A.I. Digital Characters Development & Story Telling
Client: Enchant Labs
Interactive
Technology: Midjourney / AI
My Role:
Art Direction
Character Development
Story Development
Producer Sound VFX
3D Animation
Motion Graphics
During the height of COVID, Enchant Labs sought meaningful ways to give back to the community. They created a heartwarming digital experience that allowed parents to reconnect with the magic of Christmas through a real-time video call with a virtual Santa. This Unity-powered app used facial tracking technology—letting users become Santa themselves and make personalized calls to loved ones, all from a distance. A creative solution that brought joy and connection when it was needed most. Fast forward to A.I and the question remains as to how we can use avatars to represent brands in consistent, and human ways.
The key to establishing consistent characters is a sold methodology utilizing a combination of tools that teach your AI model how you want the character to look. Balancing consistency, variety, detail and control is a process.
The Initial Covid Project
I focused on the Art Direction, moving towards a modern reinterpretation— a distinguished gentleman. For production, we partnered with Hossein Diba, known for his lifelike ZBrush characters, and a team who handled the Unity build. We ultimatly made the character more recognizable and family-friendly for the app due to user feedback. However this left room to explore the development of A.I character sets for other applications. I went on to design the above character set training a custom LORA to keep consistency between the shots.
The App Results
It was exciting to be part of the development process and thousands of happy customers that were able to download and successfully use this app with their children over a difficult time. We also created a signature look for the Enchant Santas that attended the shows, bringing the experience round to be more integrated into the immersive brand. This was one of those products that was released ahead of the AI curve and would be much easier to implement now given advancement of digital characters.
6
Characters
18.5
Million Downloads
1k+
Selfies Taken
