Sam De Lara is a fifth year student earning her BFA in Media Arts, with a concentration in animation here at the College of Arts, Media and Design. After completing several internships, Sam accepted a co-op at the Boston Red Sox as a multimedia content creator. For the past eleven months, Sam has been working at the Red Sox to create animated 2D and 3D assets. We were able to check in with her about her experiences in the Q+A below!

Tell me about your day-to-day as a Multimedia Co-op for the Boston Red Sox!

I would work from about 9:30 a.m. -5:30 p.m. four days a week from January until August, and then two days a week once school started. As the Multimedia Co-op, my main role was to create and prepare 3D and 2D assets for mobile augmented reality. This means that I would help make sure that all the content that we put on the MLB Ballpark app for augmented reality would work and work well. Generally, I would also help to create and brainstorm more use cases and executions for augmented reality for the Red Sox as well as attend weekly Marketing and Creative Services meetings where I would give my input when applicable. If anyone needed 3D content for social media (like Snapchat Lenses), I would make those in addition to promotional GIFs for them too.

What was it like working for such a well-known, established brand? How did that, if at all, impact your creative process?

It was really cool! I wasn’t super into baseball before I started working for the Red Sox. (In fact, I grew up in New Jersey and my dad is a casual Yankees fan.) But now I love watching the games and I’m even able to keep up with talking about all of our players! It was really insightful to be on the inside of such a well-known, established brand and just see how everything works. It was also very eye-opening to be able to have experiences that not many people have the opportunity to casually have, like exploring Fenway Park during your lunch break or winning a World Series. Because the Red Sox are so well known, that definitely inspired me to work harder and try my best to produce the best content that I could since I knew that a lot of people would be seeing my work, no matter where it ended up.

Describe one or two highlights of your co-op experience. Are there any specific projects/animations/content creations stand out?

I was put on a project where I would workshop with Major League Baseball directly to implement the first 3D augmented reality experience that was publicly used by any MLB team. There was a giveaway night during a game at the end of June where we were giving away Jackie Bradley Jr. bobbleheads with AR experiences attached to the boxes. The way it worked was that through the MLB Ballpark app on your phone, you were able to scan a code on the box and then a 3D model of the bobblehead would pop up and rotate while bobbing its head up and down. It was a very amazing experience to be able to have played a large part in that and have it be successfully executed. I also created interactive 3D content for social media (Snapchat Lenses) that were used on multiple occasions by over 10,000 users and it was really amazing to have that kind of attention on something I made.

How did your classes/work on campus prepare you or relate to the role?

Last year I was hired as a Lab Monitor for the Experiential Technologies Lab on campus, where I would help out with general virtual reality and augmented reality tech support. I would help turn the equipment on, change the application being use, help with room setup, and do general troubleshooting. Because I had such an immediate access to this kind of expensive technology earlier in my college career, I was able to bring that knowledge with me to the Red Sox. I was able to have a bit more expertise in a growing niche field that not many college students normally have. With the Red Sox, I was able to use that knowledge to help provide more informed solutions to the related ideas and challenges that we were facing as we were developing more efficient ways of making AR content.