https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Bli95B6Bhru7O30ukRyyUzprBkMlH8l7DI2AuC9vtwY/edit
The link contains videos of each artefact in use.
exploring realities.
Category: Augmented Reality
Developing these three artefacts, I have efficiently worked under strict time constraints, discovering innovative methods or enlisting aid to rectify any issues that came my way. Each project bore numerous complications, but my capacity to devise solutions, or learn from others to resolve these challenges, has instilled confidence in my capabilities and newfound skills for future projects. I will now divulge how I came to this realization and the developmental procedures of each project.
The first artefact was the 360 film project. Conceptually, I knew of its existence, but I had never attempted to create a 360 film of my own before. Thankfully, this project was done in pairs, and I partnered with a classmate who had significantly more experience with computer softwares and editing than I did. Under our time constraints, we agreed it was more appropriate to work mostly within our existing individual strengths. Thus, we concurred that she would handle most of the technical editing work in Adobe Aftereffects, and I would manage the narrative and creative direction, including the interactive element of the film editing in Eevo.
When gathering ideas for our narrative, we heeded the assignment brief and decided to base our plot around a futuristic, post-apocalyptic human civilization. I drew inspiration from multiple video games to aid in devising lore for our 360 film world. We designed a foundational narrative before beginning filming, allowing ourselves to rule out areas that would be unsuitable for our world. We were more efficient in filming this way and proceeded onto editing the videos quickly.
In charge of creative and narrative direction, I advised my partner on what to edit for our futuristic, spaceship-like world. We were, however, overly ambitious with our goals, especially considering both of us were unfamiliar with Adobe Aftereffects. We consequently simplified our vision to ensure it was achievable for our skillset, while still establishing our intended immersion in the world we created. As my partner edited, I sketched out a preliminary storyboard to plan exactly how each scene would flow from one to the next for the interactive aspect. I then worked off this storyboard to connect the various scenes on Eevo. However, another issue arose here – we’d both assumed that text could be written directly on scenes in Eevo, but after emailing our tutor to check, I discovered this wasn’t the case. Running out of time, and without Aftereffects on my laptop, I created a slideshow of each scene with the added text, then screen-recorded this to use in Eevo. I understood the brief was to edit in Aftereffects, but this was the most simple and efficient fix for our untimely complication. I feel this demonstrates my ability to overcome unplanned obstacles using the resources at my disposal in an effective way.
Overall, I am content with the final 360 film, but perhaps given more time and experience with Aftereffects and Eevo, the quality of the editing and immersion of the film could’ve been much greater. Though I enjoy narrative direction, for similar future projects, I’d like to tackle the more technical aspects that I am less experienced with to further my knowledge and skills.
Our second artefact was the virtual world-building project. I was both excited and nervous about this: excited to create a virtual Singapore and experience my hometown in a new way, and nervous about using an unfamiliar software, Unity. Despite my reservations, I found this project to be the most enjoyable for creativity and technicality simultaneously; Unity was generally easy to use and understand.
Once again, under our time constraints and my lacking skills in polygon modelling, it didn’t seem feasible to model my Singapore landmarks in Maya. Instead, I opted to download my landmark assets online and edit them in Unity to make them my own.
I faced a few obstacles with this software, despite enjoying it, but each issue was easily remedied with help from my classmates with prior Unity experience, or our tutor. One error now burned in my memory, never to be repeated, is ensuring to save my Unity file as a “project” rather than a “scene”. I mistakenly saved my work as a scene file, and when subsequently loading it, found that the game mode no longer functioned. After much research, fiddling, and assistance from my classmates and tutor, we discovered that the issue was due to the main camera and third-person walker camera having different displays after loading it as a scene. From then on and forevermore, I will ensure to save my Unity work as a project file.
I completed this project quickly and efficiently despite the setbacks and enjoyed doing so. Experiencing childhood landmarks I hold dear in a completely different manner, and being able to share these intimate memories with others, made this project incredibly special. However, if I were to redo it, I would dedicate more time to finer details and the realism of the world, as I feel it would be more immersive that way.
Our final artefact was creating a virtual world avatar in Spark AR. Starting this project behind everyone else due to illness increased pressure, but after browsing through Lenslist for filter inspiration, all those concerns seemed to dissipate. They were instead replaced with an excitement to create something unique and beautiful.
A holographic/iridescent face was the inception of my filter-to-be; it portrayed ethereality and otherwordly beauty. I desired to build upon the holographic face with a mermaid-esque crown to further emanate this impression.
I encountered slight hiccups while constructing my filter, the most prevalent of which was not knowing how to create the holographic face appearance. I engaged my tutor’s support on this, and he suggested I use a variety of different-coloured lighting to create this effect. Gratefully, he was entirely correct; I used this method to create a multicoloured, iridescent facial effect that matched the user’s head movements. He also advised me on how to fit my crown asset perfectly onto the user’s head, as I struggled with this. He suggested I cut the back half off the crown model in Blender, giving the illusion of the crown fitting around one’s head.
Because of his assistance, I was able to create my filter exactly as intended, exuding a surrealistic, mystical beauty. Additionally, I now have a barrage of knowledge on producing certain effects for a filter on Spark AR. I plan to practice these newfound skills and create more filters on Spark AR, as I uncovered such a sense of accomplishment when my filter was functional and published.
Here is the link to the presentation of my final artefacts, and the process of creating each of them:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1MJa0tsLjw1tOQHVSbUZovtfgZiRhpL2b7UMAX35iztM/edit#slide=id.p
Categories
AR Artefact Biography
I wanted to create a virtual world avatar that emanated ethereal, mystical beauty. As such, there is this iridescent, fantasy-like glow to the face, with a crown that matches this iridescence as the user’s face moves. As the light catches the user’s face, the colours of the holographic glow merge into one another, creating a glossy, prismatic effect. I believe this look exudes a paradisiacal feel; a delicate beauty that is somewhat otherworldly, and yet, because human features aren’t distorted in the filter, remaining natural. I wanted to keep these mundane characteristics, but warp them slightly to create this surrealistic version of myself as my virtual world avatar. I felt this would elevate the user’s experience with the filter to portray an alternate, distorted version of humans, or perhaps an insight into what the existence of an otherwordly being may look like.
Changing certain aspects of myself was always my intention with the filter from the beginning, which may be due to modern humans’ innate desire to alter their physical attributes to an extent, likely consequential to unrealistic societal beauty standards. By harnessing these insecurities and creating a virtual world avatar version of myself that is magical and transcendental, perhaps subconsciously freed me of this burden. I fabricated a heightened version of myself that is both ordinary and extraordinary; temporal and fey.
The inspiration behind the holographic quality of the filter was to create a mermadic feature to my virtual world avatar, as if I were a mermaid princess (hence the crown). The crown is large in scale and abstractly shaped, reiterating this fantasy element to the filter – an unnatural design that wouldn’t exist in actuality. Combining the unorthodox crown and holographic lighting, I feel I have successfully illustrated a mystical version of myself as my virtual world avatar.
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Week 9: Creating My Filter
This week I worked on bringing my vision for my Spark AR filter to life. Still new to the software, I had to ask my tutor for advice on certain aspects I struggled with. For example, I wanted my filter to have a crown tracking the user’s head, but found that it was levitating in front of my head instead of wrapping around it. I asked my tutor how to rectify this issue and he suggested that I cut the back portion of the crown off to give the illusion of it wrapping around the back of the user’s head. I then used the software “Blender” to do so, inputting the new model into Spark AR. As suspected, this fixed the issue and made the crown look as though it was perfectly wrapped around my head.
For the crown to look realistic (to an extent), and as eye-catching as I wanted it to be, I increased its metallicity to the maximum and used a smooth crown texture downloaded from Sketchfab. The model of the crown itself was also downloaded from Sketchfab.
The next step was to create the holographic face effect. I wanted to create a look that would make the user’s face look glowy in a colourful, ethereal way. To do so, I intended to combine pink, green, blue and white lighting effects on the face. I had downloaded textures of these colours but was unsure of how to then place them on the face in the manner I wanted. Once again, I sought help from my tutor and he suggested I use the various lighting effects in Spark AR and then colour them to achieve the look I wanted. As such, I placed 4 different lighting effects towards the face, colouring each of them in green, blue, pink and white, respectively. I then adjusted the strength of the lighting and the pigmentation of the colours to ensure the holographic effect I desired was achieved.
When browsing for ideas for my Spark AR filter, I initially wanted to combine this holographic face effect with a crown, a bleached brow look and some colourful undereye eyeshadow. I decided not to do the more beauty-focused aspects when actually creating the filter as I felt it would look too convoluted and messy. The final filter is much simpler than I originally intended, but because the crown is quite large and draws a lot of focus, I feel the holographic face and the way the colours change as your face turns, ties the look together quite nicely. It also has this wet, ethereal vibe to it – the best way I can describe this is, when using the filter, I feel like an underwater mermaid princess. Though it may seem silly, this sort of mystical beauty was my original intention for the filter, and if I were to have done more, I fear its impact and the energy it conveys would have been completely different.
Happy with the quality and look of the filter, I have just published it to be used on Instagram, Facebook and Messenger – “holographic crown”. I’m excited to share this with my friends and for them to use the filter themselves!
Being someone who has used various filters on Snapchat and Instagram from time to time, it’s felt very surreal to publish one of my own for people all over the world to use, if they choose to do so. I think I may enjoy making and publishing more filters in my free time!
Categories
Week 8: Spark AR
Today I was introduced to Spark AR, the project we were told about last week that I missed because I was sick. We are meant to create a filter as a virtual avatar of ourselves, and then write a 300-word explanation of why we decided to depict ourselves in such a way.
I learnt some of the basics during class, creating a basic tester filter of glasses and a frame. My tutor also shared a website with me where I could browse for inspiration on the kinds of filters I could create. Through browsing, I’ve found that the holographic filters resonate with me the most, and I think I would like to recreate this for my virtual avatar filter. It emanates a sort of ethereal surrealism, where the natural human features are still intact, and yet somehow warped and different. The various colours used for the holographic elements make it also seem distorted, perhaps, differing from colours that appear naturally on people’s faces.
My eye was also drawn to a beauty filter, where there was a form of undereye eyeshadow, which is abstract, and a bleached brow. Bleached eyebrows are trendy right now, and though I wouldn’t take part in it myself, I have wondered occasionally how I might look with bleached brows. I saw this as an opportunity and thought I could make a holographic face filter, with bleached brows and undereye/cheek colouring. I thought it could perhaps be an insight into what beauty standards may be in the future, such as in a distant, fully-digital era, or a portrayal of some alternate, distorted version of humans.