AT&T partnered with Magic Leap which is an AR mixed reality headset to create DIRECTV NOW as an AR app in their store. It is the first of its kind a multi-screen, spatial computing streaming service. Another motion designer and I, Francis De La Torre, worked with the developers in the AT&T innovation team to bring the DirecTV Now experience to Magic Leap.
DESIGN
To showcase this as an AR app it needed to define its purpose of why it is augmented reality in the first place. In brainstorming what the intro to this app would look like and how to make it on brand, I came up with some explorations that utilized the spatial mapping aspect of Magic Leap. The designs were meant to interact with the user's environment such as the particles shaping around the ground plane and coming together to form the logo. Also I worked with the Innovation team to design and 3-D model the app card and app icon for DIRECT NOW in the Magic Leap app store.
ANIMATION
With an approved version of the design from the marketing team, we focused on creating this intro animation in Cinema4D and Maya. The pipeline from Maya to Unity was a big hurdle that we had to find workarounds for especially for Magic Leap's Unity build which still had many bugs. Also the native UI motion for DirectTV Now had to be redesigned for the Magic Leap viewing experience. I animated the way the content loads from the carousel with the glowing orb shimmer.
MAGIC LEAP APP STORE ICON
With the internal app redesign and development coming closer to launching we needed an app icon an app details page to officially be in the Magic Leap app store. For this app icon design I pulled the blue and purple gradients native to the DirecTV Now loading screens and incorporated AT&T's globe as a 3D element.
Check out more about this app on the Magic Leap website: https://www.magicleap.com/news/news/directv-now-beta-live-in-magicleap-world