The Wave Live Show Platform

A modular live show platform that took Wave from months-long custom builds to two shows a week.

Role

Sr. Art Development Director

Studio

Wave

Partner

Meta

Years

2021–2026

Team

10–15 full-time artists and tech artists, plus an external art team that grew to dozens ahead of show dates

Collaborators

The Mill, Zoic, Future House, Kloudius

Early Wave shows were built from scratch for each artist. Each one took 3 to 6 months, and the next show started from zero.

Over about 24 months we replaced that with a library of reusable environments, interactions and visual systems, assembled and tuned to each artist and setlist. I designed the stage builder for performers and partners with no art background, prototyped in TouchOSC with show data in Sheets. The library grew to hundreds of saved looks, most made by non-artists.

Character builder
Early shows gave every performer a custom-sculpted avatar, weeks or even months of work each. I worked with the tech art team to design and build a character builder and its asset pipeline, so performers could choose from a library of personalization options and we could make a new avatar in hours. Performers gave input on their look while we kept creative control, and we showed them the avatar ahead of time so they were comfortable with it. The faster pipeline also let us take late changes we couldn't support before.

Live capture
Every show was performed live in our custom-built capture space and streamed as it happened. Avatars retargeted to each performer's proportions, driving body and face in real time, and performers watched a screen showing a camera view from inside the virtual venue so they could see and play to their fans. I held the visual bar for the capture and performance work. We also developed tracking for guitars, drums and keyboards. On the art side I set it up and tested it as it was built, through dedicated band tests and live shows with Slenderbodies and Eric Zayne + D Mills.

Join and drop data showed audience sentiment was set at the opening and the finale. So every show got an interactive performer reveal up front and a participatory finale at the end.

Emotes and toys
The lobby prototype shows our experiments with interactive toys and emotes. An emote is a VFX moment any audience member can launch at any time, a mix of several ways to communicate: fans could send the performer messages in words or pictures. Through participation they earned bigger, longer-lasting effects, up to summoning giant neon dragons mid-performance. The play people already know from live shows, taken somewhere new on a digital platform.