Dickson Cyberexpress

CyberExpress is anything but a conventional shopping mall; it is a sprawl of distinctive retail environments spread over three floors of the Airport Express Station in Kowloon, Hong Kong. The idea behind the project was to produce a unique shopping experience in various areas while carrying through a common hi-tech theme.
CyberExpress is made up of eight retail shopping ‘worlds’…..

Entertainment World
The “Media Alley” walkway guides shoppers through a wide selection of CDs, videos, books and magazines, enhanced by several listening domes with video monitors and large 42″ plasma screens. “Cyber Dancers” is an interactive video program that features robots on a plasma screen. Shoppers can morph their facial image onto the heads of the Cyber Dancers, select the desired music, and make the robot move around to the beats of the music.

E-World
The place to go where audio, visual, mobile and handheld electronics and computer hardware are on display. “Electronic Alley” provides a visually stunning, high-energy passageway flanked by Touch Panels and flat-screen monitors showing video images and multi-color lighting.

Cosmetics World
Positioned as a 21st century cybergarden, this area includes a virtual forest of huge futuristic trees (weighing 20 tons each) that display colorful twinkling lights and fiber optic flower buds, beckoning shoppers to the zone where technology and beauty become one. “Colour Me” and “Manga” kiosks allow customers to copy or animate their faces onto a computer screen, then select different cosmetic looks. Results can be emailed to friends or printed on keepsake magazine covers.

Sports World
Sports images are projected on the glass walls and surrounding floors, while a wide array of sports and fitness kiosks put consumers to the test.

Fashion World
This product world features the “Fiber Optic Lit Runway,” where programmed color variations from luminous focal walls and computer graphic monitors entice shoppers to browse fashion brand apparel for men and women. An interactive “Dress Me Up” computer kiosk offers consumers the opportunity to match apparel, shoes and accessories.

Kiddies World
Here, you’ll find games and educational toys. A popular attraction is the “Cyberquarium,” where children can create and adopt virtual cyber-fish that can be emailed to family members and friends worldwide. Twenty different fish heads, bodies and tails create a total of approximately 8,000 cyber-fish combinations.

The film was carefully scripted to include the multitude of key points, locations and features of the interactive shopping mall, before design work started on the characters to lead us around this cyber world. Architectural plans and CAD files loaded into Maya where the entire mall was created and brought to life. All the worlds had to feature and each needed to lead neatly to the next as if taking a journey around this amazing architecture. The film was created almost entirely within Autodesk Maya and composited in Autodesk Discreet Flame. The rooftop scene was shot motion control in a studio and then combined with 3d models in Flame. The short version of the film was cut down after the full film was finished and used as a promotional commercial.

In the image gallery below can be seen the mall in Kowloon Station as it exists today.

Client: Dickson Group