AR Ink
Justin Toro
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 enhanc
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 fro
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 the
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 show
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 Ad
