Our creatures of the enchanted forest prepared a special meal for a few special guests...
They joined us to watch the magic begin. As they moved their plates and bowls, our curious friends followed them across the table.
For our creative coding project Ivette Rafael and Beatrice Zorrilla worked together to create something magical to the eye. After many hours of brainstorming and creating prototypes our idea finally worked. Follow along as they share how their project went from their love of Shrek to an enchanted dinner.
Our inspiration came from Shrek, any and every Disney princess movie. We wanted to create something awesome. Something that engages kids and parents. Bringing two minds together is an amazing thing, but there is a clear difference between an awesome idea and something that can work.
Our first idea was to use AI to identify different object and then code processing so that a gif would play over top of it. That didn’t work. Then we tried using color detection code in processing and it was touchy, but it worked! We moved forward with the project. We realized the lighting was affecting the color detection; different lighting different colors. We learned that we always had to recalibrate it. It was rough but we found a way. Knowing the color detection worked our next process was to see if we could have a movie playing at the location of the object.
Our display consists of a table, set up for a nice meal with colorful cutlery and dishes. Suspended directly above the table we had our projector and a small web camera. When we run our code we use the camera to detect where each object is located on the table. Once their location is detected each animation specific to the object is projected onto it. The fireflies flutter their wings next to the red bowl, suddenly a normal table set for dinner becomes enchanted.
From creating a concept to writing lines of code, this project had it's own set of challenges, but in the end was rewarding. We learned how to work together to make this idea come to life.
Beatrice Zorrilla
Ivette Rafael