Team Members

• Lori Kipp: Set and Theming Engineer, responsible for set design, puppet design, fabrication, puppeteering, art direction
• Tsai-Yen (Cleo) Ko: Software Engineer, responsible for show programming, A/V programming, hardware installation, digital puppeteering
• Ivy Liu: Art Engineer, responsible for concept art, storyboarding, graphic design, video production, prop fabrication
• Nolan O’Keefe: Hardware Engineer and Producer, responsible for puzzle design, construction, fabrication, electrical engineering, scheduling, budgeting
• Katherine (Kat) Wheeler: Narrative Engineer and Assistant Producer, responsible for show writing, directing rehearsals, development blogs, scenic painting
• Louise Cutter: Assistant Set Designer, responsible for set drawings, set dressing, scenic painting, puppeteering

Overview

Return of the Dragon was an immersive walkthrough attraction created by a team of five graduate students and one undergraduate assistant for a one night installation at the Carnegie Mellon Entertainment Technology Center Fall Festival. Our attraction brought together RFID-based interactives, a tactile puzzle, a large-scale dragon puppet, and a complex A/V system to transport our guests into the mystical realm of Eigenrac and give them the power to bring dragons and magic back to the realm. 

Our guests visited our attraction as part of the ETC Fall Festival, a yearly tradition that serves as a showcase of student work throughout the semester. Festival is the most highly attended departmental event, with guests ranging from children and families to industry professionals. As this year’s only project given a full 14 week, 36-credit-hour course solely dedicated to creating a Festival experience, we knew our attraction would have to be immersive, memorable, and fun, and take full advantage of the physical space we were given. We owe our success to thorough planning, interdisciplinary teamwork, and keeping storytelling central to all our decisions.

Experience and Story Walkthrough

Queue

“It is just as it has been foretold. Perhaps you will succeed where so many have failed; perhaps you will help us repair the bonds of magic!”

Our experience began with a queue in the hallway outside our room, where a queue attendant delivered a spiel to each group of 3-6 guests. The guests learned from this spieler that they are elemental mages– one of them connected to fire magic, one to water magic, and one to air magic. They received dragon scales of a fire, water, and air dragon, preserved for ages by the Elemental Guild, through the spieler’s sleight of hand.

 

Preshow

“We believe you, the new mages, can use the dragon scales of old to channel anew the power of the elements.”

In the next zone, guests were greeted with our pre-show video, a two and a half minute introduction to the magical realm of Eigenrac, the dragons that once freely roamed, and the power they have to repair the broken bond between dragons and mages. Watch our video below.

Tutorial

“Out of the darkness, a flame! The bonds of magic are being rewoven even now.”

 

Next, the guests walked into a cave towards the entrance of the Dragon Temple, to learn how to harness the power of the elements of fire, water and air, under the tutelage of an Elemental Guild member. They tapped their scales on the Elemental Guild’s sigil to activate each respective element- a fire cauldron, a fan, and a fountain, for fire, air, and water. Since each dragon scale will only awaken one of the elements, guests had to collaborate with each other, and trust in each other’s magical abilities.

Puzzle

“If you are worthy, the eggs will know
And once again let power grow…”

The guests enter into the Dragon Temple, an ancient stone structure built to house the most precious magical artifacts. For hundreds of years, three dragon eggs have remained here, preserved in stasis, locked away from any dark mages who wish them harm, and guarded by a Temple Mage. A stone wheel and Elemental Guild sigil serve as a lock for their three cages. And a riddle acts as a key.

Each egg corresponds to one of the elements, and is kept in stasis using the magic of another element. The guests must turn the wheel to point towards the egg’s element, then tap the scale corresponding to the magic it needs to revive it. For example, the fire egg needs air to breathe, so the guests would turn the wheel to the fire magic symbol, then tap the air magic dragon scale.

When all three eggs are revived, the cages are unlocked, and just in time, for the mother dragon in the temple’s inner sanctum awaits.

Dragon Encounter

“After all this time? Magical harmony in the realm of Eigenrac?”

The Temple Mage guides the guests down the dark hall to the Inner Sanctum, where the dragon has been summoned.

As the guests file into the room, the dragon sees them carrying her eggs, and her grief and fear turns to rage. Her eyes change from their mournful blue color to a deep red. With a roar, she breathes red smoke at the guests.

Now is the guests’ chance to repair the bonds of magic. They move to the nest, and one by one place the eggs in it. As a light and music show plays, the mother dragon realizes that these new mages are righting the wrongs of those who came before.

With her eggs returned to her, she finally feels safe, and allows guests to pet her and take photos.

They have done it! The new Elemental Mages restored the harmony and trust between dragons and mages, so dragons can return to Eigenrac! The mother dragon gives her own scales to the guests, so they can stay in touch with magic throughout their travels. Finally at peace, her family reunited, she allows herself to drop into a peaceful slumber as the guests exit.

Post Show

“Oh my stars… for the first time in millennia, newly chosen mages, trusted with Dragon Scales!”

At the end of the show, the guests receive dragon scales and miniature dragon eggs from the mother dragon. These are not merely a keepsake, however. Throughout the building, we turned three unused offices into post-show interactive stations. When guests tap their keepsake scales on the Elemental Sigil, one of three videos plays: the three baby dragons hatching, learning to use their elemental magic, and flying with their mother. These also served to advertise our main experience, with signage indicating to start the adventure at our room number.

Design and Planning

Show Writing

After narrowing down from over 20 ideas at the start of the semester, we developed the fantasy realm of Eigenrac and the story of rebuilding trust from initial pitch slideshows, to treatments, to scripts, to our final narrative product, a show bible. This document, provided for our actors, contained all scripts, a glossary of worldbuilding terms, and answers to questions guests may have.

Our actors had the freedom to improvise in response to guest actions, and we rehearsed many different possible guest situations with them. We found that guests sometimes needed help understanding how to use our tangible interactives, and sometimes needed stalling while waiting for the group in the next zone to move on, and planned for both of these events. We also found that we needed to account for circumstances where tech problems necessitated a manual override by an actor, and added that information into our operations plan.

View our entire story bible here.

We ended up with three roles to be shared throughout the night by seven actors: the Entryway Mage manning the queue, the Tutorial Mage guiding guests through the pre-show and tutorial scenes, and the Temple Mage guiding guests through the puzzle and dragon encounter.

Storyboarding

We created a storyboard for the entire experience, as well as a more detailed storyboard for our pre- and post-show videos. Click through our storyboards below.

Throughput and Operations

Each group of guests was between 3 and 6 people, and our experience length averaged at 10 minutes. We could accommodate three groups at any one time: one in the pre-show/tutorial zone, one in the puzzle zone, and one in the dragon encounter zone. Each zone was timed to take up a slightly longer amount of time than the next, to prevent bottlenecks and allow for our actors to reset the effects. Our zones were separated by a pipe and drape system, allowing us to hang A/V elements from the pipes.

To allow for an actor to manually reset the puzzle and lock the eggs back in their cages, the role of Temple Mage was played simultaneously by two actors, who cycled through the puzzle and dragon encounter zones with a single group of guests. Several actors were trained for multiple roles, based on several actors’ other time commitments at the festival.

Overall, our planned maximum throughput was calculated at 54 guests/hour, or 216 guests over the four-hour festival.

Show Control

We used Unity to create two completely separate show control programs– one to control the overall environmental lights, tutorial space, and the dragon show, and the other to manage the puzzle. We anticipated the possibility of needing to manually restart the puzzle, since it involved the most guest interaction, so it runs on a separate PC. In the below photo, the screen on the right is using the main show control program, the middle screen is viewing the puppeteering webcams, and the left screen is a laptop remoting into the standalone puzzle program PC.

Interactives

 

The magic tapping interaction was created with Phidget-compatible RFID tags hidden inside the dragon scales, and Phidget RFID antennas hidden inside laser-cut hardboard boxes. All Phidgets were integrated with our show control programs.

The puzzle combined the RFID-based interaction with reed switches, activated by magnets on the back of the wheel.

When solved, the puzzle would activate a light and sound show, and unlock the solenoid locks hidden within each egg cage.

To help our actors reset the zones after each group, we created “reset scales” they could tap on any of the hardboard boxes to return the tutorial or puzzle to the starting state.

Our post-show interactives used MFRC522 RFIDs hidden in our keepsake dragon scales, and Raspberry Pi RFID antennas hidden inside the laser-cut boxes to control the videos. We used this system for the post-show to keep costs down for hundreds of giveaway scales.

A/V Hardware

Fire, water, and air each corresponded to a primary color of light, allowing the lighting to serve as visual feedback when a scale was tapped for each element. In the dragon encounter, the lights mounted in the dragon’s horns and eyes served to convey her emotional state. When the eggs were returned to her nest, each egg activated the corresponding color in her eyes and horns for a moment. At the end of the encounter, her lights cycled through the entire visible spectrum, symbolizing her feeling of gratitude and the harmony in the realm that guests were able to achieve.

We composed an original soundtrack for the experience. A D Major chord is heard both when the puzzle is solved, and each note within it is heard when an egg is returned to the nest, providing continuity through the experience for the three eggs.

Our lighting, sound, projection, and other A/V elements are shown here on this map.

Puppet Design

The dragon was designed as a crystal dragon, based on concept art and a 3D model.

Our puppet incorporated a physical puppeteer, who wore the puppet on a harness and controlled its mouth, eye, and neck movement, and a digital puppeteer, who controlled the lights, sounds, and fog machine. Both puppeteers were hidden behind drapes in our command center.

The goal of our puppet was to create a climactic moment with a strong sense of emotional realism. To accomplish this, the puppet’s movement had to be dynamic– and that meant the puppet had to be lightweight to prevent fatigue. She is primarily made of cardboard and PVC pipe, with liquid latex for texturing, thin plastic horns, decorative iridescent cellophone, foam teeth and eyelids, and laser cut acrylic for the eye mechanism. Her total weight of 15 pounds was light enough to suspend the harness from our pipe and drape system, taking most of the weight off the puppeteer and allowing the dragon’s neck to appear to move more dramatically.

We used three webcams in the dragon room to help the puppeteers see without being seen, so the digital puppeteer could trigger effects at the right moment, and the physical puppeteer could look directly at guests.

Props and Costumes

We created a wide variety of props and costumes for our experience, such as dragon eggs, the eggs’ nest, cages for the eggs, and miscellaneous set dressing. We also sewed costumes for our actors.

Results

“That dragon was not an animatronic puppet to me.”

After so much planning, we fabricated our props and set, created costumes and videos, installed all tech elements, composed a soundtrack, and ran playtests with over 50 people.

On the night of the festival, our anticipated challenges relating to throughput and operations were well accounted for. Every guest who got in our queue line was able to experience our attraction, and we never had a wait of over 20 minutes. We hosted 171 guests over the four hours, or 43 guests/hour– 79% of our planned maximum guests. 72 parties participated in our post-show interactives– likely more than 72 individual guests, since most ETC festival attendees are in groups.

Guest feedback was extremely positive. We saw guests advertising our experience for us through word of mouth, and several groups of repeat guests waited in our line twice to see the dragon again.

The impact of our experience on the rest of the ETC Fall Festival was very positive as well. Our post-show stations encouraged exploration throughout the whole building, and the word-of-mouth generated by our experience helped create a feeling of excitement and wonder for the festival. Since this festival was the first one held in person since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, we were especially proud of this intangible effect. We hope that the bar we set for ETC Festival attractions remains high, and that future student teams can use the lessons we learned about creating an immersive world for a one-night experience.

Special Thanks

Thanks to our volunteer actors: Louise Cutter, Martina Saldamarco, Sarah Colquhoun, Joey Perrino, Derek Williams, Marie Leung, Yukti Gupte.

Special thanks to our alumni consultants, who did not complete work on this project but provided invaluable advice and feedback: Christine Barnes and Danielle Holstine.

Special thanks to our ETC faculty instructors, Shirley Saldamarco and Ruth Comley, our faculty consultant, Dave Culyba, and all the CMU IT and Fire Safety employees who helped ensure that our event ran smoothly.