"I Want Those Who View My Work to Be Able to Get My Message" — Meet Hyeyeon Yoo, 3D Digital Artist at Observatory

Behind every great studio is a team of individuals who bring their own perspective, curiosity and craft to the work. At Observatory, one of those individuals is Hyeyeon Yoo — our 3D Digital Artist, whose work has appeared on arena screens across Europe and whose experimental approach to AI-assisted production is helping to define where the studio goes next.

We originally interviewed Hyeyeon for the Observatory blog in December 2022. "I want those who view my work to be able to get my message" — that quote captures something essential about how she approaches the work. It's not just technically accomplished. It communicates. You can read the original interview at observatory.design.

From Design School to Arena Production

Hyeyeon's path to Observatory followed a route that Ben Sheppee has described as characteristic of the best visual content creators — a design education that gave her the aesthetic foundation, combined with a willingness to develop highly technical production skills that most design courses don't teach. Her 3D work spans Cinema4D, Octane and Redshift rendering, and she has contributed animation to some of Observatory's most significant recent projects: the Jamiroquai Heels of Steel tour, Jacob Collier's DJESSE World Tour, and multiple award ceremony productions.

Pushing into AI: ComfyUI and the Live Camera Frontier

One of the most exciting developments in Hyeyeon's practice — and in Observatory's wider creative direction — is her experimental work combining live camera feeds with AI image generation using ComfyUI. This workflow blurs the boundary between real-time capture and synthetic imagery, opening up creative possibilities that didn't exist even two years ago.

The implications for live events are significant. Imagine a performer's movements being translated in real time into an evolving visual world — not pre-rendered, but genuinely responsive, shaped by what's happening on stage at that exact moment. That's the territory Hyeyeon is exploring, and it represents a genuine frontier for Observatory's live production capabilities.

Why Individual Creative Voice Matters in a Production Studio

Observatory has always believed that a production studio's output is only as good as the individual creative voices within it. Hyeyeon's own perspective — her interest in communication, her drive to be understood, her curiosity about the meeting point of technology and artistic intention — makes Observatory's work better. We're proud to have built a team where that kind of individual contribution is valued and nurtured.

Source: Observatory.design — Team Interviews, December 2022.