Wisp Vision Pro — Rafe Johnson

Wisp World is a meticulously designed ornament for your desktop — a tiny forest spirit for Apple Vision Pro. You feed the character and join thought-provoking, entertaining conversations to help the plants grow. Because visionOS lets it run alongside your other apps, you can nurture and bond with it over time. The experience pairs satisfying, magical interactions with relaxing sounds, a visually stunning miniature world, and the rich lore of Liquid City’s mobile game, Overbeast.

I returned to Liquid City as a freelancer to lead the technical art — shaders, materials, and VFX — and built the body, shaders, and states for the Wisp character.

Process

This was early-stage Vision Pro development: much of the work was testing and discovering the device’s limitations — what shaders could do, how materials behaved, what particle systems could handle — inside major constraints and a three-month deadline.

The character drew inspiration from Pixar’s Soul. We built customizable systems for facial expressions and animations such as blinking, talking, and looking around. Most of the animation lives inside the shader, then gets driven by code as the character’s state changes.

Credits

Creative direction — Keiichi Matsuda, Anna Mill, Jackson Deans
Motion design + 3D art — Salvi de Sena
Technical direction — Jasper Stevens, Grigor Todorov

Fig. 01 — Wisp character development

Most of the character's animation lives inside the shader — blinking, talking and gaze are shader states, driven by code as the Wisp's mood changes.

Fig. 02 — In-headset capture

Wisp World listing on the Apple Vision Pro App Store — Fig. 03 — Wisp World on the App Store

Wisp character in the Apple Vision Pro simulator — Fig. 04 — Simulator capture — Apple Vision Pro

Wisp World title card — Fig. 05 — Title card