Comic artistry, with a wave of your hand
Not everyone can easily recreate a popular comic strip character—unless they have the Kinect-powered application that was a hit at the show at We Do BD Festival, a celebration of digital and print comics that captivated Paris in mid-October.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDNzKh0yYqQ
Created by Vincent Guigui, a Microsoft Emerging Experiences MVP (Most Valuable Professional), the app allowed festival goers to mix and match faces and body parts of 50 of France’s most popular comic characters, thus creating an astounding number of unique comic creations.
The app was simplicity itself for users. The would-be cartoonists simply stood in front of a large, interactive display of a well-known comic character; then all they had to do was wave their hands. A strategically placed Kinect sensor captured the gesture and responded by swapping in new heads, necks, torso, and appendages on the cartoon image, much to the delight of children and adults.
The cartoon mix-and-match app once again showed how Kinect for Windows breaks down the barriers that impede human interactions with computer-enabled devices. As Guigui notes on his Microsoft MVP page, “If you are interested in designing new interactions, you must remember that a natural interaction must make the user forget the devices in order to help him focus on the data and the actions he wants to perform. [The combination of] various sensors and devices [allows] the user experience to jump out of the limited frame of display and turn it into [an] immersive experience by creating a new paradigm of human computer interactions.”
Well said, Vincent.
The Kinect for Windows Team
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