Given the short period of time I have to work on this assignment, the Blippar augmented reality (AR) project overall could be described as being successful to a certain extent, as I have managed to finish all of the three blippars that were required.
The main theme for my blippar was the idea of growing up, loss and reflection. In the first blippar, there is a woman figure covering and protecting a planet-shaped sphere. This represents the idea that when I was younger, my mum was like a world to me, and she was always protecting me. The interaction between the sphere and my mum also symbolizes the close bond that my mum and I shared. The photo album, in the sphere, was some photos of me and some of the grandchildren in my grandmother’s house. This was a memory that was really important to me as ever since a child, I’ve grown up in an environment where I was constantly surrounded by many people (perks of having a grandma with 10 daughters and 6 sons), and during different occasions, we would all gather together in a small house and bond. This was one of the memories that was really important to me, and therefore I choose to represent it in one of my blippars. The balls at the bottom just symbolize youth and the light colors of the balls represents innocence.
The main idea of my second blippar was the idea of loss. In my perspective, whenever we grow up, we tend to forget about our past and move on with our lives. As someone who has been living in different boarding schools for a few years now, at times I would feel as if my friends were more like my family, as I was constantly surrounded by them. The album portrays a series of images of me and my friends. The separation between my mum and I also started getting bigger as time goes by, and this was represented in my blippar through the massive separation between us. My mum is position on top of the building in the dark. This portrays the fact that although we’ve separated and drifted, she was always looking after me. This memory was particularly important to me as when I was leaving for New York, I could see the sadness in my mum’s eyes. The use of different platforms behind the 3 people symbolizes how in our current society, we’re constantly surrounded by different social media, and this is used to highlight the era that we’re in right now. The background used in this blippar was supposed to symbolize self-discovery.
In my third blippar, my future, I chose a calm, country-side background, which has connotations to isolation and loneliness. This portrays the realization of my future-self that I did not appreciate the moments I had with my parents and loved ones, and later on regret. The reason why this particular image was chosen was that I felt like people in my generation took the love given from their loved ones for granted, and they would rather spend their time hanging out with their friends.
Brainstorm process:
Final storyboard:
During the process of creating my three blippars, I have encountered countless problems. Firstly, the Blippar website was not working for the entire weekend, and it only started working at 1 AM in the morning, and therefore my project seemed a little rushed and incomplete. Some of my features in one of my blippars did not work and I did not have the time to complete it. Secondly, I faced a lot of issues when it comes to converting the 3D images found from TurboSquid into the required format that is suitable for Blippar, as while I’m converting the images from .fbx into .bb3 (the suitable format for Blippar), a lot of the features on the 3D image itself did not show up. In addition to that, all of my converted 3D images did not show up when I scanned my Blippar background. Lastly, when I tried putting the 3D images and forms into different angles, it was really hard for me to see the objects properly through the app, as the app doesn’t move accordingly and it stayed in one dimension.
Nevertheless, I have managed to finish three of my blippars and some of the features did work for me. I tried to use more of the feature given on the Blippar website, as that was the only thing that was working for me. Also, as I had a clear picture of what I wanted my blippars to represent, it makes it really easy for me to go forward with the designing process. In the Blippar app, the ability to move the screen around to obtain a 360 degrees view also helped a lot as I was able to see my project in a three-dimensional way with no limitations.
