During the pandemic, many folks plugged into the wonderful virtual world of VRChat, a social VR platform where folks can hang out with each other in many user-generated worlds, within custom avatars. An entire rave & party scene developed, which were mostly EDM based. However, there weren’t too many hip-hop centric regularly occurring events in VRChat.
It took a pioneering Japanese event organizer (Sera Akai) and a couple of passionate hip-hop loving DJs (Paul Manton, DJ Walleee & Jentagawa) to finally form the first hip-hop event in VRChat, “Hip Hop Day at Magenta.” I had finally found my tribe. Hoping to help the hip-hop culture in VRChat grow, I readily volunteered to handle event flyers to make us stand out from the EDM crowd, providing a variety of unique looks.
For more information on the VR rave scene, I highly recommend this PBS documentary, and for more info about Hip Hop Day at Magenta, check out my immersive VR180 minidoc here!
Pillow Talk
While attending Hip Hop Day, I started becoming a regular, which meant recognizing other regulars. But one in particular was especially interested in who designed the flyers. It didn’t take much investigation since I left my moniker somewhere in all the flyers, and when user Shotgun Envy realized it was me, they immediately shared their plans for a new event series, inspired by Hip Hop Day; it would be an R&B based event called “Pillow Talk.” Killer name, right? But, they needed a look for their flyers to help stand out from the daily flood of events.
In an effort to help the spread of hip hop culture/music and its associated genre cousins, I gladly accepted the task. But I was kinda dry on inspiration – what does an R&B flyer look like? Especially a VR R&B flyer? In the middle of my search for inspo, Envy introduced me to their friend Hiren (right), a well known dancer in VRChat thanks to their full-body-tracking (FBT) VR set up. And that’s when I found the silver bullet; a cover model! So I asked Hiren if they’d be down to meet up for a photoshoot in VRChat, and a few hours later, badabing badaboom – graphic magic.
Big ups to Hiren and Shotgun Envy for the honor and the pleasure of having worked with them.
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