Date: Jan 2022 Global Game Jam/ 48 hours
Role: 3D artist
Tools: Maya, Substance Painter
Platform: Spark AR
Team
Producer: Shan Jiang
Game Designer: Wenbo Guo, Shan Jiang
Programmer: Shiqing Tang
Artist: Yingzi Qu, Wenbo Guo
Sound Designer: Tiange Zhou
Introduction
InstruMe is an interactive music composer AR filter built with Facebook’s Spark AR Studio in the past 48 hours. Simply follow the filter test link and open up the Facebook app, you can try it out and compose your own rhythm with just facial expressions and head movement. Enjoy the duality of Oriental and Western instruments and festival vibes!
Design Process
Needs
Given the situation that Global Game Jam was on the weekend right before Chinese New Year, we wanted to create an experience for the audience to enjoy the festival vibe; at the same time, we want to use the game format to have more audiences appreciate the culture in a way of 'duality'. Politically, there is a duality happening around the world; however, for the festivals, we are sharing the same mood.
The main goals of the piece will be interactive, fun to play, easy to execute, culture-oriented.
Based on our observation of social platforms, we concluded that filters on social platforms are a fascinating way for audiences to share their experience and emotions with their friends and family; Spark AR is a powerful tool to develop a piece with executable scope within 48 hours. So we narrowed it down and aimed our final design product as a piece of AR filter (game).
Ideation
We came up with three design ideas:
Considering music is one of the most powerful media to arouse emotional resonance, we decided to further develop the second idea 'Music + Oriental / Western'.
Prototype
we created the matching list of motions and musical notes and applied that to create the prototype on the phone.
Playtesting
We conducted a series of testing, got feedback from both team members and 'naive' users, and iterated to finalize the design. One of the major changes is to fix the recognition process with the programming method, distinguish closing eyes from unintentional 'twinkle' (twinkle would not trigger any interaction).
Art Assets
