Alternative Unrealities
Alternative Unrealities: Wonder Woman
Concept
Alternative Unrealities is a collaborative project conceived by Professor Bill Fischer of Kendall College Of Art and Design with the aim of uncovering bias in images and finding a way to correct it. Multiple different teams worked on their own, unique project within this theme. Topics ranged from body image in Disney Princesses, to racial inclusivity in the cast of Scooby Doo, to accurate cultural representation in Wonder Woman. All with the uniting goal of exposing bias in media then seeking to correct it.
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The method of delivery for this project is also worthy of note. It takes advantage of Augmented Reality technology to give the viewer a unique and engaging experience. Viewers of the content would enter a room where posters would be hung on the wall. The viewers would then use their cellphones to interact with the exhibit by downloading an Augmented reality app. This app would allow them to view videos based on the original poster by simply looking at the poster through the phone's camera, tracking the video so it played on the original poster. Professors of the College, most notably Chris Brown, developed the software and app used in the project.
AR in Action
Execution
This project was undertaken by the students of the fall 2022 Professional Studio course at Kendall College Of Art and Design under the direction of Professors Mike Dollar and Bill Fischer. The class was divided up into teams within the first week and topics were determined soon after. Throughout the process, these teams would meet up and make suggestions on each other's projects, cultivating collaboration.
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The team I worked in decided to do our project on accurate cultural representation. Our topic of choice was Wonder Woman and how her overly Americanized design conflicts with her Greek heritage.
Image of the pre-existing poster off
of which we based our project.
Redesigned Wonder Woman.
This mock-up was drawn by me but was complied from designs made by the whole group.
The Team
The team was made up of five people and we determined roles in the group that would compliment the particular specialities of each student.
Nolen Delks was the leader of the group and worked with the audio and graphic design.
Bishop Limon took on the style matching, graphic design, and later took on the role of working out general kinks in the app.
Cameron Schleicher worked with the storyboard and script then transitioned into puppet animation.
Wenjin Dang was in charge of the music, foley, and audio in general.
And I collaborated with Cameron on the storyboard and script then transitioned into the frame-by-frame animation.
All of us collaborated on Wonder Woman's new design.
Storyboards
I created the final art for the storyboard.
Animation
The latter half of the project saw me developing the frame-by-frame segments of the animation. Cameron Schleicher developed the puppet animation that is used for a majority of the run time, but there were certain parts of the animation that a puppet could not capture. That's where I came in.
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I animated the jump at the start of the video and then the spin right before we transition into Wonder Woman's new design. Here, as. seen below, I animated in three separate passes. The first was to capture the motion and set a base for the rest of the animating. The second pass was simply consisted of putting the details on top of the wireframe. And the third pass was a clean-up pass to polish the animation and work out any other kinks from the second pass.
