[2024 Korea Conference]
Creature Supervisor is a position that most people don’t recognize, but it’s one that Seung Hun Lee held before he founded The2H.
His job was to create non-human creatures through computer graphics. It’s a challenging task to make something that doesn’t exist in the world feel alive, but Lee had a stellar career, winning Academy Awards for his work on movies like Avatar and Pirates of the Caribbean.
The2H was founded because of the word ‘immersive’. It was when Lee was watching virtual reality (VR) movies that he realized that the movies he had made so far were not immersive enough. Rather than watching a two-hour movie, watching a 5-minute VR movie felt like a more intense experience.
Lee spent much of his time creating VR equipment and content, developing, and accumulating technical skills. As a result, The2H created Hyperspace and PersonalSpace, simulators that increase immersive experience to the maximum. It is credited as a groundbreaking product that immerses the user not only visually, but also through all five senses, including temperature sensations such as hot and cold, wind, and vibration. Motion sickness, one of the biggest drawbacks of existing VR content, was also successfully reduced by the company’s know-how to match visual information with balance systems.
The technology has already been recognized in the U.S. market. In 2021 and 2024, the company participated in CES, the world’s largest IT fair, and received rave reviews. At CES 2024, the product won the Innovation Award in the XR technology category.
The2H has also been preparing to take a step beyond being a hardware developer. The company is working on VR games with the help of a former art director for the Call of Duty series, one of the world’s best-selling shooter games.
Lee has been working in computer graphics since 1991, and he’s a veteran of the biggest gaming markets in Korea, Japan, and the U.S. When it comes to running his own company, he has a guiding principle.
“I think the higher up you get, the more work you have to do. When you’re the head of an organization, you have a lot of work to do outside of your day job. From managing employees to raising investment, there’s so much to do, but I’ve never taken my hands off the wheel. I believe that in order to build the highest quality product, the head of the organization needs to know the technology inside and out.”
Lee, who said the game’s release is not too far away, noted that the Korea Conference will be the place to build a broad network to expand into the U.S. After working in the U.S. for 20 years, he is returning to the U.S. as the head of the company and will be competing for the global success of Korean games.
BY WONHEE CHO, HOONSIK WOO [cho.wonhee@koreadaily.com]
