Green Hippo out of the world experience
- Details
DWR’s initial concept was to create a small bus station at the expo where show goers could hop on board a bus and be transported to the DWR offices some six minutes away. As ideas darted back and forth around the boardroom table, it was DWR’s Gareth Chamber who announced, “Let’s have a Stargate portal,” the articulated words turning all former planning onto its head! The portal, that would end up taking close to 1 400 ‘explorers’ to a galaxy far, far way, was born! The show stopper saw guests at Mediatech enter through the portal’s water curtain, supplied by LazerX, and then walk along an exceptionally bright and blinding lit tunnel before embarking on a journey to DWR where the experience continued! (more on that at: http://dwrdistribution.co.za/jeffrey-rob-e-robot-takes-mediatech-storm)
“This was honestly a fun project,” said Mauritz Jacobs from Dream Sets who designed the set for both the portal and the spaceship themed demo room at DWR. “Straight after our initial meeting, I jumped onto the design. I knew exactly what I wanted and literally went back to the office and just drew… and this is what came out of it. I was unbelievably excited to be part of such a huge project with such amazing people and was blown away by the end result. A huge thank you to DWR's Duncan Riley, Gareth Chambers and Dylan Jones for all your assistance and well done for coming up with this amazing concept.”
The next stop was to source content, and DWR turned to David O’Donnell from Provisual Media. “I was really excited about the brief and DWR’s ideas and concepts,” David commented. “We researched various Sci-Fi designs and drew inspiration from existing material. ‘Stargate’ was a big influence as we were fascinated by the structural design and fluid portal concept.”
Provisual started off by looking at the mapping surface and finding ways to make it come to life. “We were lucky enough to have a talented team of artists who designed the elements for the portal and built it in 3D, which gave us the freedom to have control over all the elements,” David explained. “Once we had all the elements in place and the overall look of the portal, we came up with different ways to animate the various components and to breathe life onto the static surface. Our aim was to take the surface and transform it into a gateway that would attract the audience and send them on a journey.”
David and his team hit the nail on the head, and DWR fell in love with the very first artistic proposal presented to them.
With the set and content in-hand, it was up to the Green Hippo to set the plan into motion! Dylan Jones joined DWR in February 2017 and is the DWR Green Hippo product manager. “I am very new to Hippotizer and this was a brand-new experience for me,” said Dylan. “I wasn’t intimidated because it really is easy to use and I’m not just saying that! That said, I like challenges and I have to mention Christopher Bolton, a big Hippotizer user, who helped me. Chris also used the Hippotizer Boreal at his Black Box stand at Mediatech.”
Hippotizer was also used in the DWR’s demo room. “The demo room was more complicated,” said Dylan. “We had two Hippotizer Boreal servers which ran seven 55 inch plasmas. Content was run over all seven plasmas seamlessly. Hippotizer in the demo room was controlled by Jannie de Jager from DWR over Arnet by the grandMA2, while Bruce Riley helped a lot with trouble shooting and kept everyone calm.”
(Jim Evans)
