Magic Dots

01 Idea

Yayoi is doubtlessly one of the most influential artists of contemporary art. Most people know her as a successful artist, but few know her story before that.

She has visual impairments since born, which makes everything look dotted in her eyes. She chose to show her world with her paintings.

There was quite a hard time that she went through.

• In her childhood, she painted the backyard in her eyes - full of dots - which was not understood and liked by her teachers.

• When she left for New York for the first time, there were only 4 passengers on the plane, with heavy thunder and rain outside. “I think I might die there”, said Yayoi.

• When she arrived in New York, she lived in a small room and worked alone all day, focusing on art creation. Her work was now well-recognized at that time.

• During that time, she visited Metropolitan Museum a lot to collect ideas and get inspiration: which is almost the one and only entertainment she could afford.

• Finally, after years, her artwork and exhibitions got great success, not only in New York but also all over the world. People started to notice, like, and appreciate her great talent.

We hope that, through an immersive experience, we could better understand Yayoi, not only as a successful artist, but also a wonderful female who never stops to explore the meaning of art and life, determined to pursue what she loves.

02 Steps

• Models

We first selected key pages from the storybook, which are key moments of Yayoi’s life story. Then we designed the scene, built the models to best fit the visual experience with each different scene. For example, there are flowers with dots, the inner-look of an airplane, thunder and storm, etc. We built some models from sketch, and downloaded some basic shapes from open-resource model platforms then re-edited them.

• Interaction Design

I designed the interaction of each key page. For each page, there is a key storyline. Through interaction, I need to convey the key contents to the reader in a fun, interactive way. Here I set some examples. In the story of childhood backyard, I put emphasis on how the world looks like to Yayoi: colorful and all with dots. In the scene of flying to New York alone, I decided to state the terrible weather condition. Then in the story of her creating art pieces in New York, I focused on involving readers in the process of creating together with Yayoi. By pressing different buttons, the player can create paintings just as Yayoi did.

• Coding in #C

After deciding on the interaction design, I turned the ideas into reality with #C scripts in Unity.

• Build AR within NReal

We then embedded AR experience with Vuforia to make the storybook live and compact the design with NReal devices.

03 Delivery