Art Portfolio
Quickly made 3D interactive sketch/ composition, using A-frame, with sound. For best results, please view in Chrome browser.
I tried to capture the moment in this quick sketch. I enjoyed playing with depth here, using A-frame.
Though just a quick sketch I like the roughness or the rawness of the result.
https://boomar.github.io/eatout2helpout/
For best results, please view in Chrome browser.
This is an immersive VR political comic, telling a satirical story using WebVR software, and exploring the aesthetic and narrative possibilities of the medium.
It tells the news story of the UK government’s hugely popular ‘Eat Out to Help Out” scheme during the Covid pandemic (2020), where 100 million restaurant meals were consumed. The scheme arguably boosted Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s political popularity, but evidence shows the scheme likely contributed to the deadly second wave of the pandemic.
Artistic influences on this work include André Fougeron’s painting ‘Atlantic Civilisation’, a panorama of over 5.5m wide, telling a vast political narrative, in a comic style. Other influences were Cold War Steve’s vicious political photocollages and David Hockney’s wide immersive panoramas.
The work explores the aesthetics possibilities of WebVR, using the A- frame framework.
An A-frame scene is composed of multiple layers of drawings, separated by distance along the Z-axis, and overlapping. Authoring HTML in A-frame forces a layered approach, as a scene contains a list of entities. This aesthetic – the separation of successive 2D layers within a 3D space gives a feeling of space and depth, resulting in an effect like a traditional Diorama.
I was attracted by the fishbowl distortion of the drawings, when moving around the immersive 3D space, which felt like moving around inside a sphere, zooming in and out of the entities.
This is a panoramic story, told over time. A-frame seems to lend itself to a wide or panoramic storytelling.
Theme: Storytelling in Immersive Media
An experiment in AR aesthetic approaches, and narrative composition in political comics.
This “AR Vignette” is a tiny multimedia comment on the news. The AR effect is a 3D montage of overlapping flat planes, similar to old traditions, particularly Dioramas. These AR montages (through association, positioning and juxtaposition) tell stories in a particular aesthetic.
The technology used is AR.js and A-Frame. AR.js is a lightweight library for AR on the Web. A-Frame allows the creation of 3D Scenes and Virtual Reality experiences.
The subject for the work is the UK Care Homes during the Pandemic. The Government imposed strict rules, no visitors or physical contact. Daily on TV Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced rules from the podium – social distancing, no hugging. Yet at the same time, he was having an affair with his secretary, meeting in secret at Whitehall.
His response was “Well, I’m only human”
Composition analysis
The park alongside Parliament serves as the backdrop and Tracking Image. Scanning the Tracking Image opens up Hancock’s face – big with a transparent mask. We see through where he speaks, which is where we witness his betrayal, secretly embracing his mistress. In front of the mask, we see a care home with a family gathered outside, waving through the window. On the opposite side, Hancock stands at the podium. Hancock apologises throughout.
This experiment into narrative composition and the aesthetics of AR considers narrative possibilities of see-through shapes and over and around layered shapes and objects, exploring foregrounding, depth, layering, and what lies behind. It tells a story through layering and positioning, and transparency within drawings. It explores photocollage, digital drawings, mixed media, multimedia, and narrative composition.
Using your phone, scan the QR code:
Then point your camera at this picture:
