Thomas Averin

Graphic Design + Front End Dev + Motion

Halo: Starscope

Concept + Pitch + UI

an out-of-this-galaxy mobile experience

Starscope was a pitch conceived by myself and my copywriting partner Mathew Topolewski while working at Razorfish Portland to advertise Microsofts upcoming release, Halo: The Master Chief Collection, a remaster of the original Xbox Halo games. Microsoft wanted something to showcase the evolution in graphics between the original games and this remaster, so we conceived an ad experience based around viewing the remastered levels through your phone as 360° panoramas controllable using the gyroscope.

After our pitch was green-lit, I designed the UI with my art director and created the panoramic environments. I stitched together hundreds of in-game screenshots we took at the 343 Studio offices and created complete viewable panoramas. I was also responsible for conceptualizing and executing the various social media tie-ins for the advertising campaign that followed it’s launch. Despite a rocky technical launch of the game itself, the campaign was a huge success resulting in some of the highest preorder conversion rates seen in Razorfish’s Xbox projects. It was met with multiple awards and honorable mentions.