For the last semester of my graduate work, I spent my time as a producer for a team working with Microsoft and the Xbox Live team on a project pitched to the ETC. Not only was I responsible for leading the team and keeping them on track, I was also responsible for creating 2D and 3D assets. Microsoft’s idea was to have students from the ETC come to Redmond, Washington and create content for the large format video walls found in every Microsoft store.  We were initially supposed to produce four separate products that were supposed to build off of each other, but as we progressed, we realized the four concepts could be distilled down into two main goals.

The first goal was to create a theme for the wall that showcased animated versions of Xbox live avatars.  This was a unique step because the avatars are typically only seen moving on the Xbox or Windows base phones.  While we were still learning the technical end of how to render and manipulate avatars, one of out test themes got picked up for use at Microsoft store openings.

Our second goal was unique for both the Microsoft video walls and the Xbox Live avatars.  Our objective was to create some kind of interactive piece that could be played on the wall and used avatars. We came up with a game that could be played using a Windows Phone 7.  When a user entered their gamertag (a unique ID for every player) and a special code found only in the store into a custom application on their phone, they would then be able to  play a game using their phone as the controller.