Reconfiguring Identity
Identity is just an upgrade away. The visual world of a fictional future product: a mask that lets people sculpt, colour and blur their face.
The brief
In the year 2147, Virex Corp launches the Virex Mask: a device for real-time facial reconfiguration, in a society where identity is fluid and anonymity is power. The challenge was to make a fictional product feel functional and desirable, and to give it a believable visual world.
My role
A two-person team project. We developed the concept, product sketches and 3D models, AI-generated key visuals, storylines and concept videos, the mask’s interface and a marketing video.
Concept
We imagined a future where personal identity is customisable, drawing on cyberpunk aesthetics and AR/VR trends. The system has three products, each with its own form:
- Base maskA smooth, theatre-like mask that can change form and colour, blur the face and more. For parties and entertainment.
- VeilTranslucent strips that shift colour and blur: a fashion piece, mysterious but still recognisable.
- SphereA 360° display that fully hides the face and can show colours, pictures or anything the wearer wants to share.
As fashion, the masks also raise questions: will we need to hide from surveillance in the future? Could they be used for fraud or identity theft?
Art direction and key visuals
We set a dark, sleek tone for the whole universe: night-time cities, wet streets and neon light in magenta, cyan and acid green, against which the masks glow. Each product started as a sketch, then became a 3D model or an AI-generated key visual in the same lighting, so the images read as one campaign.
Sketches and key visuals
Storylines
We wrote storylines to show the mask in use and turned them into cinematic stills and concept videos, framed like film shots.
Story 1: hiding from the camera
A girl activates her veil to hide from a government surveillance camera
Story 2: the underground club
A club full of bizarre masks: when two people connect, their masks swap an attribute, until the masks switch off
The mask interface
The interface is a quiet counterpoint to the neon world: a white 3D head model at the centre on a dark background, with presets listed around it. Presets come in two groups, occasions (like Ghost mode and Stealth mode) and existing people, artworks and styles, and users can customise from scratch. A mood-sensitive option reads the wearer’s state and changes the mask to match.
Marketing video
We made a one-minute marketing video presenting the Virex Mask as an illegal, black-market answer to surveillance. The typography carries the story: bold red type on black opens with the threat (“Privacy is threatened”), introduces the masks of the series and what each one does, shows the interface switching between presets, and ends on the line “A memory for a mask”.
Reflection
Designing for a world that doesn’t exist yet was a new kind of challenge: every image had to be consistent enough to make the fiction believable. Learning 3D software and art-directing AI imagery showed me how quickly a whole visual universe can be built, and how much it depends on strict choices about light, colour and tone.