ThunderGong 2022 and Hatrick Swayze
Last month I was sitting behind my computer, side-stage at the Uptown Theater here in Kansas City. Just a few feet away, Jason Sudeikis, Fred Armisen and Will Forte (the Mt. Rushmore of my comedy heroes) were rehearsing songs. “This is so insanely cool,” I thought, “but I’ll have to appreciate this later after I figure out why there’s no audio signal getting from my PC to the mixer.”
The show was ThunderGong, an annual benefit concert created by the Steps of Faith Foundation and hosted by Jason Sudeikis. My friends Randall Statler and Brandon Wood and I were invited to create an interactive element for the show. What we created was Hatrick Swayze, a live-controlled, animated version of this year’s show mascot, designed by Micah Smith.
Our setup allowed voice actor Ed Goodman to bring Hatrick to life and be a character Jason could interact with during the show. We also created a touch screen control system that allowed Randall to puppet the character, bringing him to life with emotions, reactions and animations.
Here’s a peek at the Hatrick Swayze Control Center we were using backstage.
The entire application was created in TouchDesigner. I absolutely love this framework and can’t imagine creating this system with anything else. TouchDesigner’s workflow allowed us to quickly iterate from working prototypes to a final buttoned-up app that performed perfectly.
The setup was relatively simple. Ed was speaking into a mic and our application analyzed the incoming audio to make Hatrick’s mouth move in a way that matched what Ed was saying. We also gave Ed a MIDI controller that controlled certain elements like what direction Hatrick was looking. Our team had a backstage preview of Hatrick who was then displayed on an LED wall on stage.
The majority of Hatrick’s interactivity was driven by this touchscreen interface. This gave Randall instant access to all of Hatrick’s possible emotions, reactions and animations.
L to R: Me, Brandon, Randall, Ed, Guy whose name I didn’t catch :)
Ed, Billy, Brandon, Dustin, Randall and Jason plan Hatrick’s segments of the show.
Hatrick has a lil’ blow up.
The project was so fun and the show was an absolute blast. A huge thanks to Billy Brimblecom and Steps of Faith for including us and also thanks to Blake Young at Loud Productions who we couldn’t have done this without.
