“COME AND INTERACT WITH WOODY, IRON MAN, BB8, OLAF AND EVEN THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC GORILLA! THEY’LL BE HERE WAITING FOR YOU FOR A MOMENT OF PURE ENTERTAINMENT!”
Project name: The Wall of Shadows by Disney+.
Major innovation: a phygital system which uses a custom-made Artificial Intelligence which allows the characters to interact with the public.
Partners: Big Bang events, Let Me Know, Boys in the Wood, METROBUS and Zenith Publicis Media agency
Format: interactive phygital system installation with ultra-high definition LED wall.
Launch date: September 2020
To offer members of the general public, passing through the Paris Saint-Lazare station, a 1:1 scale fun interactive experience with their favorite heroes from the Disney+ universe.
“Come and interact with Woody, Iron Man, BB8, Olaf and even the National Geographic Gorilla! They’ll be here waiting for you for a moment of pure entertainment!”
To recreate the most recognizable visual traits and attitudes for the Disney characters and to make them look natural and at home in their respective environments.
To create an innovative installation where advanced human to A.I interactivity can lead to fun and surprising interaction with the Disney heroes.
To equip the Wall of Shadows with an array of large ultra-high definition LED screens to further enhance the strong physical proximity between the public and the characters.
To set up the entire installation in the Saint-Lazare train station in just 4 hours!
To create the Disney+ Wall of Shadows, several teams of experts joined forces with project manager SoWhen? and The Walt Disney Company France. Here you’ll find out more about the roles of each team of experts in the creation of this phygital system installation:
There were near-daily exchanges between our team and the various creative departments of The Walt Disney Company to understand the most recognizable traits of each character. We then recreated these behavioral patterns so that the characters would best inhabit their respective worlds before inputing them into an A.I. we specially created for the project. The result is a wall of shadows that comes to life in front of its audience, with natural gestures that encourage interactivity.
Far from being just a mirror where the characters imitate our movements, the Wall of Shadows is an innovative system with advanced interactivity which allows users to play in surprising ways with the emblematic characters of the five Disney+ brands. The characters really try to interact with the people in front of them, adapting to their size and to the orientation of their bodies and even greeting them…
The real-time image technology software “Unreal Engine”, developed by EPIC Games, creators of Fortnite, is the 3D-rendering engine that generated the real-time imagery we used for the Wall of Shadows. The Unreal Engine team helped us to solve some of the challenges we faced in this production. Special thanks to Kim Libreri, Jean-Marc Sauvetre and Marien El Alaoui.
The Wall of Shadows, made up of a large wall of ultra-high definition LED screens, provides users ample space for encounters between our world and the virtual characters and creates strong physical connections. The illusion is that of a translucent screen behind which intricate shadow puppets come to life. As the public starts to interact with the characters, their closeness, natural movements and scaled size gradually makes the user forget the technology. SoWhen? worked with its trusted partners “Boys in the Wood”, “Big Bang” and “Let Me Know” for the production and the installation of the system at Saint-Lazare station.
To produce the Wall of Shadows, SoWhen? was in its element, drawing on its expertise in multiple fields much to the delight of its team! Here’s what each team member was able to bring to the table:
Our creative team brought to life the strong concept of Walt Disney Company France’s creative department and incorporated the Disney+ universe into the project
Our animators brought to life the pre-selected heroes under the collaborative direction of Disney Studios, accurately animating them
Our developers and engineers have developed an advanced artificial intelligence so that the characters are able to respond to natural human behaviors and adapt their postures and movements according to the person facing them. So, regardless of the size or position of the person’s body, the character does all it can to communicate with the user (for instance, characters will lean down for children). Our experts in new image technologies were able to find the appropriate technical solutions to make the system efficient and innovative.
As you may already know, SoWhen? is committed to blurring the lines between the real and the digital worlds to offer entertaining and meaningful experiences, regardless of the subject matter. The Wall of Shadows project is definitely no exception!
See related article in our blog!
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