I was brought on board by Obscura Digital to create an 8 minute psychedelic experience, titled Chrysalis, for the 2017 Coachella Music & Arts Festival.  The piece was displayed throughout the festival on a 120ft dome for audiences of 500 trippers at a time.  The structure included 15 projectors and 108 speakers arranged on three tiers around the dome, creating a fully immersive audio visual experience. The visuals team consisted of several artists, each built their own world themed around rebirth & metamorphosis. 

The techniques utilized included a range of 3D octane renders, Mandelbulb fractals, time-lapse photography and fish-eye practical effects.  The journey takes audiences from the projection mapped Coachella valley, through psychedelic landscapes, between the crevices of evolving fractals, inside the bowels of bioluminescent caterpillars, into the lofty realm of butterfly cathedrals, beyond the known universe and into a graphic malfunction of epic proportions.  

The entire piece has been uploaded as a 360 degree video, which is how our team previewed designs in virtual reality.  This set-up allowed us to gauge the relative feeling of camera moves within the dome and decide on the proportions of 3D objects.  A smaller dome was also built in the studio space, which allowed us to experience test renders with surround sound audio.

The 120' igloo-shaped projection structure titled The Antarctic was built in collaboration between Obscura Digital and Pacific Domes, resulting in the largest geodesic dome constructed to date.  The artists all experimented and collaborated throughout the process, building our own individual worlds within the structure of a rough storyboard.  The evolving surround sound audio was composed by the sonic wizard Tim Digulla.

I focused on designing and animating a sequence that enters symmetrical morphing caverns, passes through the stomach of a psychedelic caterpillar and allows viewers to witness the metamorphosis of a massive butterfly through the internal structure of a cocoon.  I was fortunate to have the help of Chia Chiliu for rigging and animating the caterpillars, allowing me to focus on camera animation, texturing and environment design.  All the 3D elements were created in Cinema 4D, Octane Renderer and World Machine.

Several artists created stages of a 'Dream World' for which I created the Realm of Chrome.  I used several reflective objects with topographic displacements to create a melting sun-scape, allowing viewers to pass through it's metallic sphincter into the next realm of wispy mountains created by Emmett Feldman.  

In order to create the final transformation of the caterpillar into the Mothra of butterflies, I chose to photograph butterfly wings with a microscope and stitch them together into a 3D texture.  The process involved hundreds of photos, which were focus-stacked and stitched together in photoshop.  I then used a plugin to create seamless textures for the wings in Cinema 4D.

Executive Creative Director: Travis Threlkel, Chris Lejeune
Executive Producer: Christopher Houchin
Director of Media Arts: Marc Melzer
Creative Director: Joshua Pipic
Art Director: Emmett Feldman
Design & Animation: Alexi Alexaieff, Peter Clark, Chase Hochstatter, Chia Chiliu, Tim Digulla, Brittnie Diamant, James Ellis, Emmett Feldman, Seoryung Kim, Mayumi Ota, Ouchhh, Joshua Pipic, Ben Stokes, Hung Wei
Joshua Tree Shoot: Joshua Brott, Jerry Deal, Chris O’ Dowd, Joshua Pipic, Ben Stokes, Nikki Thompson
Sound Design: Tim Digula, Alex Oropeza, Lucy Sheils
Additional Music: Peder Mannerfelt courtesy of Archives Intérieures
Systems: Gaston Albanell, Chris Dadzitis, Jerry Deal, Ryan McDonnell, Joe Vigorito
Documentation: Ari Ali, Joshua Brott, Will Chase, Ethan Indorf, Kean Levreault
Producer: Krista Adkins, Ari Ali
Software: Julie T. Do, Bryant Place
Purchasing: Eric Schneider
Special thanks: Goldenvoice, HP, Pacific Domes, Christie Digital, L'Acoustics, and Android Jones