../Files/Ancient/Internet/Stupidity/M/

MOUNTAINS of
MOUTHNESS

Brief

Two animated mountains boomingly (new word?) relayed Twitter messages out loud to each other and the world using a text-to-speech function. The mountainous proclamations ranged from random nonsense to popular catch phrases, as people watched the mountains continue to declare the word of Twitter in real time, either in their browser or in VR.

What I did

Creative direction
Original concept
Experience direction
Art direction

Type

Browser Experience (stupid but oh so fun)

Year

2015

Team

Magnus V. Östergren : Creative Lead
Nils Friberg : 3D
Joakim Areschoug : 3D
Thomas Oger : Producer

Awards & Mentions

FWA site of the day
FWA Shortlist

TIME.com
IGN
Kotaku
Game Informer

NICE QUOTE + VIDEO

FROM TIME.COM

“These Green Animated Mountains Reading Your Tweets Aloud Are The Thing You Didn’t Know You Needed Today”

LINK TO VERY IMPORTANT ARTICLE HERE

MOUNT EIN and MOUNT DEUX

This project holds a special place in my heart, inspired by an idea I once had for a children’s book. It envisioned a quaint village nestled between two mountains with a NEED for proclaiming their love to each other in booming voices, day and night. When I got the chance to test our then spanking new WebGL creation toolset we were working on, I adapted the story of the mountains to this project.

CHALLENGE

We wanted to showcase what could be done with our WebGL production tool Goo Create (imagine Unity meets After effects but in the browser, now there’s Spline instead so use that, it’s awesome and they also survived as they didn’t have a complete idiot as head of sales/growth).

SO.

What could we make that really tapped into the REALTIME of things, and still showcasing 3D and browser based VR in a fun and new way?

Well. Let me tell you. Mountains. Not one, but two mountains.

SOLUTION

Website with a 3D world where the user could roam around either on their desktop or in a..:
…VR mode where the user became one of the deaf villagers and look around from their point of view while listening to the mountains shout out inane tweets
Fun adoption of text to speech using the brilliant Acapela groups voices

“The Mountains of Mouthness” brought this concept to life, allowing the mountains to vocalize tweets sent to them. By tweeting with “@MoMouthness” or “#mouthness,” your words become the mountains’ LOUD declarations, echoing in a majestic voice that reached the farthest edges of their virtual domain.

We also added a fun little feature where you could witness the spectacle through the eyes of a village dweller, using your phone, tablet or VR headset to immerse yourself in the joyous banter of these lovable mountains.

RESULTS

Reception was very positive and it was a joy following the first batch of dedicated fans in the community going all in on trying to solve this alternate reality game even if it’s just the first early version. And we’re still work in progress with this one so stay tuned for further updates.

Extract

REACTIONS, PRESS, MEDIA

Here’s what some news sites and blogs had say about it:
(Please excuse and dead links and 404s, I haven’t had time to check these in a while)

SHOTS

Enjoy some random shots + some quick doodles and sketches I made for the artists to try to make sense of and model in 3D. More to come when I dig up the work files from a hard drive that is currently somewhere, somehow and sometime.