Xbox Briefing at E3 2013

Just a couple of quick pics from this year's E3 for Xbox.   Another exciting year supporting a terrific client.  

Electric Holiday

We just helped to launch the Electric Holiday windows for Barney's New York. We were thrilled to be asked to design the windows by our long time client Disney. It was an exciting night celebrating the windows and the kickoff of the partnership between the two companies.

It was a rare opportunity to be asked by both Disney and Barneys to create the environment within the windows.  True to the Barneys style they wanted truly outside the box and surprising in terms of a holiday display.  The approach was to create a video sculptural environment as a canvas.  Disney created a special moving short that blended the two worlds of both brand and then we in turn created additional animation and lighting that surrounded and supported the Disney centerpiece.  

We worked incredible closely with the folks at d3 all throughout the design process.  They supported us and Disney in the most fantastic fashion.   They put together video below that documents wonderfully the design and creation process.  

Xbox E3 2012

This year's E3 show marked 7th year in which we designed multiple projects for Xbox.  We worked for our long time client, ZEDink, as always their great creative direction gave us wonderful opportunities.  Zedink asked us to design the Media Briefing, the Showcase event and evening social event for Halo 4.

Walk out

Dance Central 3

Dance Central 3 - Usher

Call of Duty

Splinter Cell

This year's Media Briefing, which was aired live on Spike TV, had many highlights starting with a live performance from Usher.   Usher performed his new single synchronized to gameplay from Dance Central 3.  His performance added a whole new layer to our design approach this year.  The whole creative team wanted to create surprise associated with his performance.  We did achieve this by crafting his reveal behind one of offstage LED screens.  Because we were working with Winvision 9mm we had the flexibility to remove the backing from just that one screen.  This allowed us to create a transparent effect only on that one screen.   We then added a winch system for the reveal to precisely fly out the screen.  With a little additional lighting upstage we ended up creating an unexpected and layered entrance for the performance.

Another highlight was the show open, which was a new live action trailer for Halo 4 that we were asked to create an total environmental design which needed to encompass the whole arena.  The show also featured new announcements from Nike, the Smart Glass interface from Xbox, a South Park game and then the show closed with a massive Call of Duty demo.

One of the major creative directions from ZEDink Creative Directors Julia Zarro and Erin Hearn was that the entire event needed be more immersive, with the show all around the audience rather than just down at one end of the arena.  To achieve this we used the in-house LED fascia as an image surface, and created circular lighting pods throughout the house which served as visual chandelier elements that could become anything from a red scan for Halo to Dance Central animated dance floor lights on steroids.

All in all, we were thrilled to be a part of the design team and are so proud that the collaborative effort resulted in such a successful show.

Springtime in Paris with Shakira

Shakira's Live from Paris DVD has been released.  It was shot in the Bercy in Paris in 2011.  Abbey did the DVD lighting with the tour show lighting designed by Paul Normandale

She was really happy to get to work again with Shakira, director Nick Wickham, and the DVD producers Splinter Films.  This is the second Shakira DVD Abbey has done together with Nick and Splinter, they also worked together on The Cure's Trilogy Live DVD and Il Divo The Promise.

Windows Phone Night Market

Manny just got back from New York where he helped to launch the Windows Phone Night Market tour.   Our work was an enviromental lighting design for the tour that is traveling to 5 cities over the next 6 weeks.   the visual design is based around the concept of a night market and guests at the event are able to experience the new phone and enjoy a concert by a different alternative rock band in each city.  

There are very few theatical fixtures in the design.  Instead we tried to used unique practical fixtures in each specifc area so that each of the activities had it's own personality.

Enviromental projection played a big role in the look of the event.  We used both 4K projectors on scrim and on the natural wall of each venue.  We used 7mm LED wall behind the band stage.

The team was lead by ZEDink, a long time client of NYXdesign.  

Abbey leads the Projection Master Class at LDI

Abbey was proud this year to serve as creative consultant for the Projection Master Classes at LDI. Abbey took the attendees on a tour of current media design. From opera to concert to spectacle to see examples of recent design spanning the methods and technologies of this rapidly expanding discipline that crosses the boundaries of cinema, theatre, and visual storytelling.  

Abbey brought together professionals like Vello Virkhaus and Dave Taylor to join in the conversation about the current state of the art and to discuss how it is used to create amazing projection design.

http://livedesignonline.com/masterclasses/news/Abbey_Rosen_Holmes_20112609/