For Málaga’s Noche en Blanco 2025, I recreated artist Rafael Pérez Estrada using AI for an interactive phygital selfie experience, and created a large-scale projection of his face on curtains at the room’s entrance, reciting one of his poems as visitors stepped inside.
A poet given a new way to speak — and a room full of people who got to listen.
Project Context
Rafael Pérez Estrada, recreated in AI at life-size scale, with organic, natural movement: he steps into the phygital screen, greets visitors, invites them to take a selfie, strikes a pose for it, and says goodbye — a full, believable interaction, not a static loop.
At the entrance to the room, a separate piece: his face reciting one of his poems, with accurate lip-sync, welcoming people in before they even reach the installation.
Phase 01 - Character Recreation
Working from an archive of reference images of Rafael Pérez Estrada, I rebuilt his likeness in AI — face, expression, presence — true enough to feel like him, not just a digital approximation.
In April 2025, character sheets didn’t exist yet as a tool, which made recreating a consistent character far more difficult. Without that shortcut, the likeness had to be generated directly in Magnific, working from archive images alone.
Phase 02 - Animation & Chroma Key
With the character built in Magnific, the next step was generating images and turning them into video with natural, organic movement — the greetings, the selfie pose, the goodbye.
Everything was shot against chroma key, since the final piece needed to sit on different backgrounds depending on where it played. In some cases the chroma key had to be added manually in Photoshop at the image stage, before converting it into video — there wasn’t always a clean way to generate it directly.
Phase 03 - Integration
With the character animated and keyed, the final step was bringing it into place: compositing it into the interactive phygital screen for the selfie experience, and onto the curtain projection at the entrance of the room, where his face greeted visitors with the poem before they stepped inside.