Arcane

Offline experience design
Project Overview
This is a work project I did at Blackbow. Arcane is the derivative animation series of the game league of Legend produced by Riot. Our goal was to design the offline Opening Ceremony of Shenzhen Premiere for the show and bring fans to the realistic and immersing Arcane world.
My Contributions
I was the chief designer of space and installation design for the show. I took charge of space and installation design, including site research, spatial planning, circulation design, scene narratives and installation design. I also connected with the construction side to finalize details and supervised construction to guarantee the progress.
Opening Ceremony of Shenzhen Premiere for Arcane
Space Designer
Jun 2021 — Nov 2021

Concept & Research

CONCEPT
Research

Space & Experience

Overall Planning

The factory has two floors, up and down, just like the two cities in the TV. Therefore, I made F1 as the Piltover city and -1F as Zaun, where two cities have different views and create vast contrast.

The long shape of the factory is great for a linear narrative, so the viewers could experience the space in the sequence of atmospheric space, interactive space and auditorium.

Spatial Planning
Linear Circulation Design
Atmospheric Space - Piltover

Piltover is a civic and more developed city on the upper part of the continent. The space is designed to give a wide, steampunk feel and use packaging and projection showing the invented artifacts and Piltover characters.

Piltover
Atmospheric Space - Zaun

Zaun had been part of Pilterover, while after a disaster It turned out to be an underground city. It is the dark side of Piltover. It steals high tech from Piltover, but people live a poor life. The space was designed to use physical props, neon lights as well as smoke to render the black market and forbidden artifacts.

Zaun

Zaun was one of the hardest part of the project. The site space is long and narrow, and the props are small but costly. To avoid viewers getting bored, but also keep the budget, we decided to make props into several assemblages instead of overspread them in the whole space. I designed 16 basic props and combined them into 4 different combinations to show 4 different stories.

Props designed based on the animation
Zaun Walkthrough
Interactive Space - Jinx

Jinx is the main character of Arcane. She is destructive, maniac with a fragile heart. The center of interaction space is to recreate her inner world by projection and mapping, and to simulate her mental stress by allowing viewers doing graffiti on the columns.

Rendering - Jinx's inner world
Interactive Space - Birth

At the start of animation, Jinx was a little girl with innocent. However, every audience have their own understanding of the character. To better expeience Jinx’s transformation, audience can use digital graffiti to freely express their own birth.

Rendering - Birth: Digital Graffiti
Interactive Space - Growth

Jinx has been unable to defeat Wei on the strength of boxing, which is foreshadowed for the two later contest and opposition. The growth part is to translate this state of mind by a boxing stage. Viewers can boxing on the stage through a designed boxing device and compete with the character.

Rendering - Growth: Boxing stage

Jinx grew up in fighting and competing. To better illustrate her growth, we decided to develop 3 Jinx-themed 8bit mini-games to let viewers go deeper in her growth.

Rhythm Monkey
Bombs Racer
JINXED Larceny
Rendering - Growth: Arcade Game
Interactive Space - Trigger

Through interactive projection, let fans experience Jinx's violent state. People can use Gatlin to play the AR shooting game.

Rendering - Growth: Gatlin
Auditorium + Entertainment

After experiencing the atmosphere of scenes in the animation and explore and inner world of characters, the auditorium is ready for them to see the animation. After the show, audience are free to use the entertainment and rest place to after party, shoot pictures and have drink.

On-site Gallery

Interactive Wall

Arcade Games

Zaun Black Market

Entrance

Zaun and Plitover

Black Market

Interactive space - Gatlin

Divider

Auditorium

Interactive space - Gatlin

Plitover

Interactive space - Jinx's inner world

Arcade Games

Boxing Stage

NPC Scenarios