Nalara

This project came from an idea in an annual one-on-one session with the art director. One of the things we talked about was what project or product we could develop ourselves. With the rise of AI, a lot of companies were implementing it into their systems, from internal tools that help staff with their tasks to chatbots that face the customer and answer the common questions.

Based on what AI can do, we thought it should not stop at a chat window on your phone or browser. Imagine you are in a hospital, an airport or any public space. You are lost, or you need some information. The normal thing we do is ask the staff. What is the procedure to do A, how can I get to point B, and so on. Simple. But let me challenge you: how many times have you asked someone for directions and still got lost?

Humans have limitations. Maybe the directions were not clear, or you happened to ask someone on their first day working there. And from their side, answering the same question every single day is tedious. So this is how Nalara was born: an AI that takes the repetitive job and handles the general one, like greeting people, giving information, and more.

Besides the AI technology, MetaHuman was also on our radar. A realistic human character that is relatively quick to develop felt like something we had to try.

I spent roughly two weeks developing the proof of concept on my own. It got pitched to a higher level, and in a short time it went into the production pipeline.

Going from that early stage into production, I got overwhelmed with the number of tasks that needed to be done. So we brought in outside help: a character artist, a lighting artist and an AI engineer. I was still the one responsible for making sure everything looked good, worked as intended, and had no problems until it shipped.