This is a concept game that uses the crowd cheering level to control a ball. Similar to a Flappy Bird style gameplay. The idea is to create crowd engagement and tie it to a promotional aspect. For example it becomes rebranded for Taco Bell or something like that and if the crowd is able to get a score over 20 they all receive a voucher for a free chalupa.

The idea came from having been in improv comedy groups and often the MC starts the show off with some sort of crowd warm up activity. This made me think of how I could do that on an even larger scale. Beyond this I also began developing a Pong game that used a stereo set of mics to control the paddles. Left channel audio controlled player 1 and right channel audio controlled player 2. By using wired/wireless mics on either side of a room or stadium you could effectively have a wave of cheering going louder and softer to control the paddles with each side competing against each other.

Every year at AlphaGraphics we worked to make a unique Christmas card experience. From decoder messages using special glasses to custom window clings to make your own snowman.

One year we decided to do a card that was tied to a game on our website. It’s a simple catcher type game mechanic. The artwork was the same artwork used in the Christmas card with a few easter eggs like a photo of the owner on the wall as well as his dog Eddie as a character. The card and website listed the prizes you could win. If you score over 20 points in the time limit you were presented with a screen to input your name and email address. The info was sent to a google spreadsheet and then used to randomly pick winners for prizes.

Overall it brought engagement with the brand and started conversations. Many people played multiple times and we found it a successful tool to interact with our customers and give them something a little different than the usual card.

I was trying to come up with ways of making my Halloween display more interactive, so I did two versions of a “Ghost Hunt” for my yard.

One is not specific to any tracking markers and just brings up ghosts flying around in your general area. The other uses tracking markers specific to my tombstones. So I can make characters for each tombstone and as people use their phone as a ghost detector the different characters will pop out of their graves.

It’s sort of a mini scavenger hunt for the yard. Using a sign that says “Can you find all 5 ghosts?” with a QR code that opens the AR project made for something different at our house.

There will definitely be more iterations of this project.

In the last 5 years or digital decorations have grown considerably, especially for halloween. Most are rectangles projected onto a flat wall or window. I wanted to create something that had a bit more dimension.

So I got a basic foam head from the craft store and started with the concept of a talking head on a pole. I started with a proof of concept to see if I could get things to align properly. Once that proved successful I refined my character design and wrote a script. After recording the script came animating it and then it was ready to go.

I’m a huge fan of Halloween, mostly because of all the DIY community surrounding the holiday. Over the years people have been integrating more digital decorations into their displays. Having always loved making things interactive I jumped into several different programs to see what I could do.

Above is some examples of some halloween themed AR effects I created. Some can be used behind a two way mirror, some are setup at the end of a hallway, others to create a live effect where you digitally interact with your guests.

Having been to lots of trade shows and helped clients prepare for them I’m no stranger to knowing how exciting or utterly boring a booth can be. If you can have something different and interactive you’re likely to pull people in and start some conversations. (Or you can leave a bowl of candy and pens out and watch people try and snag them while avoiding eye contact).

Anyway Major Rig Racing was part of a larger “interactive trade show” initiative I had come up with. Make simple games that take 1-2 minutes to play. Bring in some competition and engagement. Then give away a prize. While not accurate to what it’s like to drive a rig by any means, it doesn’t really matter. It’s an easy gimmick that helps you be a “purple cow” as Seth Godin would say.

While working at AlphaGraphics Bountiful there were plans to build a new building. When the architects sent over the plans I immediately wanted to do something with them. My first experiment was to put it into VR so we could actually walk around the building and see what changes we might want to make. This gave us super valuable insights into what customers might see while standing in the lobby and where we could possibly extend or shorten walls to give a better experience.

After the VR phase I wanted to create something the general public could interact with that wouldn’t require the use of a VR headset. So to build up anticipation in the community about the new building and let people get a sneak peek at what it would eventually be I began developing a game using waypoints. Each location would be a point of interest where an employee avatar would give information about the area.

Unfortunately around this time we experienced a fire in our building that relocated us for a while and put plans on hold.

This was a test to find a way to streamline the body scanning to AR deployment process. Using an app on my phone and taking a few photos I was able to generate the initial 3D model. It then needed to be processed through Blender in order to prep it for rigging and animation in Mixamo. After that the file was ready to go into several different AR development platforms like SparkAR, Snap Lens Studio, or Adobe Aero.

For this specific video I used Adobe Aero to try and create a USDZ file that can be universally opened on current smart phones without the use of an external app.

My nieces and nephews were bored and I was trying to think of a way we could all work on something together. They all like to make noise so it seemed natural for us to at make noise together. This is the product of that collaborative noise.

I then had them each draw a picture of the different parts of the song they wrote, scanned those in and animated them.

The storyline to the song is based off of some Spanish homework my nephews were working on. In the homework different people were not happy because they didn’t have a (cat, xbox, Coca Cola, pizza, etc) so they went around asking people if they had an extra (cat, xbox, Coca Cola, pizza, etc). These individuals would ask one person in each town traveling from Chicago to Florida to who knows where… all to get a free (cat, xbox, Coca Cola, pizza, etc) from someone that had an extra one. Lo and behold, they were each successful and in the end each was happy because they now had a (cat, xbox, Coca Cola, pizza, etc.) Thus the story of George and his quest for Coca-Cola was born into existence. Enjoy.

This was an activity I did with the Cub Scout troop I was a leader for. The boys wanted to learn about special effects and editing. Each boy picked a super power. We then established what would need to be done while shooting so that we could later put everything together in post. This helped them understand the importance of each step in pre-production, production, and post production and how skipping something early on can make it much more difficult down the road.