Immersive 3D Experience for FLANNELS' IGNITE Prize Event
The HEAT Ignite Prize powered by FLANNELS, awarded 3 young entrepreneurs or businesses with a £10,000 grant to support their flourishing business and mentorship from industry advisors. This event, ‘NOT ANOTHER NETWORKING EVENT’ attracted hundreds of guests to the Oxford St. based venue and required us to create a seamless and immersive 3D rendered 1990’s office experience at the W1 Curates Studio, spanning over 63 metres and 300 LED screens. The animated 3D render featured numerous HEAT easter-eggs, showcasing previous iconic projects, engaging the HEAT following, and adding an additional layer of depth to the venue. It is important to note this project was completed by our Founder, Caspian Reynolds, during his time at HEAT and was not completed by Bycasp.
This was an extremely challenging project due to the meticulous planning to create a seamlessly looping 3D rendered animations, tight turnaround and that the 63 metre screens inside the venue were split into six sections of varying sizes. It was incredibly difficult to visualise and achieve a pixel-perfect animation which wrapped around the 300 LED screens. This in conjunction with balancing the amount of motion to use throughout each animation to create a genuine immersive experience as too much motion would distract guests from the speakers, and potentially cause motion sickness whereas too little motion would feel flat and lack any impact. Additionally, balancing the 1990s office theme with a playful, sarcastic tone while resonating with those familiar with such environments was especially challenging.
To address these challenges, we prioritised meticulous accuracy and maintained constant communication with venue owners and the 3D renderers. To solve the issue of achieving pixel-perfect animation performance and wrapping across the six venue sections. We created our very own FLANNELS venue to scale inside Blender and outlined the six venue sections to accurately create our own canvases to work from. With this, we then tested draft versions of the renders directly in the venue to confirm in-person ahead of the event night. This careful planning and execution ensured the animations were engaging, smooth, and perfectly aligned with the venue’s layout.
This 3D immersive experience inside the Oxford Street-based venue amazed guests, many of whom mentioned they hadn’t seen anything like this before. Hundreds of guests attended to hear speakers from industry leaders, including Jonny Wilson (CEO at Cole Buxton), Akis Evangelidis (Co-Founder of Nothing), Iretizee (Founder of Street Souk), and Fisayo Longe (Founder of Kai Collective). The animation was seamless, perfectly rendered, optimised, and calibrated for the venue screens, delivering a highly impactful and memorable event.
