Visteon: Driving Innovation Challenge
Posted in: AnimationTue 10th Jun 2014, by Mike Hepburn | Eventcoverage
From February to May, CGSociety partnered with Visteon, a leading supplier of electronics in the automotive industry, to challenge the world’s digital artists to design the future of in-vehicle user experience. We were looking for something that will revolutionize the way we interact with the vehicles that we drive.
Visteon is dedicated to being a market leader, and wants to create the best solutions for its customers. To achieve this goal, Visteon continually strives to not only work with the newest and best technology, but to apply this technology in novel ways that address the needs of consumers. Hence the birth of the first Visteon: Driving Innovation Challenge, which gave CGSociety’s huge community of artists the opportunity to imagine, innovate, and help create the future experiences that drivers will enjoy.
To address this challenge, we were looking for:
– A revolutionary design for a user interface or menu structure
– A revolutionary user experience for the driver of a vehicle
– A revolutionary way that users can better interact with the features in their vehicle while operating it
As a minimum requirement, artists had to create an interface that enabled the user to interact with information on one or more displays in the vehicle. These displays could have been located in traditional or non-traditional areas, using traditional or non-traditional technology. The key is that the method of interaction should have been unique, innovative, and improves the experience of consumers in vehicles. At a minimum, the following information must have been available for the driver:
– Speedometer
– Fuel gauge
– Navigation/route information
– Radio/music selection and operation
– Climate controls
The judges were
Syd Mead (one of the most celebrated concept designers of our time, having been responsible for many memorable designs from feature films to interiors and even toys. His most well-known works include production designs for Blade Runner, TRON, Aliens and 2010),
Kemp Remillard (Senior Concept Artist at Massive Black who has worked with such clients as: Nintendo, Sega, Sony, EA, Riot Games, CCP, NCsoft, Hasbro, MTV, Playboy, Nestle, Guerilla Games, Volition, THQ, Konami),
Royce Channey (Senior Experience Designer for Visteon’s Global Innovation studio, who is responsible for synthesizing research and design vision into engaging concepts that represent the future of the automotive user experience),
T.C. Wingrove (Senior manager who is responsible for leading a global team, which includes program managers, engineers, designers and human-machine interface (HMI) experts) and
Kyle Entsmiger (Innovation Manager in Visteon’s Innovation Department. In his 15+ year experience he has worked in different industries ranging from the Visual Effects Industry working on such movies as “Exorcism of Emily Rose”, “Chronicles of Riddick”, “Constantine”, and “Mr. and Mrs. Smith”; to owning his own studio in the Video Game Industry, Perpetual FX Creative, releasing such games as “Mindcrime”, “Alien Monster Bowling League” and “Rocket Racing League”).
The Grand Prize is the once in a lifetime opportunity to work with Visteon to develop the artist’s Idea into a property, and present the finished concept property at the Visteon Booth at CES, 2015. Additionally, over $20,000 of prizes were on offer from some of the biggest names in the industry: Formlabs (the Form 1 3D printer), NVIDIA (Quadro K4000 graphics accelerator and Shield mobile gaming system), SideFX (Houdini), NewTek (Lightwave 11.5), Video Co-Pilot (Ultimate 3D Bundles), 3DConnexion (SpaceMouses), CGWorkshops (Workshops and Training on Demand) and Ballistic (Prize winning digital art books).
And the winners are (drumroll) …
Grand Prize: Alen Khoduzadeh (Blackramstudio)
Blackramstudio – http://challenge.cgsociety.org/visteon/entry/blackramstudio
Artist’s Comment
I am very excited. After moving to the United States in 2010, my wife and I have been through a lot trying to make it here, now hearing that my passion and my hard work has finally paid off, I cannot find words to explain how I feel. I am very grateful for this opportunity and I cannot wait to face what I prefer to call opportunities, rather than challenges that will be coming our way.
Best 3D Concept: Mike Luard (Miked08)
Miked08 – http://challenge.cgsociety.org/visteon/entry/Miked08
Artist’s Comment
Wow, it’s amazing to be one of the winners! Congratulations to the other winners/entrants, I found your work to be inspirational. And thank you to Peter Nickalls for composing a wonderful piece of ambient music, it really added a lot! The work produced in these competitions is one of the reasons I chose to do design and illustration a few years ago so it’s pretty surreal to be one of the winners. Thank you so much.
Best 2D Concept: Ed Martin and Edwin Li (Bolt)
Bolt – http://challenge.cgsociety.org/visteon/entry/bolt
Artist’s Comment
Winning feels great! Doing truly exciting design work in our spare time is hard sometimes…. But it’s great to be rewarded with this recognition. Well done to everyone that submitted an entry and many thanks to the judges for seeing the quality behind our simple, yet truly ground breaking idea.
Best Usability/User Experience Concept: Quinn Watkins (Qwatkins)
Qwatkins – http://challenge.cgsociety.org/visteon/entry/qwatkins
Artist’s Comment
This challenge piqued my interest as I thoroughly enjoy designing at the intersection of form and function especially when it involves technically intricate parameters. Thinking about the next revolution in driving interfaces was fun and enlightening and even more thrilling to receive an award for it. Thank you CG Society for hosting such fantastic global competitions, render on!
Best User Interface Concept: Alexander Wieting (Awieting)
Awieting – http://challenge.cgsociety.org/visteon/entry/AwieTing
Artist’s Comment
It was a really fun ride creating this piece. Since I usually create interfaces for desktop applications, it was a nice change of pace and a new challenge to combine this with 3D-Modelling and Hardware Interaction.
Usually I have target-audiences and focus-groups in mind, but this time it was focused on innovation and my personal vision. Thus I was able to approach UI/UX totally differently.
This was really interesting and I learned quite a bit and was able to dive into some tools I usually don´t use in combination.
I am really grateful to Visteon, the orginazers and sponsors for this challenge and want to congratulate all contestants and of course the other artists for their awarded Artworks.
Best Artwork: Adam Grania (Eden-3D)
Eden-3D – http://challenge.cgsociety.org/visteon/entry/Eden-3d
Artist’s Comment
Getting the best artwork title is a huge joy for me, especially in a competition organized by the CGSociety where very talented people are. Making this work was fun for me because I like designing something new from scratch. It lets me use my full potential and imagination. Congratulations to all the winners.
Best Animation/Motion Graphics: Davide Weber (Think-Yogurt)
Think-Yogurt – http://challenge.cgsociety.org/visteon/entry/Thinkyogurt/final_image/10007329
Most Original Concept: Abraham Sepulveda Gutierrez (Ikon3d)
Ikon3d – http://challenge.cgsociety.org/visteon/entry/Ikon3d
Artist’s Comment
It was great to be in this challenge to see how other people visualize the near automotive future. Car design has been my passion since I was a child, and I’ve been following what Visteon have been doing for automotive industry for a while, so being in the Visteon Challenge was a great honor. Getting the “Most Original Concept” is more than great! I would like to thank you, Cgtalk, Visteon Team and all sponsors for give me the opportunity to express my idea and I’m really happy winning this prize.
Post a Comment