A full booth project for General Motors through Czarnowski, produced for the 2019 China International Import Expo in Shanghai, China. Held annually at the National Exhibition and Convention Center, CIIE is the largest single-block exhibition center in the world, drawing participation from over 3,800 enterprises across 181 countries. Of those, the GM booth was awarded the gold prize by the event's organizing committee — the only gold among a field of one gold, three silver, and five bronze recognized exhibits.
Our Czarnowski team handled the GM booth from the ground up: every physical element, video content, audio, vehicle placement, lighting, and interactive component. My scope was the visualization work that ran throughout the booth's LED screens, transparent LED panels, and LED walls — synchronized content loops that needed to be compelling and on at all times during the show.
At the direction of the GM China team, the content strategy centered on lifestyle backdrops that would be edited into a continuous synchronized loop, each framing one of the vehicles on display. Three locations were selected: the Shanghai skyline, Arches National Park, and Jiuzhaigou National Park.
To give the sequences depth and movement beyond a static photograph or flat video, each panoramic scene was broken into layered 3D elements within Autodesk 3DS Max, allowing a virtual camera to move through a spatial representation of the photographic scene. This introduced genuine parallax into each sequence and opened the door for secondary animation: cloud movement, atmospheric light effects, and birds in the sky. The process drew on projection mapping, texture painting, compositing, rotoscoping, procedural modeling, and animation across all three scenes.
The combined result of the synchronized content, the broader booth design, and GM's vehicle lineup made for a strong showing that led to GM requesting Czarnowski's ongoing support for CIIE.