Background
The AV Awards 20th anniversary celebration just wouldn’t have been complete without a birthday cake. But this culinary creation needed to have an innovative edge. Projection and video mapping specialists Motion Mapping suggested combining sugar craft by artist Angie Harris with technology to map a six foot cake complete with on-theme content – all powered by a Datapath Fx4 display processor.
Stuart Harris, creative director at Motion Mapping, took on the project, ensuring the projection mapping was aligned with AV Awards assets such as virtual brand ambassador ‘Gizmo’ and fonts.
The Challenge
The Solution
Audio Visual creativity, plus cake, are not a typical fit but Stuart and his team delivered a tasty solution. “The technical process consists of projection mapping on the front two faces and sugar craft modelling on the back tiers,” says Stuart. “We 3D modelled a version of Gizmo using a 2D reference image and animated various components of Gizmo.”
Once Angie Harris, Cake Artist had created a scaled and accurately sized cake which was fondant covered to precise measurements, sugar sculptures and edible decorations were designed. The next stage involved creating animations and video content to map on the cake faces and utilising media servers to align the cake with the animations and manage the Epson projectors. Finally, a detailed plan for the rigging and projector placements was produced to accurately map onto the cake.
“The size and physics involved in producing a cake such as this were always going to be a challenge purely from a scale perspective,” says Stuart. “To achieve this, we ensured all measurements of the different parts fitted together perfectly in the early stages.” The end result was a stunning centrepiece that caught the eye of all 1,400 attendees at the industry’s premier awards ceremony.”We can always rely on Datapath to perform the high workload needed for these creative projects,” added Stuart.


"The Datapath Fx4 is our default choice for multiple output video management. For its rock-solid reliability, we wouldn't consider anything else."
The Kit List
VIDEO OF THE PROJECT:
www.motionmapping.co.uk
www.epson.co.uk
www.green-hippo.com
www.angieharriscakeartist.com