You have just heard, when I was introduced, and can see that I am not a designer. You can see this because I'm not wearing black ! (Laughter)
We design and build attractions for the Attractions market, and started about six years ago, and have 50 staff of whom twelve are designers , although these others think they are designers too , which is to be encouraged.
We work on projects in the UK and elsewhere such as Norway, Spain, Sweden, Denmark , France Germany, Spain and Scotland.
Also, I am representative for the Themed Entertainment Association (Europe), which represents all kinds of design professionals within the industry, such as organisations like Planet Hollywood, Theme Parks, and major 'Attractions' throughout the world.
This talk is going to be on a quick Case Study, which involves lots and lots of designers. You will see how we attempt to get the designers to work altogether.
Here we had the luxury of taking a job from the beginning - from designing it, through building it, and actually seeing the public playing with it. From the stage of a client asking "What on earth are we going to do? We see something from fresh air to designing something that actually works.
This case study involved the Science Museum in Valencia designed by Santiago …………It is a truly stunning building and used in much advertising today because it is an incredible venue.
The client came to us on another project but said ' We have an empty gallery. We have some money and some space to put a Space Gallery. They asked us "What have you got?"
By chance we had a drawing.
We said "We have got this. It is a show for children and it is all about the solar system. There is an animatronic figure there - a Professor Robot, his desk, a story, a video and special effects for the auditorium, a video and more.
They said, "Great, we'll have that".
It was that easy. But it is not always that easy. We had a budget of about E 800K, or about £ 500K.
So we developed the concept in more detail. We defined how the robot was going to look and we located the elements and so on. They bought the project from that visual. We developed the project from that vision.
Technical systems design.
SLIDE 10 Time Plan
The skills we need to use were quite varied. There is concept design, story-telling, script writing, character design - the robot is going to tell the story, so how is he going to move - animatronic design, how is he to be dressed - clothes design and then there is all the mechanical design.
We had to decide 'How is the Show going to be flow? We needed signage, scenery, desks, lighting, video , technical systems and so on. All these had to be designed, made and installed. They are not all done by different people though as some do a number of things.
The challenge is to get all this working together and come up with a single experience.
We assessed the proposal in July and we had 13 weeks to build it and ship it, install it. So time scale was very tight. Fourteen people were involved in the design and construction of the installation until September..
SLIDE 11 The Story is King .
It all starts with the story. It is fundamental to a good attraction. You get a great story then you define how you are going to do it and pull together all that you need to make it work for the audience so you get the experience you want. You don't start with those the tools.
Very often we have to write the brief ourselves as the client does not know how to do this as they do not know really what they want. They tell us what they think they want, and then you go away and write a brief, and then ask them "Is this what you mean? Is this what you are thinking about? This is very, very important. It is a key thing to do.
SLIDE 12 Show Development Matrix.
To develop the Show we use a technique devised by Disney. It involves a Matrix showing the Scenes, where we can see all what is script, the scenery, and what is sound doing, and what happens.
All designers work in front of the Matrix Board and you apply all that you have thought of. We can see if Scene 3 looks as though too much is going on - is it over cooked compared to say, Scene 5 , were nothing appears to be happening. Balance in the presentation is important. We do this so the story ebbs and flows in an attractive way.
SLIDE 13 Concept Development.
We have concept development where the designer has to come up with something that is exciting but is achievable. In this project there is a rocket that fires every 10 minutes so it has to be reset easily. Therefore we need maximum imagination but a rocket that can be reset for the next production.
We will flip through an number of the development processes.
SLIDE 14 Character Development.
This requires a designer to ensure all the mechanisms can be fitted inside the robot. It has to be an amusing character yet everything has to fit in, and still have a personality and still be engaging. The
SLIDE 15 Costume Design & Development
Robot Professor has a costume - white lab coat, and under this are lots of wires and lights So there has to be negotiation between costume and concept designers and engineers to try and come together with an idea that is going to work.
SLIDE 16 Animatronics Concepts.
How does the animatronics work? How many elements are going in , how many movements has he got. If you get this wrong it is going to be slightly embarrassing - a bit crummy. One of the things we decided was to fit the Robot Professor on a track, so he can move along his desk, which was very interesting and worked very well. This was all devised in the early stages with napkin kind of sketches.
SLIDE 17 Animatronic and Mechanical Design ..
All this had to take place within the scenic design, who were involved as well because there had to be enough room to fit it all machinery in. The electronics designer was responsible for drawing it up in CAD, not in 2D but 3D modelled straight away. .
SLIDE 18 The Auditorium Design.
The auditorium needed designing. We had the rough layout of the Professor Robot's desk. We needed a lid over the top of it so we designed a geodesic dome with a cover over it . We had to build and to test the seating system, and try out the vibrations designed for it and see how it worked.
SLIDE 19 Preferred Technique.
So the preferred technique for doing an attraction of this kind is to start with a story for children. What would be great to tell them? We told the children about the solar system. - a fairly simple story.
What will be the experience?
Well, we have a robot so let's put the planets above him with special effects - a bit of smoke, a bit of wind - yes. We will need technology for floor hydraulics, pneumatics and so on for movement, a video, or plasma screens , or whatever to help with telling the story. We did a schematic of how big the whole thing was to see what interior architecture was needed.
All this was aimed to get the desired result.
We are faced in this industry, time and time again, with clients in Millennium frenzy. They say , "What is it going to look like?" "Wow, we could have this… and that…building." Fanastic,!
If you ask "What is going to go in it? The answer will be " We will sort out all that later….later !!"
But is our experience the functionality, the fitfulness and the purposefulness of a building is inversely proportional to the ego of the architect.
We have worked with really high profile architects , who say things like " I did not realise you were going to have so many people in it". And that we need ventilation and air conditioning, and yes, maybe a shop for people to buy things, and people might even actually want to go to the toilet as they come in to the building.
Oh ! What is this?
SLIDE 20 The Dome (Picture of the Millennium Dome. )
(Laughter.)
SLIDE 22 Show Production.
How is the show going to ebb and flow. We use an emotions graph and that helps us concentrate our minds on the quiet bits, and noisy bits and where the climax is at the end. We draw this little graph roughly of how it should go then we apply what we know of how it should go to meet expectations. A simple little tool but very helpful.
SLIDE 23 Graphic Design
We need signage as so on.
SLIDE 24 Scenic Design.
We need to know how everything moves and works as a whole in the spaces.
SLIDE 25 Video Design.
This tells much of the story for the audience.
SLIDE 26 Sound Tracks and Music Development. .
We rarely use skills from outside the company, but occasionally we do and this was one occasion where sound skills were brought in. So that is interesting. There is a lone designer dealing with our company designers.
It is important to consider audiences as for example, teenagers need lots of sound, with lots of welly (volume).
SLIDE 27 Lighting Design.
Lighting design is really important too as you cannot have a Show lit by fluorescent lights.
We had a rig over the top with all the lights on.
SLIDE 28 Technical system design.
Technical system design is essential using a PC computer for controlling the whole thing, and with a sound card , and animatronic controls for all the pneumatics and so on..
SLIDE 29 The Perfect Project?
I wish. Some things to think about.
