Yakety Yak..
the plaque that talks back!
Inspired by a fancy for puppets and the song “Yakety Yak” by The Coasters, I created a plaque mounted AR puppet that keeps you company and sings with you! (especially useful for sing-a-longs when you’re all by your lonesome).
The general idea is that this 3D character is puppeteered by your face/body rotation, and mouth shape that sits on a wall (using world space line tracking). The puppet inverses your movements, almost like a mirror, so you can look longingly into each others eyes for those especially heart filled duets.
| Design Sketches |
I knew I wanted a wall hung animal head, like those you would see above the fireplace mantel in a cozy firelight kissed study.
Love the vibe.. buut, hate the murder of animals for sport… not to mention a dusty animal over a raging fire?? mm, talk about fire hazard central.
So instead I envisioned a sweet animal friend that would be a friendly face to welcome you home when you get in from a long day that comes with no extra clean up, never needs to be fed, and hangs itself on the wall in a matter of moments.
| Yak Dude Character Design |
I ended up with choosing this character as it felt like the right balance between simple and complex forms. Keeping the eyes in focus with color, making sure to keep the fur simple so the model would stay light for real time interactivity. I knew I wanted an animal with impressive horns, (to do the mantel justice) and these slightly more bison-like horns were simpler. I also love the contrasting balance of rough organic brown against smooth, shiny aqua and brass golden metal. So I balanced the horns with a kind of brass headpiece gem that lights up whenever the character has locked in on a face to puppet.
3D Designed Color Variants
I matched the initial character design colors but then while in substance played around with the colors. Seeing how the character would feel like as an alebrije.
Rig
Total Tris of Character: 3644
Maps at 2048. Textured in Substance Painter. Animated in Maya. Rendered in Redshift
The texture maps for the characters body are separate from the characters mouth. This was done intentionally so that the animation of the mouth could be controlled by moving the UVs in texture space to simulate the users mouth movements. Not only would this be lighter weight that modeling lips and tongue geo and tying a rig and blendshapes and animation to it, but it also kept the style in this 2.5D realm. The intent was to have this character feel as if it lifted off a page and was half your real life pet/ roommate and half figment of ones own imagination (but not in a weird way).
Mission Accomplished… (If only this AR puppet could also give crisp high fives.. mm not a bad idea for v2)