Nextgen Showcase - Drakendorp
Client: Nextgen Showcase, Rebavision International
Year: 2023-2024.
Responsibilities: I was responsible for Producing all 3 of the presentation videos, the adverts and the pov video, Contributing towards the ideas based on the brief in blue sky, providing direction and artwork for 'Capture That' during development, modeling and designing the ride vehicle, modeling a white box version of the ride based on the layout, and providing creative and technical input and support throughout
The Challenge: There was a very detailed brief for this project that covered a lot of aspects. Generally speaking, Terratopia is a fictional zoo and theme park situated in Midland Europe. The clients at Terratopia wanted a new area of the park themed which acted as a transitional zone between the mountains and the wetlands. It was up to our team to come up with a solution. There needed to be a focus on conservation but avoided bringing any animal exhibits into the zoo.
The main challenge I had was producing the videos for this project and some 3d modeling as well.
One of the more challenging aspects of this project was the 30 second advert that needed to be produced right near the end of the project. Mainly because we had to fit in as many selling points as possible into 30 seconds - which became about 50 seconds.
The Solution: The solution to this was Drakendorp, an area based on a mining village. The main animal we focused on was a salamander known as an olm. The Olm was fictional and took the design of a real world olm and made it cartoony with a cute look.
My solution to the advert however took a bit of inspiration from my mograph encyclopedia and pulled a few techniques to help tell the story and show off our land.
The Process: The process itself was set up into three phases of work over a ten month period. The bluesky phase, the development phase and the schematic phase. All three of these were reviewed by a client panel and we received feedback throughout the project.
In terms of the video work, one of the more complicated parts of this project was mapping editable content onto animated page-turns in 3d, I had never done this before and needed to find the least time consuming way to approach the project, as the content could have change at any time, and I did not have the time to be re-rendering the 3d sequence just to tweak a small graphic, so that part had to be done in post. Luckily I found out what UV passes are for - exactly this.
The Results: The project itself was a success. It was live streamed in the final presentation, and was showcased at Iappa Europe and America in 2023. It was also showcased at Sate in 2024.
You can read more about it here:
https://www.nextgenshowcase.com/202324-work-1/drakendorp-caves-of-terratopia