Waking Wonderland was a true labour of love for Secret Location. As head of development, I shepherded the project from its inception through multiple rounds of prototyping as it evolved from a multi-player, freeroam virtual reality experience to a projection mapped, mixed reality adventure. The launch trailer for the finished experience is below.
From its earliest stages, the experience sought to capture the sense of wonder at the heart of Alice in Wonderland. The first piece of media created to for the project was a mood reel of visual references grouped across sensory themes. It set the tone that would be our north star for the project.
In building out our characters we looked for textural inspirations to support our sensory themes. The Cheshire Cat was a natural alignment with ideas of vision and colour, and found its form in the swirling diffusion of ink in water. The evolution of the character is seen above, with the production version at right.
Our environments reimagined iconic Wonderland through an immersive, experiential lens. The Garden of Live Flowers (seen above in early concepting (left) and final production (right) plays on scale and colour, rising up around viewers as they navigate the space. Below, we see the evolution of Alice’s Drawing Room from Through the Looking Glass, where reflections lead to surreal, parallel worlds.
The experience is currently live at Illuminarium in Toronto, where it has been embraced by audiences of all ages.