This was the kind of project that could only come about because of a very weird, specific set of circumstances. Somewhere during the pandemic, Colin sent me a funny photo of a noodly character he had put together using jacks from his
synthesizer, and asked me if I could maybe create a character. I went ahead and started sketching, and soon enough Jack was born. We thought he looked hilarious, so I decided to create a fully rigged 3D model.

Over the course of several months, our ridiculous plan started taking shape. I called in my partner in crime Sem Schreuder and Merijn Meijers from Pixelclone, and we rigged up PTZ cameras in Colins studio and built an enormous Unreal Engine 5 project. We set up an AR overlay for the camera feed, matched the camera movements live and did a heap of live compositing trickery. We integrated live text input from viewers on Twitch. Every person watching got their own little Jack character and could send it commands via the chat, making him dance and emote in various ways. Over the course of several months Sem and I added more and more functionality to the setup.