At the Studio, we want to leave our mark not only through the games we create but also through how we impact our society. That’s why many team members are invested with organizations working for important causes, and Ubisoft encourages them to do so by allowing them to volunteer three days a year.
In September 2020, we launched a partnership with Fab Lab La Verrière, located in Montreuil, to anchor ourselves in our neighborhood. This manufacturing and creative space makes various equipment available to all and accompany its members on their different projects. In this regard, the Fab Lab is more than a place of discovery: it is also a meeting and sharing site.
United by a common desire to allow all those who wish to learn and discover creative industries, our partnership began in November 2020 with several computers’ donations of very valuable equipment to organize training workshops in digital tools.
Subsequently, an interest in video making emerged from Fab Lab members. A visit to our motion capture and video shooting studio was organized on January 11, allowing them to discover the other side of video game creation and the technologies used in motion capture. On this occasion, we were pleased to welcome no less than thirty members of the Fab Lab La Verrière, divided into two groups.
Both groups, one made of a younger audience and the second made of adults in professional reintegration, were able to discover the amazing combination of skills needed to make our studio work. To create our games’ video content, it takes people who know how to handle the cameras and build accessories to give references to the actors, costume designers to prepare Just Dance’s costumes, and the makeup artists and technicians. A visit high in learnings and that echoes the multidisciplinary skills deployed within the Fab Lab. They were also able to ask all their questions about how to create a video game. What studies are required? What does it take to be a dancer on Just Dance? And how many cameras are present in the Studio? All these questions and more were investigated by the expert team at our video studio.
And to conclude these two visits, we had the pleasure of shooting in motion capture: four people were wearing a suit and made real-time movements captured by our team. It allowed them to understand how we import these movements into our video games.
These first months alongside Fab Lab La Verrière are only the first milestones of a partnership that we will continue to develop. While our actions may have inspired members of the association, the reverse is true as the studio members went to their premises to meet the team and learn about their activities which sparked everyone’s interests!
A big thank you to the entire team of Fab Lab La Verrière for their availability and desire to work with us and to the shooting studio’s team for their welcome and their time!
