Jean Paul Gaultier
Technical Art I 3D Art | Unity3D | Holographic Stand
Role:
3D Artist / Technical Artist
Focus:
Visual Design and Presentation, 3D Animation, 3D Modelling, Shaders
Project Overview
Jean Paul Gaultier was an interactive holographic perfume catalog developed by VNTANA, using the company’s holographic display technology paired with a touchscreen interface that allowed customers to explore the fragrance collection. The visual direction was inspired by Jean Paul Gaultier’s 2019 advertising campaign, with the goal of bringing its distinctive aesthetic into an interactive 3D experience. Beyond those initial references, our team was given considerable creative freedom to develop the presentation.
I was responsible for much of the project’s visual design, including 3D modeling, materials, shaders, and visual effects. Working alongside a small team of programmers and animators, we had just four weeks to bring the experience from concept to completion. Despite the tight schedule, the project gave me an opportunity to explore some particularly creative visual effects, especially those representing the fragrances’ ingredients, such as flowing honey and jasmine flowers, as well as the presentation of the perfume bottles themselves.
The finished experience was launched in Portugal, where it was featured for several months as an interactive holographic installation. It remains one of my favorite projects from my time at VNTANA, both for the creative freedom it offered and the opportunity to contribute to nearly every aspect of its visual development.
Visual Development & Shader Design.
We began by studying Jean Paul Gaultier’s Welcome to the Factory advertising campaign, using its distinctive visual style as the foundation for our interactive experience. The goal was to make visitors feel as though they had stepped inside the factory itself, where they could explore different ingredients and create a perfume based on their preferences. We drew inspiration from the commercial’s industrial machinery, incorporating gears, pipes, glass tubing, and a combination of chrome, copper, and reflective metallic surfaces. The campaign’s signature blue and pink color palette also played an important role in establishing the overall aesthetic.
To bring more personality to the experience, we also developed a stylized 3D cartoon version of Jean Paul Gaultier, who would serve as the visitor’s guide throughout the perfume-making process. The character became one of the project’s highlights and was particularly well received by Jean Paul Gaultier himself.
With the visual direction established, I began modeling the environment’s mechanical elements, including gears, pipes, glass beakers, and connecting tubes. One of the more interesting technical challenges was finding a convincing way to simulate liquids flowing through the machinery without relying on complex fluid simulations.
My solution was to develop a custom shader that used a scrolling gradient across the UV coordinates to progressively reveal the liquid geometry. At the same time, the shader tapered the geometry toward a narrow point at the leading edge, creating the illusion of liquid traveling through the tubes even though the underlying mesh remained stationary. I then layered animated noise into the refraction to introduce subtle distortion and movement, giving the liquid a more natural, constantly flowing appearance.
This approach allowed me to create a convincing liquid effect using relatively simple geometry and shader-driven animation, while maintaining the visual quality and real-time performance needed for the holographic experience.
Project Outcome
The Jean Paul Gaultier holographic experience was displayed primarily in Portugal, with additional installations in several boutiques across Europe. Although the installation ran for a limited time, it remains one of the most challenging and rewarding projects I worked on at VNTANA. With only four weeks of production, our small team had to create and assemble a substantial amount of content, including unique combinations of three ingredients for each perfume, all of which required their own 3D assets.
For me, the project was especially meaningful because it was one of my first opportunities to really explore shader development and experiment with how materials and visual effects could behave on an unconventional platform like a holographic display. It pushed me creatively and technically, and gave me a chance to develop solutions I hadn’t attempted before. The finished experience received extremely positive feedback from Jean Paul Gaultier and his team, making the effort all the more worthwhile. Looking back, it’s still one of the projects I’m most proud to have been part of.