For Spectra's 10th anniversary, I was among 10 local artists commissioned by Look Again (part of Gray's School of Art) to develop 3D art to be used in AR spaces as part of the festival via Instagram. The Northern Lights project was led by Craig Barrowman
With my piece for the festival, I had the idea of the phone being a special device like an X-Ray or Infrared camera when you can see spirits, ghosts and/or aliens hidden among our naked eyes. I was also inspired by Iso Takahata's Pom Poko (1994) when the tanuki (raccoon dogs) shapeshift and to entertain at first but then scare and prank the humans that have decimated their forests into modern-day Tokyo. I had made a few ghost prototypes but I stuck with alien as it was more simpler and wuick to develop.
The models were made and animated in Blender with 2D textures done in Procreate Dreams. I used a new workflow for modeling using the Skin modifer which helped get the result I desired. The model and it's animation des was then imported over to Spark AR studio for Craig to implement and test. Craig had praised my work for it's playfulness and ease of implementation alongside my skills with Blender.
The final piece was displayed via Meta's Spark AR filters through Look Again's Instagram pages with QR codes throughout the festival site. Seeing the final product during the preview night of SPECTRA felt magical with the city being covered in snow that night. Unfortunately, Zuckerberg has killed third party AR filters meaning you cannot access this filter. I do however plan to implement thie extraterresital into future animations/projects.