Mindi Lipschultz Creates Innovative Media for California Academy of Sciences

Wow! I just completed 2 years of media design and production on the new California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. It was a fantastic project and I created 31 media pieces including interactive games and kiosks, mini-documentary films utilizing archival footage and stills which were brought to life with some fancy After Effects tricks, edge blended projections to bring static murals alive, soundscapes and more. You can read the full story on the Blooloop Themed Attractions site. I'm posting some samples here for all to see and you can click here to go see more images and video samples. When you get there, click on the first image of my logo on black, then use the "View Album" feature in the upper right to get a slideshow. Don't forget to hit the back button to return to this blog!

One of the most popular attractions at the California Academy of Sciences is my Insect Collecting Game. Players use a hand tool that they swing in mid-air that corresponds to one of 4 scientific collecting tools on thescreen. In this game, players are virtual field scientists on an expedition in Madagascar. Watch the movie to see how it works!

At the conclusion of each round, actual Academy collection drawers animate out to reveal the insects each player collected. The software calculates each catch and places it in the drawer.

In this excerpt from the documentary about the history of the Academy's expeditions to the Galapagos, I wanted to bring to life the archival photos that the scientists took 100 years ago, so we separated them into layers and animated them using a "multiplane 3D" technique and also added special effects to give the visitor the feeling that they are traveling through the actual 1905 landscapes.

Islands of Evolution film  © California Academy of Sciences

There are so many more samples of the exhibit media to show here, but please go to the photobucket to see them, click here. I'll just show a few more ...

Portal to Undersea Galapagos Underwater Adventure, and...

...one of the 4 interactive Kiosks for Africa Hall. Each kiosk has 2 Virtual Safari Adventures that get visitors involved in the stories depicted in the adjacent dioramas.