Event Date

Jan 2019

Role

Concept design
Experience design
Illustration

Team

5 designers
2 engineers

As a pro bono project, I co-created an augmented reality photo booth for the annual Art Party at the deYoung Museum.

The deYoungsters Art Party is an annual, family-friendly fundraiser held for the deYoung Art Museum in San Francisco. As one of the lead sponsors of the fundraiser, Adobe was asked to host an activation booth during the party. With less than 30 days to make it happen, a small group of volunteers and I quickly assembled to design and build an interactive exhibit.

We created a multi-part activation where children’s butterfly drawings were animated in an augmented reality photo booth and live display wall. Party guests were given instant print-outs of their photos as a memento. I was primarily responsible for the overall concept and illustrating the 3D scene for the butterflies.

Gallery  Party guests pose in the AR photo booth.

"Your magic activation at last night’s Art Party was incredible. I thought the backdrop was actually art from one of our collections."

Board member, deYoung Museum

Fig 1  © Copyright teamLab 2013

Defining the concept

Since the event coordinators did not have a specific theme in mind for their 2019 party, they gave us full freedom to define a concept. We were really interested in participatory art and empowering children to view their own work in a museum setting. We were especially inspired by the Sketch Aquarium installation created by teamLab (Fig 1).

We developed a similar concept where children’s butterflies would be brought to life as a collaborative exhibit. Our pitch was presented to the museum event coordinators organizing committee and given a green light to build.
 

02 - Concept

Experience flow

Color

Child participants complete a butterfly coloring sheet. Each sheet comes with a unique scanning code for identification.

Scan

The drawing is scanned and brought into Unity as the texture of a butterfly object. The wing pattern is repeated on both sides.

Play

Children pose alongside friends and family in a photo booth with their butterflies. Using live body tracking, the butterflies land on participant's arms.

Showcase

All of the butterflies from throughout the party are collected in a second live environment broadcasted in the venue on the large screen.

03 - Design

Building the scene

The basic foundation of the experience was a forest environment. For the style of this scene, we wanted to create a whimsical and fantastical storybook feel with rich detail and dramatic lighting. We wanted the children’ magical feeling of seeing their work come to life to be matched by a magical landscape.

Step 1  I started with a quick sketch to discuss with the engineers.

Step 2  I then mocked up concept art to pitch to the museum.

Step 3  I created vector shapes in Illustrator, then added texture in Photoshop. Layers were carefully organized to export the necessary UV maps.

With the quick project turnaround, we didn’t have the time to model a complex 3D scene. Instead, we opted to model a few key objects for the animated butterflies to interact with and build out the remainder of the scene with layered planes. This 2.5D effect played perfectly into the storybook aesthetic.

Step 4  Vlad Petkovic, our 3D expert, reconstructed the scene in Unity, placing each item as layer in 3D space.

Step 5  James Hurlbut, our developer, added butterflies and lighting effects to the scene.

04 - Production

Hosting the event

On the night of the fundraising event, our butterfly activation was a major hit with kids and parents alike. It was personally satisfying to watch kids excitedly search for their butterfly on the big screen and proudly point it out to their families. One toddler even sat on the floor in front of the screen in awe for 30 minutes!

Gallery  Kids spent time at the coloring table, then hit the photo booth with their families.

Despite a few Unity crashes along the way, the overall flow from paper to digital scan to photo booth worked well. We had considered using a set of iPads for the coloring portion of the process, but luckily we choose not to. Analog paper and crayons proved broadly approachable for a range of ages and allowed many more kids to color at the same time without the pressure of time restrictions.