Virtua Mascot
Virtua is a fictional fashion brand as part of a group project in my university curriculum. For my major project in my final year, given the most amount of creative freedom I have ever had in my university life, I decided to embark on creating a virtual mascot for the brand I had grown so attached to.
The Prompt.
Create a virtual puppet as means to promote a fashion brand.
Mascot PV
Showcase
Movement Demo
Face-Tracking Demo
Why a virtual Puppet?
The problem that most mascots face in the modern day, and the problem that this project aims to tackle, is the lack of interactivity.
With the popularization of social media marketing, relatability and interactivity is the name of the game. Marketeers for multiple brands have tried to achieve this to varying levels of success.
The goal of this project is to create a virtually-piloted mascot, made possible by real-time motion tracking technology, to explore this these interactive mascots as a marketing solution.
The sources these poses came from ranges from Vogue, to Christian Dior to Marilyn Monroe’s infamous skirt pose.
Playing around with these poses, observing and researching the way fashion was marketed to the people throughout the years, was not only a very fascinating experience, but helped be get a better idea for the shape language and outfit design for the eventual final character design.
My hope is that with a virtual puppet as a mascot, brands are able to interact with their consumer-base in a more direct way through their mascots.
It is my vision that through good character design and thoughtful, organic integration, brands will be able to increase their memorability and brand loyalty using these mascots.
In order to meet our goal to create a virtual puppet, a character design that reflects Virtua’s brand identity clearly and concisely.
I began ideation by looking at various vintage fashion magazines and replicating their poses as a ideation/drawing exercise. Given Virtua’s high fashion influences, I believed that this would give me a good idea of what sort of character would best represent Virtua as a brand.
Applying the above design to the poses, it helped me flesh out our mascot’s personality and allowed me to see whether the outfit design would look good in different angles and in dynamic poses. I was overall very satisfied with this iteration of the design, so the next step was to finalize the design.
Applications?
Character Design.
The image on the left is the first sketch of eventual final character design of Virtua’s mascot character and what would eventually serve as the final design for our virtual puppet.
Final Design.
Final Sketch
Additional Illustrations
Final Design
Live2D Rigging
The next major step was to give the character design real-time motion. This would be done via Live2D rigging and motion tracking from Vtube Studio.
Live2D is an animation technique that allows animations of 2D illustrations through the distortion and warping of images to give the illusion of 3D movement. Rigging the illustration would allow the illustration to warp according to various movement parameters. Mapping these parameters to various facial movements that are tracked in real time will allow our character to move according to an actor in real time, allowing the mascot to be puppeteered virtually.
For more detailed account of the design and rigging process, please download the full report below.
MOre About Virtua.
The project from which Virtua’s brand was created can also be found on this portfolio.