First week hit different. We're working with mentors from Harbor Pictures, ETC, and Cat, actual industry heavyweights, so the pressure was on from day one. During our initial brainstorm, I pitched this idea I'd been sitting on: what if we combined Gentle Monster's insane eyewear design with smart glasses? Turns out Google actually announced the collaboration with Gentle Monster, which made it feel even more real. The team got immediately hyped. Something about merging that avant-garde aesthetic with AI vision tech just clicked for everyone. We spent the rest of class hammering out the visual direction and figuring out how we're actually going to pull this off.

One of the biggest wins this week was how quickly we aligned on workflow. Anna's handling project coordination, Bua's storyboards are giving us the narrative spine, Robyn and Sheng are diving into the technical pipeline. My role became this hybrid of concept development and art direction, gathering mood boards and pulling everyone's material together and translating it into the presentation deck.

The schedule and shot list we mapped out became our shared roadmap through week 10. Breaking down timeline and shot requirements early means everyone understands scope and dependencies. It's not the sexy part of pre-production, but it's what keeps five people moving in the same direction without constant check-ins.

Here's the thing about Gentle Monster—they don't make eyewear, they make wearable sculpture. Bold, architectural, unapologetic. We need that same energy for smart glasses, but we can't just make a tech demo showing off features. The concept we're chasing is AI vision as a "third eye": revealing hidden layers of reality, bridging Eastern philosophy with technology.

Assembling the pitch deck became this exercise in visual storytelling. How do we communicate that elevated realism? Grounded enough that mentors believe we can execute, stylized enough to keep that avant-garde edge. Every image placement, every transition builds toward selling that narrative. The team's collective research made this possible.

• Concept pitch and project alignment
• Mood boards: environments, lighting, color, camera language
• Production schedule and shot list breakdown
• Reference shoot for Shot 2 and Shot 6
• Complete pitch deck assembly
• Team workflow and tool ecosystem setup

Three minutes to sell our concept to mentors from Harbor and ETC. I handled the idea presentation, art direction, and walked through the color mood boards. The energy in the room was solid—our Gentle Monster x Gemini concept landed well, but the feedback session completely reshaped our visual approach.

The mentors kept circling back to K-pop visual language, rapid cuts, choreographed movement that highlights face and glasses, surreal elements like Gentle Monster's retail installations. Kyle suggested referencing Stray Kids and BTS music videos for pacing.

Lighting feedback was unanimous: hard, graphic stage lighting with strong shadows. Try iridescent materials, mylar, lens effects, anything that makes the glasses feel like they're revealing hidden layers of reality. Jaymin mentioned heavy grain in comp could help blend XR stage work with CG elements.

Material guidance: Iridescent surfaces, mylar, lens effects, anything that makes the glasses feel like they're revealing hidden layers of reality.

XR Stage Booking Locked:

• Load Test: January 28th, 8am-5pm
• Shoot Day: February 5th, 8am-5pm

Four weeks to get everything production-ready. Our clock is running.

Set up the Perforce repository and Unreal Engine 5 project structure. Color pipeline needed to be bulletproof from day one, configured ACES workflow and implemented OpenColorIO for consistency across CG renders, XR stage output, and final comp.

Start building our material library. The PBR and tri-planar master materials give us flexibility for quick iteration. With only four weeks to load test, we need shader systems that let us swap materials without breaking the lighting setup.

Scout with Prof. Prada about holographic shader approach. His guidance: use Additive blend mode for emissive color, fresnel to control perception at glancing angles, complement with scanline effect using 128x128 rectangle mask driven by panner node. Two multiplier nodes, one for intensity, one for color control.

Researching shimmer materials: iridescent finishes, sheen, pearlescence: The Difference Between Luminescent, Pearlescent, and Iridescent Paint ︎︎︎

Primary material targets: Iridescent finishes and Sheen materials to bridge that atmospheric, high-fashion tech aesthetic. The monochromatic palette actually makes material complexity more critical, we need variation in reflection, refraction, and surface quality to keep visual interest.

Pipeline Exploration:

Also exploring Gaussian splat to LiDAR PointCloud conversion using Apple's ml-sharp︎︎︎︎︎︎ https://github.com/apple/ml-sharp Converting 2D images to volumetric point clouds in UE5.

With more experimental images:

• Pitch presentation (Idea, Art Direction, Color Mood Boards)
• Perforce workspace configuration & version control setup
• UE5 project structure with ACES/OCIO color pipeline
• PBR/Tri-planar master material systems
• XR stage booking meeting with Team (Load Test 1/28, Shoot 2/5)
• Futuristic city asset optimization with Bua
• Initial Gentle Monster store element concepts