Sketch One Outcome: Fairy Companion

We presented our Sketch One projects yesterday. To recap, our project is inspired from Peter Pan's Tinkerbell. Because she is so small she is only able to elicit one emotion at a time. Hence, the goal is for the user to move in a way that allows the fairy to become comfortable enough to stay close by, otherwise it will scare away quickly.

Our group's project worked out about as expected, with a couple additional features. We managed to get an animation of the fairy going, as well as get it to change its color to red when flying away from the participant (to depict a scared/angry emotion). Here is a video demonstration of our project:

Also, here are parts of our max patches:

We used bounding boxes to read the size and location of the user, so we could offset the fairy.

Centroids were drawn to get the centre point of the camera image.

We added in an animation of the fairy (done in flash) and calculated the point at which it should start flying away (based on the user's speed and size). Before this, we were using a white ball to test out the interactions.

Series of "if" statements to determine the fairy's location.

Made the fairy turn red when flying away, otherwise it stayed yellow.

Mirrored the camera image, so the user can accurately see their movements on the same side.

This is the final outcome - the fairy is staying close and liking the user in this case!

We did consider incorporating multiple fairies and participants, however due to the complexity of the bounding boxes and centroids we kept it to a single fairy and participant. However, it would be a goal if we were to move this project forward in the future. 

Sketch 1: Flushing Out Concept

For this project, we decided to take our footsteps concept (where glowing footsteps would be projected onto the floor from up above, acting as an imaginary companion to the participant) into a playful experience with fairies. This is mainly due to the nature of the defined setup - because the projector would be facing the screen and the camera would be facing the participant, we needed to tweak our concept to fit the environmental requirements. 

We came up with other ideas as well that might be implementable later on: 

Mischievous shadows 
- Inspired by Peter Pan's shadow
- 2 people in separate rooms, interacting at first with their own shadows, which subtly changes into the other person's shadow


2D --> 3D Depiction
- Inspired by Pixar's Night and Day short

- Environment where a message or image is only shown through the participant's silhouette, so it will require working together with others to solve the "puzzle" 


Virtual Paintball

- Gestural-based interactions, where participants can throw balls of light towards each other and use objects around them to block movements (almost like virtual paintball) 

   

For our project, we were inspired by Peter Pan's fiesty sidekick, Tinkerbell. We will create an environment where each participant will have their own Tinkerbell to interact with. However, since Tinkerbell is so small that she only able to elicit one emotion at a time, each motion elicited by the person will have a direct effect on the fairy's reaction. For example, slow movements will encourage the fairy to come closer and be more comfortable with the person, whereas quick movements will scare the fairy away and will perhaps make it angry (visualized by changing colors). We will also take size into consideration, where the fairies will optimally interact with children. If adults are involved, then they might have to crouch down to appear smaller and more approachable. 

We will, in particular, be detecting:

- Speed of participant and fairy's movements

- Size of participant

- Color of fairies

Here is a sketch of the general schematic:

    

Ideation - Sketch 1

Our design team sat down together today to brainstorm possible ideas for a responsive environment that would involve the basic components of a camera, projector, and screen. 

In our ideas we wanted to ensure that there was quality in the interaction, that incorporated unique senses. First, we brainstormed possible variables that could be detected. We threw out terms such as motion, distance, frequency, speed, sound, temperature, size and quantity. We took these further and applied them to possible concepts. Below are some of the concepts we came up with:

Concept 1:  Needy Room

This concept was taking into account a direct impact of the projection based on human movement. A projector would be placed overhead, projecting glowing balls of light on the ground. The more people clustered in a space, the bigger the blobs get. If there are areas in the space that are empty, a sound element could be incorporated that would subtly indicate that the space is lonely and needs more people. 

Concept 2: Footstep Companion

This idea would consist of a projector up above that displays glowing footsteps on the ground. A camera would track the movements of the participants, which would affect the movement of the footsteps. These footsteps would act as an invisible  companion, presumably to a child, by walking beside him or her. Where the footsteps could also skip ahead or walk using unique patterns, forcing the participant to follow it and turning the nature of interactions into more of a game.

Concept 3: Imitating Subconscious Actions through Fiber-Optics

This idea was inspired by the tendency of natural, subtle movements, such as lightly tapping feet on the ground, or rubbing one's arm upon feeling cold. We thought it would be interesting to exaggerate a subtle movement in order to anticipate the upcoming action. An example that was brought up was the technique of drawing comics. If the artist was to draw a character sitting up, he or she would first have picture the character slightly leaning back before actually getting up. This lead to a tangible concept, where through fiber optics, we would use the current movement of the participants to exaggerate and almost "fast forward" the action to create an anticipatory environment. 

Welcome!

Hello, friends! This is my blog for a class I am really excited about this term, called Body Interface. Here, you will find our process and documentation for upcoming projects, as well as my thoughts about embodiment. On the right hand side you can access the blog entries of my team mates. Keep checking back for more posts!


-Azmina