Augmented Reality App for ChildFund Alliance – Free From Violence
Atticus Digital was commissioned by Gill Advertising to develop an app to encourage people to sign a petition to help set children 'Free from Violence and Exploitation'.
ChildFund Alliance was keen to use some kind of augmented reality. Once the creative approach had been agreed and the target audience had been identified, we set about figuring out the best approach to tackle this very sensitive subject and develop a promotional tool that would engage and educate the user. It was important to consider the advocacy of the stakeholders and the anticipated reaction of the audience.
The result of the creative process was to focus on the plight of children in certain scenarios, such as Child Labour, Physical Violence and Sexual Violence. The key concept was established and it was decided that we would incorporate the brand message and set children free from violence and exploitation using the ‘Butterfly Effect’.
It was decided that we did not want to portray nations, gender specific people, ethnic groups or identify individuals, so Atticus suggested using animated silhouettes to represent the scenarios.
Once the concept was agreed, Atticus set about investigating the technical approach to the app development. Budgets were restricted due to the charitable nature of the project, so conventional animation methods were dismissed. Motion capture of real people was the obvious choice but traditional methods are very expensive.
Atticus decided to opt for new motion capture technology using Microsoft Xbox Kinect sensors and specialist software iPi Soft, to record the data and convert it for use in 3D platforms.
Each of the 3 scenarios were acted out by adults and the motion was captured and transformed into data that could be manipulated in 3D animation software by Newtek, called Lightwave.
The characters were developed and individual child and adult profiles were matched to suit the brief, several iterations of gender, clothing and even hairstyles were modelled to fit with the requirements.
Once the animation had been matched with the models and the motion capture, the movie files were exported in high definition, ready for compositing with graphics and key messages.
Atticus also produced the animated butterflies to free the children from violence and exploitation.
The augmented reality was programmed by Atticus via the gaming engine Unity, which enabled the integration with the required devices and utilised the gyroscope and GPS locating system on iOS and Android devices.
TestFlight was used to distribute the app for testing on devices before deployment.
The initial release was on the Apple App Store and the approval process was lengthy. Additional functionality was added to aid this, such as news feeds, sharing, Twitter and Facebook integration.
You can download the app from the Apple App Store here:
Wow looka amazing!!!
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