WELCOME TO
SLYDER FESTIVAL!
The Greatest Party
That Will Never Happen
2020Interactive Design
Design Brief
Using my previous work Achieving Slyder Festival, I created an experimental, imaginative, risky live streamed event with a set of live interactions/triggers. Based on Achieving Slyder Festival, Welcome to Slyder Festival — The Greatest Party that Will Never Happen identifies and plays with the tropes of emergent cultural events, live streaming, and existing internet media/shows. The project is a digital collection of visual references, cultural associations, and analysis of formal attributes of ‘digital space’ and ‘event type.’
Overview
Welcome to Slyder Festival is a virtual promotional party for an event that will never take place. Seemingly materialized in Animal Crossing New Horizons, Welcome to Slyder Festival is a showcase of how an event can be replicated and inflated through compelling imagery and amplified brand experiences on a green screen without actual occurrences. The visual narrative and impression of a branded event surpassed its actuality, as the events nowadays transpire through postings on social media. The happening becomes inconsequential since the reality of an event is that of its media representation.
Slyder Festival intends to investigate the connotations of branded experiences as well as the nebulous reality created by media through simulated imagery in the virtual space. Overpromised events like Frye Festival are able to occur or not occur because of the hype built by pervading social media posts and casual celebrity endorsements. We rarely follow up the development of what we see as we glance and swipe inattentively on social media. Authenticity is hardly questioned, and all that matters is the promise, the hype and the impression. If anyone is familiar with the Fyre Festival documentary on Netflix, the subtitle of the film is “the greatest party that never happened.” Slyder Festival on Animal Crossing New Horizon may very well supplant that title
“the greatest party that will never happen.”
Tools
Illustrator, Photoshop, Unity, OBS, Nintendo switch
Research
Study the visual signifiers od Fyre Festival and Coachella. The prominent and contrasted blue and orange make up the identity of Fyre Festival on social media. The promotion idea was to catch people’s attention by flooding instagram with orange squares. Ocean waves, palm stem and top models in bikini are the signature of the campaign. The visual elements of the identity are made up with generic sans serif typeface and script fonts and the simplistic logos of fire and waves.
The pastel pink, blue, orange and purple can be seen from the graphics, art installation to the photography of the event itself. The giant color installations and sphere sculptures make the photography of the environment look like a photoshop collage. Thin sans serif typeface is used pair with the handwritten Coachella logo.
︎︎︎Visual references of Fyre Festival and Coachella
Identity
The identity design of Slyder Festival should adhere to its strict color palette of blue, white, pink, orange and applied to all the items that can be customized on ACNH. The logo should be applied to all Slyder Festival merchandise and festival images. Images should be taken near the beach on the island in order to consistently reminds the audience this is a music festival on a remote island. The images should take maximalist approach on branding, but somewhat minimal approach on the design of the artifacts in order to conform the Millennials/GenZ branding aesthetics. Every image produced should convey specific narratives rather than plain promotional pictures.
︎︎︎Identity design for Slyder Festival
Concept Iterations
Concept Iteration#1: What if I take any ACNH pictures on the beach and impose Slyder Festival visual elements to them?
Concept Iteration#2: WHAT IF I CREATE A GREEN SCREEN ON MY ACNH ISLAND AND SUPERIMPOSE SLYDER FESTIVAL IMAGES ON TOP OF IT?
︎︎︎Green screen room in Animal Crossing on Nintendo Switch
︎︎︎Experimenting with OBS Chroma Key to juxtapose animal crossing character on ACNH party images
Visual Elements
︎︎︎K.K. Slider and Slyder Festival banners, signs and decorations
︎︎︎Slyder Festival balloons 3D models
Make Slyder Festival everywhere with photoshop by superimposing Slyder Festival visual elements on Animal Crossing game views.
3D animation of the visual elements are designed in Unity.
︎︎︎Animation designed in Unity
Event Planning
Slyder Festival Promotional party is going to be a whole day event that include beach photoshoot, sponsor events, hanging out with celebrities and concert at night.
︎︎︎Slyder Festival event scene
︎︎︎Overlay design for the livetream
Final Delivery
The event invitation was sent out a couple days before the live stream. The guests had no ideas of what exactly was going to happen at the Slyder Festival Promotional Party. It was quite difficult to guide the guests to the event desitnation, which was a room in my house on Animal Crossing, since they were quite confused by the setup. Meanwhile, the party was happening on Twitch.
︎︎︎Guests arriving at Slyder Festival Pre-opening Party
︎︎︎The guests are having some hard time understanding why we are entering a house for the music festival
During the live stream, when the audience cheered on the chat, I would release balloons on the screen through OBS. All the animations are triggered on OBS and the party happens as we go through the background image slides.
︎︎︎Welcome to Slyder Festival
︎︎︎Background slideshow
︎︎︎Release balloons when the audience cheer on the chat
︎︎︎Give away Slyder merchandise
︎︎︎Slyder camera filter
The imagery of the party is amplified by visual triggery of the event signifiers, including sponsor products, branded merchandise, party balloons, lightings.
︎︎︎Free energy drinks
︎︎︎Dance Floor superimposed with flying balloons
︎︎︎Waiting for K.K. Slider to come out superimposed with flying balloons and party lights
︎︎︎Live stream interface of the concert on twitch
︎︎︎Screenshot of the live Stream of the concert on twitch
MEANWHILE......