Oklahoma Contemporary hosted a conversation and demo with James Simpson, CEO of GoldFire Studios, Jeff Price, chair of game design and animation at Oklahoma City University, and Linh Terford, independent game illustrator and concept artist. The speakers shared their experiences contributing to a growing video game industry in Oklahoma and gave insight into what’s on the horizon in game design, development and VR.
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I’m getting back into the swing of things for Uncovering Oklahoma and first up is a story about the art experience, Seed Reef. I went in a different direction, focusing on more of a mellow pace. For example, I pause the interview a few times, turning up the music to showcase footage of the installation. In addition, I used my camera’s highest quality settings (that I’ve nicknamed the Netflix settings as they are what Netflix wants for video production with my S1H). I used this setting because besides being an episode of Uncovering Oklahoma, this story will be part of another episode of a new series that I’ll talk about another time.
Seed Reef is an immersive, sculpted paper installation of a coral reef, created by artists Emma Difani and Malcolm Zachariah, in collaboration with Factory Obscura. Participants may walk “underwater” through the kirigami (cut and folded paper) reef as it transitions from a colorful, vibrant section full of corals, fish, and other sea life to a barren wasteland of bleached coral skeletons.
Participants are invited to restore Seed Reef by constructing and adding their own corals and other reef animals to the installation. By crafting corals, you are helping seed the reef, bringing it back to a healthy, thriving state.
Artists Malcolm Zachariah and Emma Difani’s artistic partnership formed through a shared love of material, nature, and ecology. Emma will use dye, silkscreen, and woodcut printmaking techniques to create patterns and imagery based on reef life. Malcolm will design, cut, and shape the printed paper to create stationary and suspended kirigami sculptures.
Seed Reef will be open for General Admission on Thursday, February 10, 2022. Tickets are $8 for Adults, $6 for Kids 12 & Under, and Free for Children 3 & Under. Save $2 when you bundle with your Mix-Tape tickets.
Factory Obscura’s Mix-Tape is located at 25 NW 9th St, in the historic Automobile Alley district of Downtown Oklahoma City. More information is available at www.factoryobscura.com.
Thanks to my superstar supporters, Revolve Productions, and the Keller-Kenton Family, as well as all of my supporters on Patreon. If you love what I’m doing, please join me on Patreon for bonus content, including early access to new episodes. Be sure to visit my online store with various Oklahoma-themed merchandise.
Happy Adventures!
A profile on Wrist World written for the Oklahoma Venture Forum on the subject of Leveling Up Talented Kids.
Having celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2021, Loveworks Leadership helps middle school students develop personal character, install leadership, and learn entrepreneurship skills. While attending Lovework’s summer camp program, Brent Wheelbarger and his daughter, Emma, learned about Lovework’s first student-started business, Real Kitchen Salsa.
“With Brent’s expertise in augmented reality and technology, he came to Loveworks and presented this idea of what if we did a Silicon Valley-style startup with middle school students,” said Carolyn Le, Associate Director of Loveworks. “From there, we presented it at one of our summer camps, the opportunity to join a Silicon Valley-style startup, where we’re going to create some sort of maybe video game, some sort of technology using this technology for kids.”
Students submitted a resume, went through an interview process, and then ten students were selected to be part of the team, said Le. This team in 2018 created Wrist World.
“Wrist World is an augmented reality video game that uses four slap bands, and each of them are different worlds that you can play here and explore,” said Arya Ramineedi, part of the 3D modeling Team. “You can scan the different bands with your App, and the game will pop up. There are two modes to play. There’s game mode and wrist mode. In game mode, you can explore through any four bands, collect items, and fight enemies. And in wrist mode, you can show off your character in 3D on your wrist.”
With a rough start with makeshift wristbands and buggy software, Wrist World has evolved over time, getting their products in stores such as OnCue and Loves, and in 2020, officially licensed its first character, Hatsune Miku.
“To give you an idea of kind of who Miku is as the character, she’s a Vocaloid character, and she’s almost like a hologram who does performances on stage and thousands of people will go and watch her just perform,” said Emma Wheelbarger, Chief Marketing Officer of Wrist World. “Miku did a big expo that was online because of COVID, and we got to run an ad during that campaign, and our ad took off, and thousands of fans were super excited to see it and just hopped right on board to the Wrist World fan base.”
Brad Sparks, part of the marketing team, added they are developing new bands with different characters but weren’t allowed to divulge any further information.
Brent Wheelbarger, founder and CEO of Trifecta Communications, thinks Wrist World is an example of the Ted Lasso Effect, the idea that you don’t necessarily have to be a complete expert and know all the answers to go out and try something.
“None of us knew anything about the toy industry or this whole realm that we were going into, and yet we put ourselves out there, and the team put themselves out there,” said Brent Wheelbarger. “We’re willing to stumble, try, fix, improve, get better, learn and in a way almost stumbled their way to a successful outcome because we could never have dreamed when we first started that we would be making deals with Japanese companies to license their characters on these bands and selling all over the world.”
The Wrist World team will be presenting at the Oklahoma Venture Forum Power Lunch on Wednesday, February 9, 2022. The event will be open to guests both in-person and virtually via ZOOM.
“I think that being here in Oklahoma and part of this community has been a huge help to our company,” said Katie Sparks. “Just the fact that we live in a place that’s so supportive like alone, but especially when it comes to business and when it comes to kids trying to do something that’s never been done before.”
Oklahoma Contemporary commissioned me to film this guided tour of their exhibition, Open World. Featuring nearly 70 works across both traditional and digital disciplines, this showstopper exhibition offers something surprising around every corner. Open World will engage gamers, pop culture enthusiasts, art aficionados, and casual fans of all ages alike.
I got to use my big camera stabilizer for this tour, which I’m still getting used to setting up and using for videos. The tool was great for walking around the gallery.
If you can make the trip to Oklahoma Contemporary, go visit Open World before they close on February 21, 2022.
A profile article on Michael Basch, Nathaniel Harding, and Matt Wilson written for the Oklahoma Venture Forum on the subject of The Future of Oklahoma’s Venture Ecosystem.
Atento Capital, Cortado Ventures, and Victorum Capital Club each have their criteria and types of companies for investments. Atento’s focus is on generating excellent risk-adjusted returns and making a lasting economic impact through stimulating entrepreneurial activity in the community. Cortado invests in capital-efficient businesses that leverage technology to scale in the Fintech, Biotech, Aerospace, Ag Tech, Energy Tech, Manufacturing, and Logistics sectors. The Victorum Capital Club is a membership network of accredited investors focused on entrepreneurship, investment, and business development to generate a return on investment and promote community and economic development.
Basch’s advice is cash is a relative commodity for companies looking for investors.
“I think, doing the work to understand your customer and the problem you’re solving before you raise any money where you would completely understand the problem and the willingness to pay,” said Michael Basch, Managing Partner at Atento Capital. “I think it’s doing the work on customer discovery ahead of time and not raising money for the sake of raising money but raising money. Cause you have to raise money. Not every business needs to raise money.”
Over at Cortado Ventures, Harding said they invest in business-to-business technology that “you can put a moat around.”
“That’s defendable where that company can either have an advantage because they have patents or either intellectual property that’s difficult to, to replicate, or their strategy involves, a key partnership with a large company that can help them scale very quickly,” said Nathaniel Harding, Managing Partner at Cortado Ventures. “There’s other ways of having a moat, besides having patents or trade secrets, but we look for defendable, unique, novel technology.”
Victorum Capital Club works the same way as any other venture capital firm, but while they don’t currently fund, they have a network of investors from across the country they pool together.
“Each of those investors gets to decide if they want to invest and if not, and if they do how much they want to invest, then when we have everybody’s commitments, we just group everybody together into a single entity and make an investment,” said Matt Wilson, Managing Partner at Victorum Capital Club. “Historically, venture capital has only been available to the wealthy elite pension funds, insurance companies, things like that. And what our business model does is it brings access to high-quality investment opportunities to everybody that is an accredited investor.”
Wilson said a venture capital firm will generically tell potential companies that they look for are “team, team, team, market size, and traction.”
“It’s a joke, but it’s a very serious point that the people are arguably the most important thing,” said Wilson. “One of the unique things about it that is particularly interesting to us and where we’ve found ourselves gravitating to is a CEO that has a real reason, like a real differentiated reason to be successful. So somebody that grew up in the industry or was the market already, like they have some unique reason that differentiates themselves from just any other guy off the street to be successful in their industry, focused on their customers, with their product, things like that.”
People who are trying to make a quick buck, who don’t have a good sense of why they’re building their business, and don’t want to collaborate are some red flags in a CEO Basch said. Basch also watches for how they take feedback, how they respond to adversity, and how they problem-solve.
“Don’t start a company or raise money because you want to, but do it because you have to,” said Basch.
Harding said one of the benefits of doing business in Oklahoma is fewer gatekeepers here.
“If you’re a first-time founder, you may not have a track record,” said Harding. “You may not have like the network or the keys to the city, but you can get meetings with the people that are going to help you, and they’re going to be willing to help you. That’s really special and powerful. I think if that is embraced and that entrepreneurs and founders know that, then they should be not afraid to reach out to people that may be able to give them great advice or they’ve had experienced that sector. If we all leverage that as a community, we can scale and grow the venture capital and entrepreneurial community much faster.”
Michael Basch, Nathaniel Harding, and Matt Wilson will be part of a special panel discussion at the Oklahoma Venture Forum Power Lunch on Wednesday, January 12, 2022. The event will be open to guests both in-person and virtually via ZOOM.
“You don’t have to be any particular thing to be involved in this ecosystem system and support founders and support businesses,” said Wilson. “There’s a lot of different ways to do that. And so I think everybody should find ways to be active and build the future of our state, build the future businesses that are kind, and going to drive us for the next 50 years.”