AR PRIDE QUEENS

For me, Pride is a collective celebration of individuality and living one's truth, and also a celebration of the bravery required to live your truth. When I set out to come up with the designs, I focused on the one feeling I had at my first Pride: overwhelming joy.

See The Queens in AR Here!

The Task

Yahoo News needed an AR experience to accompany news articles surrounding LGBTQ+ Pride Month. I pitched the idea to Yahoo News to feature stylized and unique "drag queen" characters, rigged and animated to dance in a loop. Yahoo News was excited about the idea and agreed to move forward. The delivery timeline was aggressive, with only 3 weeks from start to finish, and the project needed to be of high quality to be successful.

My Approach

As the art director, I created the stylized designs of the queens and directed a small team of 2 artists to complete the models and character rigs. I identified key elements to make the drag queens look abstract yet specific and appealing, and also worked with Yahoo News' internal ERG representing LGBTQ+ diversity to get creative and design sign-off to make sure we were being as inclusive to the community as possible. I used my experience in character animation to craft the queens’ dance moves, ensuring that they met the creative direction, standards of quality, and technical AR requirements.

Results

Despite the aggressive timeline, we were able to deliver the AR Pride Queens on time and of high quality. The stylized drag queen characters were unique and eye-catching, and their animations were appealing and lively. The project was a success, and the AR experience received positive feedback from Yahoo News readers. The team deepened their understanding of creating stylized and unique characters while working within a tight timeline. Overall, the project was a great success for Yahoo News and helped celebrate LGBTQ+ Pride Month.

"Aly is a fantastic artist with a great creative eye. She is relentless in her pursuit of new skills, and actively works on elevating them. Her technological aptitude really enables her to deliver projects that look wonderful and function well in their delivery platform. Aly adeptly handled outsourced artists and vendors, and mentored junior artists."

Guenever Goik, Director of 3D Art at Jadu AR