Winchester Museum has undertaken a complete refurbishment of its Anglo Saxon Galleries. As part of this Motivation was commissioned to design and create the content for a large two-screen interactive display.
This was to convey layered information about the history of Winchester based upon maps of the city through the ages accompanied by images of objects and other historic illustrations.
All this information would be delivered through the perspective of four significant characters with important roles at the time. These individuals were to be portrayed by 3D CGI character animations.
Hants Cultural Trust had contracted Audionation-UK to carry out the 3D creations and animations and in discussion with their team it became clear that rather than simply recording voice-over artists it would be more cost-effective and creatively flexible if we decided to film actors using the latest motion-capture techniques.
The style of visualisation was deliberately in a CGI ‘adventure game’ style to attract younger visitors.
Of course the core of any characterisation is the script. We wrote these in a tone hinting towards a generic historical idiom – real Anglo Saxons and Normans would have spoken forms of old French and Latin, so no chance of portraying reality!!
Each sequence is accompanied by supporting visual material – objects and captions – enhancing the messages being conveyed.
A “home” screen also provides other menu options from which visitors can choose to look at objects and further details about Winchester via an interactive time-line.
