ashley hadzopoulos

Hyundai partnered with The Walking Dead franchise to offer fans the opportunity to build their own custom zombie survival machine with The Walking Dead Chop Shop app, debuted at San Diego Comic-Con. Users could choose from 3 different Hyundai models using hundreds of custom-designed post-apocalyptic 3D parts. A responsive website was built to house a gallery of users’ builds in real-time and allow users to vote on favorite submissions, whereby a Best Zombie Machine contest awarded one contestant a trip to New York Comic-Con to see a real-life rendition of their car on display at The Walking Dead booth.

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The app was built in Unity 3D software and was compiled for each individual platform – iOS and Android in mobile/tablet and Web. A separate kiosk version was optimized for Comic-Con San Diego and New York booths to provide users with an abbreviated offline version to combat limited bandwidth on the show floor.

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The parts were an even more complex process. With over 600 individual 3D parts designed from scratch, we started with a series of brainstorming sessions to understand what weapons would best serve to defend in a “real life” zombie scenario… a string of conversations that consisted of surprisingly serious debate. Starting with conceptual sketches from the comic book illustrators, the parts evolved into detailed renderings, 3D models and eventually texture maps that were then programmed into the Unity engine. A considerable amount of careful testing and optimization was then required to compress assets and improve performance without compromising graphics quality.

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We utilized Twitter and Facebook APIs for social login, sharing and accessing friend lists, and wove in the social analytics platform, Gigya, on top of Google Analytics to obtain more detailed user insights.

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A complex rubric was developed to manage the logic associated with currency (to earn points and spend them on parts) and survivability scoring.

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As a final (and significant) release, we added two major features to the app. First, a real-time 3D animation to dynamically populate a choose-your-own adventure type of sequence with the user’s customized car; this was to better payoff the car building experience with a much more visual performance test. Second, users were given a “save your friends” option enabling them to put their friends in the cars and notify them on social media if they were able to save their lives in the apocalypse or not; this new socialization layer enabled users to further amplify their experience to their networks.