Case Studies

Project development ran in two parallel streams: first to develop the storytelling and animation styles with which to populate the Eye and the bespoke engine which would run them; second, to research our very specific and demanding hardware requirements.

Working closely with Prudential, Cogapp developed a series of four 'themes' through which we could tell simple but evocative stories, all centred around images and movies from the Group Digital archive. History stories use an ever changing waterfall of images and movies. Investment stories are illustrated by the strong and sustainable growth of a tree. Community stories orbit a globe, signifying the international nature of the business. Innovation stories explode into being, dynamic and exciting.

As designs progressed our software team designed and built a bespoke display engine. The engine was written in Cocoa and designed to run on a Mac Pro, equipped to run five monitors. The ultra-widescreen nature of the Eye meant that the software must run at a native resolution of 3072 by 768. Using a combination of QuickTime, OpenGL, Quartz Composer and a specially created animation language, the engine displays all text and images live, over a pre-rendered massive scale QuickTime movie (or movies). The requirement for physical projector alignment was reduced with a series of built-in controls that allow the user to shift, rotate and squeeze each projected 'screen', along with colour adjustment and edge blending.

The hardware for the installation was specified after an extensive research period into display technologies. The holographic glass for the installation was supplied by HoloPro in Germany. Created especially for this project, the four metres by one metre holographic film would be the largest continuous piece in Europe. Driven from four projectors, the images would first bounce off a series of mirrors before hitting the specially calibrated lenses within the glass.

The Results