Q&A: How to Extend Reality with Kathryn Hicks
Immersive experience designer Kathryn Hicks
Kathryn Hicks—immersive experience designer and Co-Founder & Chief of Games for BVO—is like really creative. Read the Q&A from our interview available on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
ZACK ORSBORN:
So I'm joined by the amazingly talented Kathryn Hicks. Kathryn is an immersive experience artist. She's the founder of Creature Studio which has done work for HBO’s House of the Dragon, Snapchat, Hilton. I found out about you through Baron Von Opperbean and the River of Time and BVO. You're the Co-Founder and Chief of Games, and I had to have you on the show.
So thanks for joining me.
KATHRYN HICKS:
Thanks for having me.
ZO:
I am a big tech nerd. I love figuring out all the new technology coming out and love immersive experiences. What does it mean to be an immersive experience artist?
KH:
I guess with me and my background, I always think spatially. So, I’ve worked in what's called the extended reality industry for ten years.
Extended reality is essentially an umbrella term for augmented reality, virtual reality, mixed reality. But I've always taken reference from like location based entertainment, which the immersive experience industry is in. Immersive experiences essentially means you're feel like you're transported into a different world. And even theme parks have elements of immersive experiences like Universal and Disney. Whether you're going to like Diagon Alley or different areas, you're immersed in this world.
But I guess this immersive experience artists are—people like throw a lot of titles for me, but I'm technically like a 3D generalist. For what that means for me is like, you know, thinking spatially, building worlds, thinking about, like, what is behind the worlds, like the weather, what type of characters, what type of environment you're in, the story aspect of it, as well as how people experience the world they're walking in. Like is it comfortable for them?
How are they interacting with the space? There's aspects of level design into it. I guess level design also has similarities to user experience design as well. So I guess I'm thinking on the design side as well as the creativity side and like the world building side currently. So I know Chris [Reyes, co-founder of BVO] is very like hands on.
He's building everything out and he is thinking about his lore and his story. I'm thinking about what it looks like extended digitally. What does the city look like? What are the multiple cities look like? And we won't be saying this publicly, even though I'm on this podcast and you are hearing me saying this right now: all these worlds are alternate versions of Memphis.
So whenever I go to downtown Memphis, I've been taking photographs and looking at all the details. I'm like, okay, what makes this Memphis? If you notice, there's a lot of red brick buildings downtown and a lot of unique elements of it. So I want to take those characteristics into what these different worlds are, like different Memphis elements and Easter eggs and things.
Even, Crosstown Concourse has really small reliefs on the side of the buildings that are like grapes and stuff that people will usually pass by. And I guess I got that from my—I used to be a traditionalist artist. I used to be really into drawing and painting. I was very anti digital art, which is ironic now because I've 180 degreed that.
But I take the elements of like foundations of art and design and like with research and studying, I take that into everything I do, whether it's painting something, drawing something, sculpting something, lighting, etc.
ZO:
I love that and that like super honed-in observation skill. How did you develop that skill of noticing things that people don't usually see?
KH:
Really observation. Like with people watching. If I want to come up with ideas for characters—looking at how people walk, how people interact with things, their body shape, their muscular structure, body fat ratio, etc.. Same thing with a building. A building is a character. A city is a character. Think of Gotham City in Batman. Gotham City is a character.
So I think about it the same way where, okay, what makes this character unique? What is its story? Does the building have a lot of rust and decay? Has a car gone through it? I know that's a bit extreme, but has a car gone through this building? Is there remnants of this? And so I'm thinking about that, as I'm like, building out the digital side of BVO and even just kind of working on some sort of book for it.
ZO:
Oooo, I would love to read that. And with your creative process, when you have, like, say you have to create these alternate versions of Memphis and you have these worlds you create, how do you begin a project? What's the middle of it and how do you complete it?
KH:
I guess right now I usually block things out. So research, take reference photos, and then once I have enough of that I will block things out and lay that out and see what it looks like from different camera angles.
Because I guess the way we have the world set up now, at least on the ones I’m working on, which is a window display. I have a camera set. So I'm seeing what this looks like to the camera. I'll be adding ships to what's on display now. Currently, it's very much a work in progress, but I'll see how ships flow through the city.
What types of ships will be here? I definitely want trolleys in there. I'm going to have flying trolleys in there. How are the people walking in this environment? Because there might be, like small remnants of people in the buildings and stuff. So it’s really a sketch, whether it's research, it's some sort of sketch from blocking, from lighting, from like double checking the textures.
Which textures are pretty much like the color of the buildings, the painted side of the buildings. And then rendering and then seeing what it looks like rendered. There's a lot of testing and iteration.
ZO:
You said you started out in traditional art when you were younger. What interested you about art? Were you always a creative kid?
How did that develop?
KH:
I guess I always wanted to be like some sort of concept artist or illustrator. And I went through like painting—in undergrad, I went through studio. I went to undergrad at University of Memphis, and I started out as a studio art major, and it was very figurative. I used to love drawing dragons all the time, and my mom said I would never make money drawing dragons.
Loved creatures, monsters, dragons.
Grew up watching 1950s and 60s black and white horror films with my dad so, Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney, Vincent Price, and then I have my studio is Creature Studio. And then transitioned to more figurative work. Loved drawing people, always drew from life. I was very realistic, and I had a very baroque art style like contrast and detail.
And then I started to transition to more stylized figures. So more caricatures—not like caricatures in the weird, like big head stuff, but angular, very angular in design style. And at some point, I think my sophomore year in college, I'm like, I want to be an animator. And I saw with [being an] animator, I'm like, oh, you should know graphic design.
So I transitioned to graphic design, which graphic design is not really related to animation. At the time, I didn't know that, but I'm glad I did graphic design because it was very helpful for me, and it was really difficult for me to transition from traditional art to design, specifically graphic design, because I had to think differently. After I finished graphic design, I realized, like, no, like graphic design—when you're doing design work, it's like a character. It's character design. You know, a brand is a character. The brand standards are the other elements of that character design. It's a process book. And so I think post-grad, I realized, oh, there's more connections to traditional art and like more of the figurative character, illustrative work.
And I think when I was in graphic design, I separated so much. And so it was really difficult for me. I struggled. I'm not great at graphic design. But when I finished, I was helping my friends start up in the Crews Center—he was doing fintech, and at the time it was like a PayPal type thing.
But anyway, doing that and then I applied like the Archer Malmo apprenticeship and got it with flying colors. I went to SCAD and I went there for animation and like, okay, I need to know animation. And like, I know I'm hopping around in my timeline, but right before I went to SCAD, I was trying to make an animation learning league class or not class, like where we all try to teach animation. That didn't work.
I ended up being the teacher. I ended up teaching a summer animation camp at Hutchinson for a little bit before I knew anything about animation, but it was good practice with teaching. And then yeah, SCAD started—went there for animation. Found I don't like animating through the summer after the first quarter, so we're on the quarter system.
So we have fall, spring, summer.
ZO:
What didn’t you like about animation?
KH:
What I didn't like about animation is like, I guess it's more acting focus. It's not really what I thought it was, which is like, I don't know what I was thinking. I guess I thought it was more modeling and it's not. 3D modeling is different. You're sculpting characters.
You're building them out or you're building environments. And that's what I lean towards. But I didn't realize that until like, the very end, what I liked in terms of the 3D pipeline of animation games, etc. Like second quarter, I took a modeling class. My professor is like, you should be a character artist.
And I should have probably listened to him. But I'm like, you know what? I want to get into storyboarding, and I like storyboarding, but I think I like doing it for myself versus for a production. And so I hopped around. I took also what SCAD has called Collaborative Learning Classes. You usually work with a company. It's kind of like a weird free internship but with a class where you build something for that company.
So we did Great Dane trailers. We did like a process book for Great Dane trailers. And then the following quarter, I did another Collaborative Learning Class—CLC is the acronym with SCAD—doing a virtual reality musical.
ZO:
Oooo I’ve never heard that phrase before. That’s cool.
KH:
At some point, I took a media theory class in the summer of 2015, and my friend’s theories—we all had to do a theory; mine, I think, was Roland Barthes’s Mythologies—he did love Lev Manovich and I forgot what it was specifically, but it was correlated to virtual reality. And so SCAD at the time had four Oculus developer Kit Twos, and he created an Oculus Experience for his theory. And I got to try it. And we also got to play around with like the different experiences through Oculus.
And I'm like, I want to do that. And I found out about Oculus Story Studio, which doesn't exist anymore. But I'm like, oh, I want to do this. This is what I want to do. I wanted to make my thesis on it. And then I fast forward to the CLC with virtual reality musical. I also helped form their VR group.
Some people from Disney and stuff came to that group and talked, so that was cool.
ZO:
Yeah, it’s the future. And speaking of the future, how do you keep abreast with all the technology and all the new updates coming out? How do you keep yourself up to date?
KH:
Usually I try testing things out or trying experiences. I know lately, while have Creature Studio, a lot of my energy's been on BVO, so I've been really focused on the environment, you know, planning out what these worlds are going to look like and as well as looking at other immersive experiences as well as theme parks, because I've been obsessed with following Epic Universe at Universal Studios. I know that's not an immersive experience per se, but, I do like looking at themed entertainment design, and I actually have since I was a kid.
When we didn't have time to go anywhere and, like, we were just at home during the summer when I was in grade school, I would watch Travel Channel and watch behind the scenes of Disney or Universal, and the Travel Channel is not the same anymore. So a lot of that is now on YouTube. So I watch Theme Park Stop.
I used to watch, Tim Tracker and a bunch of other, like, Defunct Land, a lot of, like, behind the scenes of the technology behind themed entertainment design as well as the story process side behind it. And even when I was majoring in it, when I was finished towards my thesis at SCAD, when I was doing virtual reality and figuring out: how do I tell a story on virtual reality?
Because I was focused on building a Sasquatch story that was very 2D styled and inspired by Samurai Jack—Scott Wills’s background paintings. I went to Universal, Islands of Adventure and spent a lot of time at Diagon Alley. I spent 16 hours each day at Diagon Alley. Themed entertainment design is a great reference for virtual reality.
Mixed reality, really extended reality as whole. So it's kind of funny that I'm doing something that may not be theme park based, but it is part of the location based entertainment side. You do have to think spatially in immersive experience design. So you have to think about how people interact with your space, accessibility, all these things.
And even in game design is similar. People are going to walk in your space and, you know, they might break things and do whatever. But you have to think about how the audience interacts in the game. And the game has also interactive storytelling as well. And I think that's the appeal of what we're doing is, and I know I'm skipping ahead—
I think that's appeal. What we're doing is we're giving agency to the audience. They are not a passive participant in it. They are active in their story, which I think is why people like games and why games are actually more popular right now more than TV and films is because they are active participant in their story. And I know not all games have like deep stories.
Sometimes it's about gameplay, but a lot of the most popular games have strong storytelling devices and a bunch of other things. So with us, we are giving the audience agency over their story and they will have multiple outcomes because again, we are extending the physical set pieces digitally through digital displays, which we can change every day, and we'll have daily activations and events.
The characters that come into this experience—I have an idea of how like to go about the character interaction in the space, but like maybe having rules, but they don't have to be specific characters. They create their own characters. So that gives an infinite amount of possibilities and interactions and experiences. Because those characters could assign you side quests, you can go through different doors, you can take control ships, you can travel through different worlds, you can cast spells and magic and different things.
Not just magic, but different powers and abilities. But that gives you another option to interact with the world differently. So everything has multiple, if not infinite possibilities. And that's the power of also just giving agency to your audience. They become the hero of your story. They can choose to do the gameplay, gamification, the lore, the storytelling, or they can just chill on the boat and drink a beer.
ZO:
We were talking about dragons.
It's the logo on your website.
KH:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that's part of how I got that [HBO House of the Dragon] project.
ZO:
What is it about dragons that have inspired you and then that has led you to work with HBO’s House of the Dragon?
KH:
As a kid, like, I think it's just that they can fly. They look really cool.
I also feel like they're misunderstood. And I know depending on what different regions they are perceived differently. Like European regions, they're like dangerous and ferocious. In Asia, they're friendly and like godlike. And I think that's what's also interesting is so many different cultures have an idea of what a dragon is without ever interacting with each other.
And, but I think they just look cool. They have an interesting, like, history, as well as physiology. So many different interpretations of dragons and designs. And so as a kid, I would collect so many dragon things. I had so many books.
The first book I read on my own, which I was so proud of, was My Father's Dragon.
Collected a lot of dragons. My mom, I think, got tired of me drawing dragons. I was a talented artist as a kid.
I'm not trying to toot my own horn. Toot it. But I was like, really very ambitious. I wanted to be the best artist ever and, like, do really well. And I love drawing dragons. And my mom would get me to paint. I would have private art lessons and she'd get me to, like, paint different things sometimes, but I was usually more rebellious and just keep on drawing dragons and creatures.
And then at some point in time between middle and high school, I did far more figurative work. And I think that just correlated to characters. And it was very like detailed. For me, replicating images was just very, very easy. But it was harder to like design and think about like lighting, all that stuff, and making it look realistic.
But, yeah, dragons there and then—I think that's part of why my my own logo and I'm hopping from my childhood to high school and post college. I guess I'll go into college a little bit. When I was in college and I was in studio art, I wanted to be more in the commercial art side.
I was a big fan of Drew Struzan, who is the legendary poster artist who did Indiana Jones. He did Harry Potter, Star Wars. Everyone has seen his posters. I was supposed to do a 45 minute presentation, which is my longest presentation I had done at that time, and it ended up being an hour and a half. But people liked it.
They're like, oh, cool. But within the studio art department, I was far more commercial, and I liked the geek art. And I wanted to do this big painting of my friend battling a slug monster. But the professor's like, oh you know, this isn't...how did you feel when...like, all the weird contemporary BS like, making up some meaning that I have no association with.
They're like, oh, it doesn't have to be this fantastical illustration. Like I want it to be. I want to paint it like that. I can add a lot of meaning and make it up, but, like, I was going for a very particular look and feel and style from, like, my childhood growing up looking at Dragonlance books, which at the time I had no idea was related to D&D.
I had Dragonlance books, I had a lot of dragon books, a lot of comic books. I had stacks and stacks of books. I used to carry them to class in middle school and high school and like everywhere. I just carry a stack of books. Seventh Grade Me and shove them in my locker and like, carry them everywhere to class.
I wouldn't even use all these books, but I used to carry them to class. So fastfowarding ahead to SCAD—realizing I'm going to an art college that has a library full of art books that's three stories. And I told my roommate, I'm like, I'm at an art school. There's a library filled with art books. She's like, yeah, you're at art college.
I was like, you don't understand. Like, I go to the University of Memphis, go to the fourth floor in like a particular area and it's a small shelf of art books versus going to SCAD where you have like three layers of art books. You have, anatomy, like 3D model stuff. You have a library of Don Bluth. Don Bluth did The Secret of NiMH, Rock-a-Doodle, Dragon Slayer, the game.
So they have an archive area of that too, so you can actually look at the OG like Don Bluth artwork. I was in heaven. It was great. And then Savannah's also a pretty cool city as well. It's great. I would say do a weekend trip. Don't do like a week long trip because it's smaller and you can get everything done in a weekend.
I know I just jumped around from dragons. I'll go back to dragons. Okay. Dragons. Love dragons as a kid. Middle school still love dragons. At some point in time—I guess 2018-19—I made my own logo because I'm like, okay, I want my logo to be a dragon and have, like, a paintbrush and everything because it's always hard to do personal branding.
And when I try to do personal branding—in the beginning, which was just my initials and it was done poorly, I just tore it up and threw it away. So I did my own personal brand. I did it in Procreate and sketched it out, and it worked. Like, this is me. I had a business card with gold leaf foil and whenever I went to tech conferences.
So this is around 2018-2019, and I got my business cards printed through Moo and had the gold foil treatment. It was a black business card with gold foil treatment. People loved my business cards so much that they would ask for them. At Oculus Connect, before Oculus changed its name, they had really amazing conferences and I would take them there and, at some point in time, it became around 2020.
I became like a Snapchat augmented reality creator because I signed up for their storytelling residency. And so that's how I got involved with Snapchat. And I did some like projects for them, like Black History Month and other projects. Trying to fast forward. In 2020, I was at the tailend of working at AR, VR company
I worked at locally right after graduating—did a lot of medical device training for VR and AR, and then, I worked at a design firm for a little bit, like six months, at Nationwide Marketing Group—not the other Nationwide. And then ALSAC wanted me to do AR activations for them.
I was an immersive experience designer—that’s what they called it. I think that's why on my website I went with immersive experience design.
So when I was at ALSAC, I went to the Augment World Expo. I think it was in 2022. First time I got Covid too but anyway, I went to a big conference and I had my business cards around and everything.
I gave them to some of the Snapchat people as well and met a lot of the Snapchat creators in person, which is great. But Augment World Expo is usually in Santa Clara, California, basically near the Bay area, and they showcase a lot of the new augmented reality technologies, what companies are doing.
And it's not always just AR, it's everything in between, but it's very corporate, very different from the Oculus Connect conference of the time. Oculus Connect was cool, kind of geared towards like gamer developer. It's fun. They had like people playing VR games on a big stage with loud music and then it like—now it's not like that anymore.
I think the first AWE I went to was very corporate. The one post-pandemic, people were excited to be back in conferences. So it kind of had elements of Oculus Connect because it's the people that make those conferences. It kind of reminded me of that, so it was cool to meet a lot of these people in person that I've never met before.
Snapchat reached out to me about, hey, do you want to do an augmented reality experience for HBO and Snapchat for House of the Dragon. I'm like, yeah... Did you watch the show? Yeah. Dragons. A whole show about dragons. It's about the dragons. Like, yeah, of course. So they reached out to me initially and it was for their first round.
They were having 20 creators create House of the Dragon experiences for HBO and Snapchat. It was promotional material. So commercial work for the show. It was 20 creators around the world that would be doing this. I was one of 20 doing this, and I was just the one in Memphis representing the Memphis sign and everything, because some people did in India, Seattle, London, Amsterdam, etc..
And there was a first launch and a second launch. I was supposed to do the first launch, but they had layoffs and everything, so I had to keep on, try to like, hey, I want to do this project still. But I got reconnected with them and I ended up being a part of the last launch.
So I think I released that project at the end of October and worked on it for about a month. And ironically chose—there were three locations I was looking at. I think it was Beale Street. I was looking at The Ravine but then I realized I couldn't really do anything there because it's closed off to the public.
And then I'm like, you know what? The Memphis sign on Mud Island because the dragon would love to—like, I could see a dragon living on Mud Island.
ZO:
That is a total dragon thing.
KH:
So I chose the Memphis sign of Mud Island, and we're driving across the bridge. I take my laptop and I’m testing out the filter because, like, it's location based.
I guess the name of the project was like House of the Dragon custom land marker lens. So the custom land marker lenses are location specific and they're connected to a figure or some sort of statue or something. So I chose the Memphis sign as that, like location based like object that it would be connected to.
So if you had Snapchat opened up and if you were at the Memphis sign, you’d open up the lens, it would tell you where to go and like, where to walk. And then the dragon should pop up and you could see it fly above the Memphis sign. And I added a button to have it land.
And so it would land and you could take a picture with it. It would roar and everything.
ZO:
That’s cool. Did you design the dragon? Was it your own dragon?
KH:
We used HBO assets. So these were large film assets that were not optimized for your phone. Various hundreds of megabytes, huge files. We had options to choose from which dragon we wanted.
So there was red, green, blue, gray. And then you had, like, baby dragons and I went with blue dragons because Memphis is blue. We have like, Grizzlies, the Tigers. So I went with the blue dragon and I like blue, and so I chose the dragon. I gave him a concept of what I wanted it to do.
It had to fit brand standards of course. You couldn't like, make it goofy because I originally wanted people to fly on the dragon, but I think it fell into that kind of goofy scenario. So I'm like, okay, I’ll just have it fly along, they could have it land and take pictures with it. But great experience, lots of testing, and ironically, like I had walked by that [BVO] building every time I tested out this experience.
One night, it was my first time on Mud Island doing this project. Like, I didn't know Mud Island was a whole park and everything. I thought it was just the amphitheater because my mom was like, oh yeah, that’s where Mud Island is. And I'm like, where? I see Mud Island, but how do you get there? Because I just thought Harbor Town was just Harbor Town, and I didn't know where exactly. Mud Island was in this weird area.
I'm like, I don't know where this is, but I just know there's a sign. So first time on Mud Island, first time in that area, walking back and forth and passing by that museum that I had no idea existed until Chris [Reyes, co-founder of BVO] called me up one day.
ZO:
So that's a good segue. So you were on Mud Island, and now you are building a location based immersive experience: Baron Von Opperbean and the River of Time. How did you get involved with that? And tell me the process. What's the latest updates on that?
KH:
All right. How did I get involved with that—I met Chris when he was working on his first project. He asked me to be a part of it, but I didn't know Chris that well.
I also wasn't open to working for free yet, and I was starting my first job post-graduation, so I didn't agree to that. But I did go through his experience. It was after he had it popped up. And I was also working on like a Meta-funded game. And so me and that group went through that experience and he showed us the HoloLens 2, and the project he was doing with BVO.
So I was I went through it in 2020. I thought it was cool. He did all this—it's a small space and he transformed it. Fast forward to December 28th, 2023. He calls me up, he's like, hey, I want to show you something. So I go to Mud Island at night. I'm like, where am I going? What is this?
We get up the escalator and I'm like, there is a museum here. And I've walked by this every day. It just looks like an office space building. You wouldn't know. And I go in the museum, I see that they're not one boats, two boats, and they're full size ships. And I'm like, yeah, I'm on. You got me here.
Like, this is one: perfect location for experience. Two: it's a great idea. It makes a lot of sense. And what he wants to do with it is like redefining this industry. So I immediately said yes. And here I am.
ZO:
Will there be dragons?
KH:
You will be on a dragon ship.
ZO:
Was that your idea?
KH:
No, it was Chris’s, but I was like yes, more dragons!
ZO:
It's like your path: follow the dragon.
KH:
Follow the green dragon.
ZO:
So, like, on a day to day basis, what do you create? Are you in an office? Like what is your process like?
KH:
I'm in Mud Island. Usually I'm helping with social media team. We just formed a team. We're going to announce it shortly. So doing that. Usually doing some sort of, like, 3D thing, whether it's for the front entrance window or for the dragon ship, whatever.
Figuring out stuff like that and also learning. Sometimes learning some new software and things like that. But day to day, it depends on what what we're trying to get done, whether it's like meetings, touring people. Me and Marvin are the tour guides and whether we're touring people or meeting people, doing notes and stuff.
So reaching out to team members and, like interviews, podcasts, building things. So it depends on the day.
ZO:
And my last question I like to ask artists on this podcast is if you had all the time and all the resources, what would be your dream project? But this kind of sounds like a dream project.
KH:
It's definitely a dream project.
It's like this and I had like another idea for an immersive experience as well. I had this idea about like, maybe having a Camp Cryptid. I probably can't use that title because there's already other things named Camp Cryptid. I'd probably name it some sort of whatever name of a camp, but it would be like an indoor/outdoor experience that has day and night cycles.
And it would be about finding cryptids, getting badges, talking to scout leaders, etc., and tying in southern cryptids. So I'd like to talk to, like Toby Sells, who used to do the Haint Lose podcast, which is really great. He doesn't do it any anymore, but it's still up on Spotify. Great voice.
He actually inspired me for when I was working on a project for my first Snapchat experience through the Snapchat Creators Program.
ZO:
What would it take to get Camp Cryptid, or whatever you end up calling it, going. What would go into that?
KH:
I'll probably start building it digitally to see if it works.
And build some sort of digital version first. I probably should do a physical thing, but I thought like maybe doing it digital, seeing how people interact with it. What works, what doesn't work might be a good testing ground. But I’d probably have it in a woodsy area and have, like, tents and stuff.
I know the way I want to do it would not be, like, cheap, so I'd have to get funding and stuff, but I would also have to build some sort of proof of concept, maybe in a small area, have people in character, use a mixture of holographic kind of viewfinders where you're not holding anything up, but you're looking through like binoculars.
I don't know what they're called. They're like on stand and you look through things. I'm going to call them viewfinders, but like making AR version to that. So they look through that. Maybe they have to like—they see cryptid flying around. So integrating—I like how Chris had like natural integration of technology and physical locations seamlessly.
I would like to use more of that, but having it attuned to different day and night cycles, if you're going at day, it will be a different experience from going at night. And then if it rains, you can go inside the tents, and if it's not, you can go outside the tent. So, but it's still like in a brainstorming phase and I was mostly just researching like Southern cryptids and like, what creatures I would want to bring there.
ZO:
That sounds like the fun part. What is the southern cryptid?
KH:
In Tennessee, we have the White Screamer.
ZO:
I know a few of those.
KH:
Which is, yeah, it's a banshee, in Middle Tennessee, apparently, like, killed families or something. So the White Screamer, like it's a banshee, it screams, it’s supposed to rip your skin off or something crazy. But then the White Screamer has been sometimes confused with a werewolf.
So it's been debated, but in books, I mostly find the White Screamer, the Ozark Howler, which is in Arkansas. You have Swamp or sorry, Lizard Man, and I think that's in one of the Carolinas—Lizard Man. I know there's more. And I'm blanking oddly. And I know Tennessee—or not Tennessee—Mississippi has its own Sasquatch as well.
You have variations of Sasquatches throughout the United States outside of the obvious parts. But cryptids usually found in, like, southern areas. Like, I bought a book called, I think, Appalachian Folklore. And it has a cryptid section, but it has many folktales, haunting, spirits, all that stuff. So that's like part of my research is going through those types of books.
ZO:
I love folklore like that. I'm fascinated by it.
So last question. I fully believe that location based immersive experiences are the future of art in general. Yeah. Do you agree with that? Like, what do you think is the future of art?
KH:
Yeah, I absolutely agree. People want shared experiences. Matter of fact, the immersive experience industry is $150 billion industry as of this year.
I think by 2033 it's expected to be $800 billion. So we are on the cutting edge and like we are redefining immersive experiences because we are part—our three pillars are play, games, and story. So we have the playground elements, kind of like the Saint Louis City Museum.
ZO:
I just went there like two months ago. It was amazing.
KH:
Oh really? I still need to get like—I'm talking about these, but I still have to go to Saint Louis Museum and Meow Wolf.
ZO:
Meow Wolf changed my life. You have to go to Meow Wolf—especially, they have this part—it's like a downtown futuristic city. And you were talking about like going around Memphis and like seeing all the details. Like, you would love it.
KH:
We have a few people on our board that worked on Meow Wolf in Santa Fe and I think Denver.
But Meow Wolf was also was an inspiration for BVO. But this has more like storytelling and lore based things. So there's elements of, I would say, a Universal/Disney where each area has like a has like a theme or like a world or story there. It's an interactive narrative, not linear narrative. So you're not like, going through each room and it's in the linear story.
It's more so this is a living, breathing world with characters and interactions, and there are story bits within it, like how game interactions, game storytelling is, but not linear games, but open world games. So I like to reference Sea of Thieves. I love Sea of Thieves. Sea of Thieves is an open world gaming experience. Or it's a video game.
It's open world online game where you're pirate and you have crew and they have story elements and each like land you go through. And sometimes they have like depending on what season it is they had like a Pirates the Caribbean crossover. So they had Pirates of the Caribbean stories it could do.
ZO:
That sounds fun. Well, I want to thank you so much for coming on the show.
It's not every day you get to meet a genius. The way you layer things and how you research and put all your interests together, it's just like you're living the dream. You’re doing such cool things. And you're on the cutting edge and, like, it's going to put Memphis on the map.
KH:
Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention—I mentioned human characters that we'll have in this experience.
We'll also have an AI character as well. And I know people are afraid of AI, but we will have an AI character. In the earlier version of BVO, Chris did have an AI character. It was named Louise. It's named after the Baron's long lost wife. But she'll be a character. You get to interact with the story. She won’t just be someone you're talking to, there will be a holographic display. So wayfinding, you can see different worlds. You can ask her questions. She's your guide to the multiverse. She'll be in each world.
We're having touchless interactions as well. So hand tracking. So you could actually rotate the map and do whatever without touching anything. We'll have a bunch of touchless interactions that will make it feel like magic.
ZO:
What is it like the next step of BVO? Like what are you guys working towards? I think we're looking towards trying to get enough money to build out the experience. That's our first and foremost. We have a WeFunder out right now, which is our community investment platform. It ends, I think, April 29th of next month.
But we are also looking at private investments as well. And when our WeFunder ends, we do have a contribute page on bvoexp.com. It's under Contribute. There are multiple options: we have the WeFund page as well as like—you can just like give us ten or whatever dollars, you could throw it in that there.
But WeFunder is like you could invest as little as $100 and you get I think it was like—I'm not good at describing the legalese on it; it is on the website—but it's like a 2.2 x return depending on how we do. If we do really well, your investment will be good. If we don't...
ZO:
You took a chance. I think it's such a great chance. Like Memphis needs something like this. It's going to change everything. Thanks for being part of that, and thanks for being creative.
Where to find Kathryn
Instagram: @gokatcreate
Website: www.gokatcreate.com