Hasta La Motion!

Cancer Research UK has launched “Life Garden”, a virtual reality garden experience designed to celebrate and thank over 100,000 people who have left a gift in their will to the charity. The virtual reality experience, on display at the Hampton Court Palace Flower Show, transports viewers to a seemingly endless field of flowers after donning an Oculus Rift headset. The Cancer Research UK Life Garden will move to locations around the UK at specially designed ‘Tribute Events’. These events will give family and friends the chance to experience the virtual reality garden as well as the opportunity to come together and celebrate the progress Cancer Research UK has made thanks to these generous gifts. The Life Garden campaign will be supported by in-house PR, social media, email marketing and press ads in the RHS Hampton Court Palace Flower Show catalogue. A video walkthrough showing the virtual reality garden can be found at cruk.org/lifegarden

This YouTube version provides a 360 degree rendition, best viewed in Chrome, Firefox or Opera.

The experience, produced by the VR team at Rushes, runs using software platform Unity, which is traditionally used for developing games and interactive content, and has a powerful set of features for controlling, navigating and interacting with objects in real-time 3D environments. This allows for flexibility and control over the whole experience from beginning to end, including when and where certain events occur, and how the user interacts with the experience. It also allows for sound to be positioned in a 3D space to give the user an added level of immersion.

Cancer Research UK Life Garden Credits

The Cancer Research UK Life Garden concept was developed at Atomic London by creative director Guy Bradbury, copywriter Sam Laub, art director Tim Kitell, agency producer Becky Ormrod, planning director Richard Hill, planner Will Humphrey, business director Kate Mackinnon, senior account manager Jess Feltham, working with Cancer Research UK marketing team Sarah Squire and Sarah Hayman.

The virtual reality experience was developed at Rushes, London, by VR lead developer/CG supervisor Andy McNamara, executive producer Chris McKeeman, producer Caroline Laing, CG artists Adam Lindsey, Nimesh Patel, Craig Travis, unity developer Charles Burt, compositors Noel Harmes (Lead), Sarah Breakwell, Guy Hancock, encodes/deliverables team Leon Grant (Lead) and Jon Kerby, tech support team Tim Wharton and Daniel Borg.

Audio post-production was done at Resonate.