Mobile Augmented Reality: Visual Storytelling
An interactive AR storybook "Daisy's Day Out in New York" that brings hand-drawn characters to life through scannable augmented-reality effects.
Augmented Reality
Illustration / Visual Design
Role
Illustration · AR Design · Visual Design
Timeline
~2 months (NYU AR course)
team
Bhavya Mulukuri, Erika Noma, Rithika Repakula
platform
Tools
Adobe Fresco, Adobe Illustrator, Procreate, SparkAR
Overview
We set out to create an augmented-reality storybook that's interactive and engaging for all ages, with a focus on younger readers. The storybook was drawn entirely from scratch in Procreate and Adobe Fresco. We loved seeing storybook characters come alive on television growing up, and wondered how we could bring that magic to a printed book using AR — so we wrote a story that's simple, easy to follow, and uses AR to make the characters move.
Daisy's Day Out in New York' our hand-drawn AR storybook.
Process
We executed the project over a month across six stages: concept development, creating and illustrating the elements, writing the book, accessibility research, building the AR effects in Spark AR, and deployment — adding QR codes and printing the book.
Six stages from concept to a printed, AR-enabled book.
Spark AR for the augmented reality; Procreate and Adobe Fresco for the hand-drawn illustrations.
Storyboarding
We started with initial storyboarding to establish the storyline and give our illustrations a foundation.
Initial storyboard: Daisy meets a squirrel, follows him into New York City, through Central Park and the zoo, exploring the city.
The Characters
Daisy- our adventurous protagonist. Chip- her chipmunk friend.
The Output
Using Spark AR, we developed augmented-reality effects tied to the storybook. It was a fascinating process — animating the illustrations and turning them into AR that readers unlock by scanning a marker on each page.
Page 1: Daisy in her room; scan the book to see Daisy meet Chip.
Page 2 : Central Park; scan the butterfly to see what Daisy does.
Page 3: the zoo, scan the paw to see what Daisy does.
Page 4: an ice-cream truck in Manhattan; scan the popsicle to see the finale.
Conclusion & Next Steps
Building the book and its AR effects from scratch was a great learning process and we validated it by testing with school students, who were captivated watching Daisy come alive in augmented reality.
Next steps: Publish the book and make the AR effects more interactive.
A process video of our illustration work and building the AR effects.