Fast & Furious Netflix Series
Spy Racers
One day I got an email from a recruiter at DreamWorks, asking if I was interested in designing and animating fictional user interfaces (FUI) for a new show on Netflix. Obviously I thought this was a joke. Why would DreamWorks need FUI? Certainly not in Kung Fu Panda, or How to train your Dragon....turns out, it wasn't a joke at all.
Long story short, I was given the opportunity to work on season 1 and 2 of a new Netflix show in the Fast & Furious universe. It was a fantastic experience. Everybody was very welcoming and professional and my boss, Art Director Christine Bian gave us a lot of freedom to be creative with our UI solutions.
The main challenge working on a show like this was, that the timing was set. The voice actors record first, then they make an animated storyboard, which is then handed to us designers with a short brief of what they wish to see. Also the dimensions and obviously framerate are set in stone and cannot be changed. This is not necessarily a bad thing, it was just a different kind of workflow compared to web design or conventional UI design.
Concept window design for an operating system
My fellow FUI guru Lasha Brodzeli created the look and feel of the 'operating system' you see on the show. It was a new and interesting experience, having to stick to someone else's design.
This was my first task. To create a UI that makes it clear that the driver's seat will eject in 5 seconds.
Conclusion
Even though I can't show you everything I designed, i am very grateful that DreamWorks came to me as the second FUI designer. As a designer and fan of FUI, it showed me, that today, FUI's are taken more seriously and are a plan in the production. It's not just some glowing circles anymore. People want to see 'real' FUI's that could work in the real world, even though they are fictional.