“This is a wonderful interplay between two mediums with a seamless execution.” —juror Gabe Kean
“The element of surprise and delight is found when uncovering the fact that each animation is completely unique.” —juror Megan Meeker
Overview: Typical calendars are passive elements, sitting on your desk, reminding you of the birthdays you’ve forgotten. To improve on a classic, motion design and production studio We Are Royale built an augmented reality calendar to give as a holiday gift to friends and family. The physical calendar cards sync with an iPhone and Android app. Lucky gift recipients can experience these unique interactive models, only viewable through the camera in their phone, for each month of the year.
•The app uses markerless tracking to recognize each card’s design, rather than a convoluted barcode typical to augmented reality tracking.
•The project was designed in September 2014, with on-and-off internal production leading to a launch in December 2014. The final calendar months were added to the main app in June 2015.
•The project’s video case study has had more than 25,000 views on Vimeo.
Comments by Jack Arnold and Brien Holman:
What do you think are the project’s core features? “The physical calendar consisted of the twelve unique letterpressed cards, packaged in a folding enclosure that doubled as a stand. Each calendar month featured its own augmented reality experience through a stand-alone app. Users could download a PDF from our site to experience the app. An intro animation was also created to explain the concept of augmented reality to anyone who hadn’t seen it before.”
What software, back-end technology and programming languages were used? “The entire project was built in Unity. Getting it there required a gamut of software, including Maya, Adobe After Effects, Spline and Adobe Flash. Different artists used their preferred animation tool to produce each calendar month, with Unity curating all the elements. The most integral piece of back-end tech was Qualcomm’s Vuforia software, which enabled the markerless augmented reality tracking.”
Describe any special interactive features. “Each month had a unique interactive model. The models ranged from simple tap interactions to mini baseball games. Any time you can tickle actor Tom Selleck’s mustache to trigger the Magnum, P.I. theme song or deform the geometry of our office Boston terrier and get an achievement for doing so is a good time had by all.”
