This powerful augmented single-user VR performance provides an intimate encounter with Grin Payne—the iconic character from The Grinning Man.

Rendered in Unreal Engine and using MetaPipe for custom character design and build leveraging the MetaHuman pipeline & featuring a stunning motion-captured performance by Louis Maskell, the piece places you in a thick, fog-shrouded world where every glance matters.

Though the performance is pre-recorded, through innovative use of eye, head, and positional tracking, Grin Payne is able to subtly respond—meeting the audiences gaze, recoiling, shifting, and acknowledging your presence in real time.

Led by Director Tom Morris and Aardman Digital, and brought to life through motion capture by The Imaginarium.

This project was enabled by the MyWorld Experimental Production fund.

Experimental Productions is the storytelling heart of MyWorld. Bringing together big stories and storytellers to test technologies developed by other areas of MyWorld to create new ways of delivering and telling stories.