The intersection of human and artificial intelligence.
The intersection of human and artificial intelligence.
Project Overview
The GIMM Guardian is an in-house AI assistant built for the Games, Interactive Media, and Mobile Development program at Boise State University. It lives and works in our lobby where students can speak and have a hands-free, face to face conversation. The Guardian handles class questions, equipment checkouts, tutor routing, and will eventually use BLE tags for spatial lab awareness. I served as the sole artist on this six-person team, leading all visual identity and creative direction alongside backend developers and faculty.
Technical Challenge
Early development used Unreal Engine's MetaHuman for a photorealistic face with real-time lip-sync, but the team deliberately moved away from that direction as a realistic human risked parasocial attachment rather than positioning the Guardian as a tool. I pivoted to a cubist, Picasso-inspired abstraction with an intentionally gender-ambiguous design, using colors and shapes that leave age, race, and ethnicity open to interpretation. The goal was a character human enough to invite conversation, but abstract enough to maintain a clear boundary.
Technical Implementation
Technical Implementation
I modeled, UV unwrapped, rigged, and animated the Guardian entirely in Blender, landing at 3,450 vertices and 6,102 triangles — built lightweight to run alongside a live AI model in Unreal Engine 5. Rather than texturing digitally, I developed a process of projecting a physical canvas via webcam onto the UV shells of the 3D model. I then hand-drew textures within the UV shells with crayons, markers, and colored pencils to achieve a cubist and abstract style. The finished drawings were flatbed scanned and cleaned up in Photoshop before being applied as the final textures.
Visual Development
Visual Development
The model's geometry pulls directly from Picasso's portraiture; disproportionate features, flattened planes, and overlapping perspectives that read as human but sit firmly in abstraction. I developed the color palette through a dual process of digital texture painting in Blender and physical color testing with real materials, merging both to inform the final look. The result is a mixed-media aesthetic that is undeniably 3D but carries the warmth and imperfection of something made by hand.
Current Progress & Future Plans
The model is nearing completion with animations in their polish phase, and the visual work is well ahead of schedule relative to backend development. Next steps are in-engine implementation, connecting the visualization to the live AI system, and physically installing the Guardian into the space in the near future.
