Gorillaz's 2005 EMA hologram was a projected cartoon, not a scan

What you see

In November 2005, viewers in the arena and on television watched the animated members of Gorillaz appear to walk onto the stage at the MTV Europe Music Awards and perform alongside the hip-hop group De La Soul. MTV's own coverage, archived from mtv.co.uk, describes the audience as 'open-mouthed when the band were projected onto stage as remarkably solid-looking 3-D holograms,' and reports that the band went on to win Best Group that night. No headset was needed; this was a stage effect meant for a live arena crowd and a broadcast audience.

How it works

Gorillaz's animated members are drawings and CGI models, not scanned people, so the underlying content is pure animation rather than a captured performance. MTV's article does not name the specific projection vendor, but Musion's own case study for its 2012 Tupac show separately states that its partner AV Concepts had 'previously' used the same Eyeliner-branded rear-projection technique for 'the Gorillaz,' among other acts. That technique projects imagery onto an angled transparent surface so it appears to float on the stage, the same broad family of illusion used for other virtual-performer stage shows this site covers.

Viewing conditions and limits

The illusion works for an audience facing the stage under arena lighting; MTV's report gives no detail on brightness, screen size or the number of simultaneous viewing angles that were tested, so those figures are unconfirmed by any source opened for this entry. What is confirmed is scale and format: a televised awards show with a live band, De La Soul, sharing the stage with the projected characters. Musion's separate case study of a related Gorillaz appearance, filed under the vendor's own portfolio as a joint 'Madonna & Gorillaz' entry, describes a similarly staged performance it calls 'the iconic Grammys performance,' underscoring that Gorillaz used comparable projection technology at more than one award show in the years that followed.

What it is not

Despite MTV's own '3-D holograms' phrase, this is not an interference-recorded or free-space hologram: it is a projected animation bounced onto a screen or foil so it reads as solid to an audience looking from one general direction. The character content is entirely computer animation, so there is no underlying photographed or motion-captured performer standing anywhere, unlike some of the deceased-musician projections this site also covers. 'Hologram' functions here as the broadcaster's and the industry's shorthand for a striking projection effect, not as an optical description.

• Ask whether the award show's own archives name the specific projection vendor and technique used that year.
• Ask whether the animated content was pre-rendered video or a real-time rendered projection synced to the live band.
• Ask how the effect differed, if at all, from Gorillaz's later Grammy-stage appearance with Madonna.

Gorillaz's 2005 appearance is often cited as one of the first widely broadcast uses of hologram-branded stage projection in music, which is why the specific mechanism, rather than the label, is worth pinning down.