Chad Austin Design and Media: Sunrise Microsoft AX site

Building a Sunrise office for Microsoft Dynamics AX™

When Jackson Group Interactive came to Chad Austin Design & Media and proposed they work together on a new online Virtual Environment for Sunrise Technologies featuring Microsoft Dynamics AX™, it was quite a shock. To work on a large-scale project with world-class business giants means stepping up your game exponentially. Chad Austin Design & Media (CADM) and the Jackson Group Interactive (JGI) were honored to be chosen for this project and excitedly accepted the challenge.

Sunrise Technologies featuring Microsoft Dynamics AX™ (STMAX) is not only a Microsoft Partner, but a leading member of Microsoft’s President’s Club. To the layman, this means of all of Microsoft’s partners, Sunrise is in the top 1% world-wide. STMAX had seen another Virtual Environment created through an earlier CADM & JGI partnership and wanted a virtual environment of their own for marketing, advertising and garnering new business. After a few preliminary talks, CADM & JGI sat down to start fleshing out ideas. As in past projects, JGI would oversee the entire project & any (HD) video production, and CADM would oversee the multimedia development, Swift 3D™ environment and Flash™ development. Crucial to this creation was a low download time and modular design so that future updates and edits would be possible.

The first batch of ideas stemmed from a suggestion from the 1999 movie, the Matrix. JGI drew up a few sketches and handed these ideas to CADM. From these creative rough drafts, CADM created a fleshed-out animation from Swift 3D™ into Flash™ for the client. The original sketch and resulting proposal can be seen here for the first time.

But then another idea was proposed: could we get it to resemble their office, as if you were actually entering the STMAX facilty? How about creating the office so you could navigate through it, moving from one room to another? So JGI traveled to their Headquarters and took pictures of their office and anything associated with the identity of their office. Then JGI created another rough sketch and offered it to CADM, who took these sketches and translated them into a second proposal.

This second proposal was the answer. Once accepted, the next segment was to work out the navigation into the tertiary levels. The suggestion was to start from the hallway of the STMAX main office, go through the door to the lobby, and then work your way into the conference room (see the figure to the right).

Once the navigation was cemented, the 3D virtual environment was populated with models of objects, lighting and interactivity (sounds, buttons, links, etc.). You can liken this to decorating a home with your imagination.

Sunrise Technologies featuring Microsoft Dynamics AX™ not only wanted the virtual environment, they also wanted a narrator in their virtual environment- much like a meteorologist on TV. JGI shot the video in front of a green screen in HD. The narrator video was then set into the virtual environment (with the green screen removed).

A "magnifying glass" test-phase was applied to the entire site. A visitor had to be able to intuitively navigate their way through the office without getting lost. The environment had to be engaging enough to the visitor to make him or her want to explore. Inside the office more video, software demonstrations, white papers, brochures, awards, audio clips, and more could be found. By the time the visitor leaves the Sunrise / Microsoft site, they should have a firm grasp of STMAX's business model.

After hundreds of combined man hours; countless meetings, emails and late nights; video shoots; traveling across the USA; and even more emails- the green light was given for a launch. The site was officialy announced January 25th, 2010, with a national campaign following in Spring 2010. The Sunrise Technologies featuring Microsoft Dynamics AX site is a shining example of ideas, creativity, business and technology coming together and creating something new for the online visitor. We hope you visit and enjoy our creation. You can view the Press Release here.

Update (July, 2010). Sunrise Technologies is the recipient of the prestigious Microsoft Distinction in Marketing Award for Overall Best Marketing Campaign, a campaign that featured this joint Chad Austin Design and Media / Jackson Group Interactive project.

Please don't hesitate to contact me should you have any questions!

Chad Austin

(828)-381-7896