Texas A&M Visualization Grads Give An Insider’s Look At Digital World Building At SXSW

Gracie Arenas Strittmatter: “It’s a place where you can be yourself, but it can also be something of an extension of yourself in this world that we actually can’t physically feel and touch, but through that experience and through those characters, we actually feel what it’s like to be a part of that world.” — Gracie Arenas Strittmatter on interacting in a digital world: “It’s a place where you can be yourself, but it can also be something of an extension of yourself in this world that we actually can’t physically feel and touch, but through that experience and through those characters, we actually feel what it’s like to be a part of that world.”

Mark Guerrero/Texas A&M Marketing & Communications

Kyle Clark (right): “It always has to come back to creating emotional connectivity to the consumer. World building is nothing if you can’t find a way for the consumer to actually have some sort of relationship or emotional connectivity. It’s not just about the pieces and parts and the physical details of the world. It’s how they impact the user. There needs to be a home for stories.

Mark Guerrero/Texas A&M Marketing & Communications

Tim McLaughlin: “This term world-building has been around for about 200 years now and it takes on a lot of different meanings based upon where someone’s position is.”

Mark Guerrero/Texas A&M Marketing & Communications

Digital world-building technology is constantly changing, but the goal remains the same: create interactive environments that elicit an emotional reaction from audiences.

That’s the message from three visualization experts at Pixar Animation Studios, EA-BioWare and Flight School who gave an insider’s look at how digital worlds in films and video games come to life during the World-Building Creativity & Technology panel talk at Texas A&M [Power] House in Austin on Monday.

At the SXSW Interactive Festival, EA-BioWare Technical Art Director Gracie Arenas Strittmatter, Flight School CEO Kyle Clark and Pixar Animation Studios Technical Director Laura Murphy shared how their experience as Texas A&M University visualization students formed their creative imagination on the panel moderated by Department of Visualization Head Tim McLaughlin, who worked on Star Wars and Jurassic Park.

Discussion topics included how to reign a design team’s creative ambitions, learning not to fear artificial intelligence, connecting emotionally with audiences and the value of human creativity.