivity.
MILL MASCOT
Mill Mascot is an animation system developed by The Mill that combines real-time animation and game engine technology with motion sensors; enabling a digital puppeteer to control the animated character through hand and facial gestures. This gives directors, creatives and clients the ability to ‘direct’ CG character performance live on set, giving feedback and making creative decisions on the fly. It can also be used at live events such as the HPE Discover conference, allowing brand Mascots to interact with customers.
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