There has been a discussion on the Whitechapel Forum about how physical comics could be linked to the digital world. Most of the conversation was along the lines of adding QR or Barcodes into panels to scan and view content on your smartphone.
But I wondered about using AR (Augmented Reality) technology. I have been playing around with Aurasma on my iPhone and have always used the likes of LayAR.
Using the smartphone’s camera, GPS, Bluetooth, WiFi internet and its position, acceleration and direction, the technology combines image recognition and a conceptual understanding of the 3D world to recognize objects and images and seamlessly merge augmented reality actions into the scene. Without the need for barcodes or tags, the app is able to see its surrounding environment and make it fully interactive.
What if you could link a certain panel in a comic to an image or video using AR?
The panel on the page could have a little logo in the bottom corner – like the channel logo in Aurasma:
With this you would know there is some extra content – it could be an image, information or a video (like a movie trailer)
Image you are reading a Captain America comic and you see the logo in a panel. Fire up your phone and wave the camera over the panel and you get a trailer or special promo poster for the upcoming movie!
I have had a go using a video clip I made about ‘Box 13’ and the front cover of the trade:
Thoughts?
