Designing the Unexpected with Immersive Tech Innovator Alexandre Lupien

An initiative to boost and nurture creativity among the young generation, the Virtual International Design & Creative Masterclass 2021 aims to inspire them to bring forth their talents in this thriving creative era. Organised by The One Academy, the live sharing saw to eight master experts from various industries connecting to a wide audience of secondary school students and industry players keen on broadening their perspectives.

Presenting for the digital media design segment was Alexandre Lupien, the Creative Director of the Theme Parks Division at Moment Factory, a world-renowned multimedia entertainment studio based in Montreal, Canada. Moment Factory designs experiences for event shows, concerts, museums, theme parks, airports and a multitude of other experiences that connect people together in a physical space. They have created more than 450 unique digital media projects worldwide, with clients including Disney, Universal Studios, Sony Pictures and many more.

With nine years of experience at Moment Factory, Alexandre is hailed as its ‘ideas man’ and core creative leader, specialising in visual and special effects as well as technological exploration. In the session, the audience was given a glimpse of how he and his team create experiences that leave room for the unexpected and push the limits of design to reach new boundaries. Prior to his current profession, Alexandre has a background in aerospace engineering. He said that the transition from the ‘expected’ to the ‘unexpected’ pushed him to seek other topics and creative ways to explore his creative mind in other fields.

He started the sharing with a brief history of the evolution of public experiences. Starting from cavemen who build campfires and gathered around to tell stories, audience that gathered in amphitheatres to watch gladiator games, crowds who gather to admire a sky lit up by fireworks and throngs of moviegoers catching the latest flicks in cinemas, people have always sought to share new experiences together in a physical space at the same time. Post-Covid-19, concerts, live and crowd events have seen an innovation to the virtual and augmented stages reaching out to a global audience.

“It’s in our human nature to seek the unexpected. The human mind is always on the lookout for novelty and situations that defy our expectations. This is why we love magic, surprises, things that are completely unusual,” he explained. He also told the audience to not be afraid of the bizarre, as sometimes the bizarre is what’s amazing. To create innovation, one sometimes need to be crazy and think of ideas that are out of the box.

“Your skills, knowledge and competences are what makes you an expert. When learning, it’s important to not get too stuck on which skills to acquire to get into the industry, just develop the skills that you want,” he advised, using himself as an example of how he applied his knowledge of aerospace engineering into his design, making him an expert in his field.

There are two focuses when it comes to designing the unexpected. One has to master the ‘ingredients’ or elements and learn how to look at them under a different light, only then can innovation take place to create the unexpected. Mastering the ingredients is only half the recipe. Next, is to perform a clever delivery of a simple technique by using one’s ingenuity. To make an unexpected situation akin to entering a new realm, one has to blur the line between what is real and what is not.

“It’s easy to create a beautiful image, concept art or illustration, but to make it interesting and something that people would stop and reflect about your work. Always think about this when doing your craft, ‘how can I make my thing a little more different so that it’s interesting and not only beautiful?’,” Alexandre told the audience.

“If you want to be a real designer and a good craftsman in this industry, you have to get your hands dirty, experiment, test new stuff and really get into the realm on what you’re doing,” Alexandre imparted to the young learners about getting hands-on, understanding more and in the process, becoming better.

Lastly, he told the students that instead of asking ‘what do I want to be when I grow up?’, to ask themselves the right question, which is ‘what do I want to be right now?’. If they are living in the moment and working towards their goal, everything else will follow. “Don’t always focus on the future. Focus on what’s in front of you right now and make the most out of it,” encouraged Alexandre.

The One Academy is committed to providing the best art education programmes and continues to nurture its students passionately through its “Masters Train Masters” coaching philosophy, which has been practised for the past three decades, by providing diploma and degree courses namely Advertising & Graphic Design, Digital Animation, Digital Media Design, Film Visual Effects, Interior Architecture & Design, Illustration, Fine Arts and Paris Fashion Design & Pattern Making. For more information on The One Academy, visit www.toa.edu.my or call +603-7875 5510 or e-mail your enquiries to [email protected].