Hand-Drawn Animation Combined With A Cell Phone Creates Unique AR Cartoons

There's been plenty of artists working with augmented reality, whether that be through projection mapping or the looking glass of a smartphone. But animator Marty Cooper has done something particularly unique and fun, by combining hand drawn animation with photos taken using his cellphone.

The result is AR stop-motion cartoons where Cooper holds up transparent animation cells featuring sharpie-drawn characters to the world around him. The images are then captured frame-by-frame as the looney characters carry out their slapstick interactions—like a giant frog hopping atop rows of traffic or a milkshake drinking itself.

Cooper then uploads the sketches to his Instagram account. You can check out a three minute compilation of these called Aug(De)Mented Reality in the video below. Augmented reality has constantly promised many things, but is generally used for practical applications like displaying visual data of a city or town. If they could combine that with this type of entertaining and lovingly-crafted engagement, the world of AR could be a lot more interesting.

Uploaded to YouTube last Thursday, the video has already amassed over two million views. Check it out below.

h/t Colossal

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