KFC - The
hard way
Project Description
A VR escape the room game for KFC where you must learn to prepare and cook the chicken using KFC's 7 step method.
Credits
Agency: W+K
Design studio: W+K Motion
Technical Development: W+K Lodge
Full credits below
Selects
Working with a large team of creatives over a few months to build KFC a VR game based in a Kitchen escape room run by the colonel. It was a great experience and one of the most fun projects I've ever had at W+K.
Worked in several roles starting with some very early visual development and tech dialogues. After some rounds of viz dev with concept artists, we moved into production and I was able to teach the team several game specific modeling, texturing and animation tools to ramp up a small team very quickly. Most of the team had limited experience in 3D for advertising and making the transition to a performant "low" poly game building enviroment was part of my role. I also taught them how to make the most out of using Substance Designer and Painter, a first for almost everyone else on the team.
During production, I was able to assist the art tech on our team with Unity specific level building and making sure models were being produced with the right parameters including the crazy clock timer scene.
I also had the pleasure of animating large sections of the game. This ranged from the players hand models as well as the Gantry robot whose mechanical arms would manipulate the environment and flow freely from his body.
Process
Some behind the scenes look at work in progress assets. Alot of these were a direct collaboration between multiple members of the various groups working on this. Generally, not a single person owned one asset from start to finish.
Concept art below made by Michelle Kwon.
Robots &
Clocks & time manipulation
A big section of the VR experience is this timed section where the chicken fries for several minutes in a custom pressure cooking deep fryer. We wanted to show all these clocks that the colonel had collected countdown that time and go absolutely crazy.
This section had many individual assets, all with their own animation cycles. I spent a lot of time working on this section. From modeling, texturing, animation, and level layout in Unity. I also had the pleasure of animating over 10,000 frames of animation for the gantry and setting up all those animation controllers for the in game triggers.
Music Box
Highlighting this cute and fun little asset that I had the pleasure of animating and implementing into Unity. Learning how Unity handles object parenting was a really exhastive test of patience. Having the robot pick this up and put it down and also having it tied to gameplay mechanics while not breaking in VR was a real feat.
360 Capture
Here's some super compressed and choppy 360 gameplay capture to watch on youtube. Not quite as good as playing it in VR but it works in a pinch.
Credits
Col. Sanders voice: Jim Meskimen
Modeling and Animation: W+K Motion
Design Support: W+K Studio Portland
Sound design, recording and mixing: Joint Editorial
Music Houses: Walker, Butter Music, Heavy Duty Music, Marmoset
PR: Edelman
Creative Directors: Freddie Powell, Jason Kreher
Brand Creatives: Lloyd Winter, Micheal Brandes
Design Director: Jonathan Minori
Technical Director: Ryan Kee
Executive Producers: Dennis Hanley, Saira Weigel
Producers: Micah Gendron, Teresa Lai
Developers: Nate Horstmann, Michael Latzoni, Roger Braunstein, Jesica Marquez
Concept Art: Nicholas Weigel
Technical Artist (Unity): Scott Garner
3D Artists: Mark Lundgren, Jeff Ackley,
John Van Unen, Daniel Moreno,
Foley Artists: Natalie Huizenga, Noah Woodburn