My Hospital Pal mobile AR game
Microsoft Consulting Services
Introduction
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My role:
Character Designer, Animation Director My team: Project Manager, Engineer, 3D Modeler, Animator Collaborators: Customer stakeholders Year: 2021 |
Mixed reality is transforming healthcare in many innovative ways from training to surgery navigation. However, another transformative impact was in helping young patients to cope with stress and anxiety during hospital visit. Virtual Reality can distract a patient during a scary medical procedure or help reduce anxiety before and after hospital visit too. The Surrey Hospital in British Columbia had many positive outcomes in leveraging VR experiences with children during procedure. They asked our Mixed Reality team to produce a mobile AR interactive experience that is geared towards young patients. The goal for this app is to keep the children occupied with fun educational activities during a hospital visit to reduce their stress.
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Task
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Here are some of my pencil sketches during the exploration phase. I was coming up with a variety of art styles for this squirrel character that is suitable for the game.
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We settled on this look for Chip that has strike a balance between simplicity (fit the scope and budget), appealing look and personality. My background in traditional Disney style animation came in handy to help bring this character to life.
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Main beats
After we established the game storyline, I illustrated all the key moments of Chip greeting the player, introduction to the check in procedures, and changing to the hospital pajamas. These main illustrations will help guide our 3D artist in modelling, rigging and animation.
Result
Here is our final video showing how the experience is like. Cheesy warning ahead that it may make you go nuts!
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We had a very tight production scope due to the budget constraints. However, we delivered the app successfully to the customer on schedule. I had a lot of fun designing Chip and collaborating with our 3D art team in giving him the right personality!
You can read more about this in the official press release. |
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