Physical Cartooning

The idea was to create a virtual 3D window into an alternate world of Aardman characters. These ‘magic mirrors’ could be placed around Bristol, allowing passers-by to witness bizarre cartoon happenings. “We wanted to give someone ambling through the city a real ‘what the hell?’ moment,” Aardman’s Dan Efergan explains.

The aim was to understand the city as a canvas, and experiment how digital media can augment space and location.

Merging animation with real life video footage on screen is something that has been done for years. Classic films like ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit?’ have held adults and children spellbound and asking the question – what if this could happen in real life? Can a cartoon become part of our reality, creating an augmented hyper-reality?

Throughout the process the team whittled a wealth of ideas down to a final pair: digital hand puppets, and the virtual, interactive windows. “The puppets worked so well that it seemed far too easy to develop that idea,” says Dan. “So we focused on the magic mirror.”

“We ran out of time to develop it as far as we’d hoped, so the success of the final product was mixed,” HMC Interactive’s Mike admits. “However, the process we went through to get there was a huge success. That’s the main benefit of the Sandbox scheme – going through the creative process. We learnt so much about different tracking technologies, hardware, software and human interactivity.”