AR Ink

Justin Toro

Justin Toro is a 3D artist graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in Interactive Multimedia from The College of New Jersey, he has expertise in hard surface modeling and a meticulous eye for design and detail. Most importantly, Justin is a gamer and understands gameplay concepts and designs, ensuring that his work will impact the world it lives in.

AR Ink

“AR Ink” is a demonstration of what could be possible if we merge the exponentially expanding industry of technology with physical body art through tattoos. Ultimately, “AR Ink” will be an app that utilizes augmented reality to bring tattoos to life through visual effects and 3D animation. What is augmented reality? Augmented reality is an interactive experience where real world objects are enhanced with digital graphics to convey information or entertainment. Typically in augmented reality games, players will use their phone cameras to view characters live in the physical world in real-time. In my concept of AR Ink, app users will be able to save their tattoo images onto a library where they can pull visual effects to display on their tattoos through augmented reality. This demonstration will provide a preview of an animated 3D character associated with one of my personal tattoos.

Inspiration

As a young adult growing up in a historical era of self expression, I have been inspired to find different ways that I like to express myself. One of these ways is through tattoos. Tattoos are images or phrases that are displayed on your body forever, making this a very intimate form of art. People hold emotional and meaningful connections in their tattoos with some of these connections coming from real life influences such as family members or role models. Other influences can be moments of joy or hardship that are worth remembering in becoming stronger as a person. If I can strengthen these connections with my passion in technology and art, I believe that I can deepen the meaning of tattoos and provide a more personal storytelling experience.

Technical Inspiration

One of the most popular augmented reality apps and one of my inspirations for this project is Pokemon GO. The developers at Niantic created one of the largest trends of the summer by getting people outside to explore for augmented reality Pokemon in the world around them. Using a GPS based system, Pokemon will pop up on the map, forcing players to go to that specific location in order to catch them. What I admired about Pokemon GO was the unique user experience they created. Flocks of people would travel together and it was amazing to see everyone unified through a game. With AR Ink, I want to give people with tattoos an extra layer of personalization to continue to express themselves in a new and digitally enhanced way.

Challenges and Pivots

The biggest challenge I faced while working on my thesis came from my own ideas of deliverables for this project. Initially, I wanted to create an IOS app with saved libraries of visual effects that can be selected and applied to tattoos. With this goal in mind, I was put on a path of app development and coding, both of which I have no experience in. I had to answer the question of “How can I showcase my strengths as a 3D artist through my thesis project?” After pivoting away from the deliverable of an app, I decided to focus on creating an animated 3D model that still conveys my core value of visual storytelling. Another roadblock arose when building the augmented reality of the project and with time constraints, I was forced to replicate the augmented reality experience through a video composition. Although the development process was halted, my thesis project provides the stepping stones for a larger idea that could be the future of tattoo technology.

Tools

To create and animate my stylized serpent model, I used Autodesk Maya. In the future, I plan on expanding my skills in 3D software by translating my knowledge of Maya to Blender for accessibility purposes as well as learning different pipelines and processes. In order to texture my model, I utilized Adobe Photoshop. My experimenting in AR was done in Unity using Vuforia Engine. I also tested in Adobe Aero which can prove to be a useful tool in the future. In order to replicate the augmented reality, I used Adobe After Effects after rendering my animation along with an alpha channel using Maya’s Arnold Renderer.