Mould Me at Cadbury World

Imagine when you look in the mirror your entire image turning to chocolate before your eyes — that’s exactly what happens at the Mould Me installation which forms part of the Purple Planet exhibition at Cadbury World.

Step into the photo booth and listen to the narrated instructions — “three, two, one, and… strike the pose” Your image is frozen in time on the video wall in front of you before being moulded in virtual chocolate and loaded onto a computer generated conveyor belt for all to see.

Your sculpture is paraded around the room until new additions move it off the end of the conveyor. So you sit next to your friends in a veritable chocolate hall of fame until 20 more have joined the ride and it's time to move on.

Virtual chocolate technology generated especially for Mould Me is used to cast incredibly lifelike chocolate busts on-screen. HMC Interactive software engineers worked closely with Cadbury staff to arrive at the perfect recipe for a glistening just-set chocolate effect that would convince even the workers in a world class chocolate factory. After extensive research and development, the required effect was achieved and the results have to be seen to be believed.

Mould Me uses live feed video, motion detectors and wall-mounted cameras linked to a central processor to achieve this amazing effect. The exhibit has been designed to be ultra-accessible. Any user, from the smallest child to a full-grown adult — including wheelchair users, will be able to mould themselves in chocolate with ease.

The creative lead on the project was taken by Newangle while HMC wrote bespoke software linking the interface to the processor — not to mention cooking up that recipe for world class virtual chocolate.

Exhibition design: Event Communications Design & production: Newangle Software programming: HMC Interactive