Bringing “The Goose” to Life at the 2018 Lviv IT Arena

This year, the Lviv IT Arena continued to grow and attracted about 2,500 IT specialists, company managers, startup founders, and latest technology enthusiasts that came to listen to world-known speakers, take part in Startup Competition, roam around the city center from one meetup to another. Meeting IT specialists from other countries is always a great opportunity to share knowledge and experiences. Even though traveling around the world visiting IT conferences, summits, and festivals is always fun, welcoming visitors who came to an event in our home country is an added pleasure. This is why the Lviv IT Arena is a special event for us.

Our presence at IT Arena included our Director of AR/VR Research and Development, Ruslan Kapustin, who presented our latest project to animate a beloved Ukrainian cartoon hero “The Goose”. Let’s take a closer look at the project.

Background

Our client, Art Nation, promotes brands in the Ukrainian market. It is a group of companies that belong to producer Eduard Akhramovich and they cover 360º of content; engage in the creation and production of brands, their licensing, development, and distribution of animated and digital content, the release of books using the technology of augmented reality (AR).

Art Nation needed to “revive” their character, “The Goose”, and transform it from a static 2D hero to an animated 3D state on time and on budget. The revival was to be done in real time, using the motion capture suit. In the end, they wanted to get a lively character, who could be the moderator of the event in real time: to conduct dialogues, move around the stage, and interact with the audience.

The solution to the problem already existed, all we needed to do was to combine Motion Capture and Unity 3D and implement it as part of our project as soon as possible. When discussing the project at the Lviv IT Arena, Ruslan Kapustin said: “One of the most difficult tasks of the project was transforming the character from a two-dimensional into a three-dimensional one. We did not come up with something incredibly complicated, we used existing solutions to efficiently combine them.”

*Source: IT Arena

The Presentation

We presented the finished product at a meetup at the Lviv IT Arena which was hosted by Ruslan Kapustin, where he discussed the development process, technologies and difficulties involved. During the meetup, he said “Modern technology has made our character strikingly portable and mobile. He doesn’t need a big studio. For him, a screen and a dressing room are enough.”

At the Lviv IT Arena, “The Goose” entered into a dialogue with the participants and anyone present during the meetup was free to ask “The Goose” questions and he would respond just like in real life.

The possibilities of bringing “The Goose” to real life are endless. According to Eduard Akhramovich, “The Goose” can act a virtual MC or showman and since he exists in the virtual world, he can be in many places at once. Also, “The Goose” can be a great way to bring some color and humor into otherwise grey and boring advertisements. For example, “The  Goose” is currently being used in Kyiv’s metro to educate people about the rules and regulations of riding on the metro.