Meet So-Hee Woo, creator of the Kid LAROI’s metaverse set

Los Angeles’ Fairfax, a time-honored vacation spot for streetwear and youth tradition, is a becoming neighborhood to listen to So-Hee Woo speak about her AR set design for alternative-rock singer KILLBOY. She arrives in custom-made denims, which she repurposed with big vinyl stickers of hand-designed Doberman Pinschers, then painted in head-turning pink and pink. Not even 5 minutes into the interview, Woo gasps over a ping from her cellphone; her good friend has despatched her a hyperlink to check Pinterest’s new invite-only collage-making app. Woo excitedly unlocks Shuffles’ options, rapidly pulling objects from her photograph library to create a collage that frankly seems to be clever for one thing completed in 30 seconds.

Nimbleness and curiosity are pivotal to all of Woo’s inventive endeavors.

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“It may be horrible,” she says. “It may be the worst factor you’ve ever made. However simply attempt. It expands your thoughts on easy methods to do issues.” 

As the present Head of XR Design at Encore, Woo makes “stay music movies,” a hotly debated time period that she personally loves to make use of to explain her combined actuality units for artists’ digital concert events. Because the music trade inches towards acceptance of the metaverse as an extension of an artist’s identification, Woo likes to show new converts and curious storytellers easy methods to embrace the time period. 

“Some folks hate [the term] ‘stay music movies’ as a result of then it feels much less stay and extra manufactured,” Woo explains. “I prefer it as a result of the way you think about the medium feels extra comparable [to a music video]. It doesn’t should be constrained to the bodily world.”

[Photo via So-Hee Woo]

For Encore, an interactive stay music streaming app co-founded by Child Cudi, Woo has constructed combined actuality units with artists reminiscent of the Child LAROI, Trippie Redd, $NOT, KYLE and Oliver Tree for his or her digital exhibits. A few of her most vibrant collaborative work up to now required modeling 3D heads to drift in outer house, designing a cartoonish hellscape that abruptly cuts to raining greenback payments and dressing an electroluminescent stage towards an ‘80s “retro sundown”-inspired backdrop. The visuals evoke the power of a Hype Williams home get together set whereas nonetheless presenting a brand new approach for artists to strengthen their style and magnificence. The very best a part of all of it: Any artist could make one on their very own in-app.

Although the expertise is an thrilling piece of the pie, it is nonetheless many artists’ first time interacting with the metaverse after they step into Encore’s tiny inexperienced house to carry out. Consequently, what usually occurs is an “AR yard sale,” a time period that Woo coined to explain all of the littered design objects slapped onto an AR house when artists run amok with their new canvases. But augmented actuality nonetheless abides by acquainted visible rules: making a background versus foreground, centering topics for focus and having a function. Woo reminds artists of this as they begin to construct their units.

“[Artists] have been creating digital stuff for a very very long time with music and album covers and music movies,” Woo says. “In AR, the rules are nonetheless comparable. It’s simply increasing that much more.”

[Photo via So-Hee Woo]

Self-proclaimed to have been “tremendous addicted” to the idea of bodily items, Woo thought she was going to make tangible merchandise after she graduated with a serious in industrial design. After a quick stint creating devices for the medical trade, Woo attended graduate faculty to additional examine industrial design with a give attention to speculative design, which taught her easy methods to solid what she thinks the longer term may appear like, then take steps to deal with the issues set sooner or later. Nonetheless, Woo was craving some utility in her work. 

“I wanted a steadiness,” Woo says. “My grad program was once problem-setting, however the industrial design thoughts in me targeted on problem-solving. To me, simply problem-setting was nearly too emotional. The whole lot all the time feels damaged.” 

Throughout her thesis, Woo met with early innovators behind Encore and labored as a contractor to assist them outline their lane in prolonged realities. Impressed by the chance to increase on its use for the longer term, she took a place because the crew’s first Head of XR Design to guide one-off video productions, tech analysis and improvement, and now the democratization of the digital device within the music and creator trade.

[Photo via So-Hee Woo]

For so long as the metaverse wants an articulate definition, the job gives the steadiness that Woo was searching for by way of her educational pursuits.

“Lots of people assume the metaverse is undefined as a result of it’s not totally immersive but,” Woo explains. “That is the problem-setting half. [The metaverse] is an idea we try to form: What are we going to do between now and what it truly is? When now we have outlined that, we higher have made some good selections alongside the way in which.” 

In hopes of defining the way forward for the metaverse by way of a wholesome and humane framework, Woo believes you will need to deliver extra laypeople, from musicians to different creators, into AR by way of accessible language — finally to show them that anybody can do what she does. In her downtime, she enjoys creating “how-to” TikToks to provide sneak peeks into the manageable, no-cost (exterior of a smartphone) work that goes into constructing units. She additionally makes movies to unpack the emotional and psychological sides of the metaverse.

“I supply a novel perspective as a result of I’m not that technical,” she says. “I’m nonetheless a designer and artist. I nonetheless have my core beliefs and values of what I need to say, and AR simply helps me present it.” 

Woo’s core piece of recommendation for anybody who needs to start out? Ask your self what’s the best technique to get motivated. 

“That’s extra necessary than what kind of software program to make use of,” she says. “Should you assume it might be actually humorous to make an AR snail climb alongside your brow and have him high-five you on the way in which down, you be taught the expertise that approach, and that’s a lot extra helpful. That’s your first step to the following factor.”