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The Inventor Of 3D Hero 'Tulipman' Tells Us His Favorite Tech Tips

Dutch artist GabyGaby used Augmented Reality to create a national treasure--now he shares his secrets.

Schermafbeelding 

Based in Amsterdam, artist GabyGaby creates pieces that can be described as pop art-meets-portraiture paintings, adored both by sneakerheads and curators alike. Best known for his Dutch superhero–Tulipman–a shadowy image of a man with a pink and orange tulip as a head, GabyGaby has used digital and social media to make a growing name for himself in the tech and art world.

Tulipman is so wrong it’s right–a tulip for a man doesn’t fit, but the combination of the everyday with the comic hero does fit,” says GabyGaby. In many ways it’s a combination of the real and surreal. And Augmented Reality fits the concept like a glove without being overcomplicated. “You have to look at it from the user’s point of view–like a 16-year-old boy in the streets needs to understand it and think it’s cool,” he says. “I think about new ways to think about A/R to take it to new limits and do things that have never been done before,” says GabyGaby. “A/R can be used for more than real estate promotion.”

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Tulipman Takes Dubai, by GabyGaby.

From GabyGaby’s ability to take augmented reality to new heights and rethink 3D printing to his elegantly unusual uses of social media, he is undoubtedly at the forefront of art’s constant evolution. In an interview, he shares some of his favorite apps, systems, and software that he uses to add firepower to his creations:

Layar – A/R
It helps that GabyGaby and the world’s #1 augmented reality app (Layar) are headquartered in the same city. The tech shop, which launched just five years ago, amps up iconic GabyGaby art. “It gives my work a cartoony layer–like flipping through a Marvel comic book. It’s like POW! BANG! ” exclaims the artist. This whizz-bam effect is especially thrilling for his signature Tulipman series, where a smartphone camera and sensors add a layer of video and animation directly on top of his painting. (Think the Boston CyberArts Festival.)

Here’s how: Viewers open the Layar app on their smartphones, tap the screen to scan the painting, and behold: A movie sign is split in half by an explosion and then Tulipman floats down from the top of the screen–resolving to an image matching the painting.

Foursquare – Social Media
In addition to digitally enhancing the experience, GabyGaby seems to constantly have an eye on what’s next. Even four years ago, in 2010, when he saw the location-based social networking app as another tool in his art palette. This thinking allowed him to create and “check in” to 11 paintings on the roads that the Tour de France would ride over.

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Kred – Social Media
Not only can tech enhance art, it can inform it. So GabyGaby used the social-media influence measurement to turn his Twitter account–@gaby407–into a series of paintings that his fans would relate to most. To do this, he and Kred uncovered three things about his audience. For example, what colors, cities, and words did they tweet about most? When “blue, Netherlands, and followers” were the answer, he created the painting “Follow the blue Dutchman.”

Shapeways – 3D Printing
One thing GabyGaby seems to be on the hunt for is a way to create a world for the viewer to step into. To do this, he’s partnered with the world's leading 3D Printing marketplace–led by CEO Peter Weijmarshausen–to model an art toy of Tulipman. This brings the character off the painting and stretches fine art to a new dimension.

When asked about incorporating technology into his art, GabyGaby addresses fans and critics, saying, “I don’t want it to be a ‘trick’ – I want it to fit the concept…I like to create something that I would like to see.” This vision is being amplified to his 126,000+ Twitter fans and has laid the groundwork for his ambitious 2014 plans.

2014: The Year of Tulipman’s Hi-Tech Comeback
After debuting Tulipman in 2012 in Dubai, the artist gave the character a rest for a year in order to make it better. In December 2013, he brought him to South Beach for Art Basel’s Interactive Art Fair–and now he’s refocusing his attention on this series all year. So it’s all-Tulipman, all the time.

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If you're interesting in following Tulipman and GabyGaby, check out what the artist has planned for the rest of the year:

January
Live flower installation

The flower industry is officially naming a flower after Tulipman and GabyGaby, and will be taking a 6.5ft installation of 200,000 flowers on a European tour through the UK, Germany, and France.

May
3D art toy with a Layar-scannable card
Painting will enter a new dimension in the spring, when his 3D-printed Tulipman art toy launches. The model, created by Shapeways, will come with a playing card that the toy stands on (e.g. a basketball court or a beach). When you open the Layar app on your phone and scan the card, an environment (like a stadium) pops up around the toy. The cards can also be swapped between friends who have the toy, so you can see your toy in another environment–like on a wave.

October
Panoramic A/R micro-world
A new GabyGaby A/R exhibit with 100 scannable A/R pieceswill crash the epic 2014 Amsterdam Dance Event–an annual five-day electronic music conference and festival. In another first, he’s creating an Augmented Reality world that is the size of an Olympic swimming pool in the middle of the festival. “I decided to make the structure curved because that shape is all over technology today–like in Google Maps when you drop a pin in Street View and rotate your view in a sphere to see around you–or when you open your Photo app on your smartphone and flip through your gallery pics and they bend.”

The 100 A/R elements in this panorama will range from a joke or a game to a short episode or a GIF. For example, in a new beta version of Layar items can be connected – so if you press an image of a tulip, a box near it could explode. It means more connectivity and interaction within one layer of the app. So maybe it’s a scavenger hunt where there are 7 items that the reader has to find – the more creative we get the more we push the limits.“That’s how I dreamt up Tulipman becoming 3D and flying around– either coming right at you or going in circles. With the new Layar, maybe you see Tulipman holding up the Tower of Pisa and then you select the Tower and see the history on why it’s crooked. This way, the technology lets the art tell a bigger story.”

Over 300,000 high-energy, blissed-out Millennial clubbers can walk into the installation to catch a breath, break from the dance floor, and discover the unexpected. “It’s a whole new venue to see art. It was inspired by the idea of an art room or a dark room. This way, you can go out, get a drink, and dance; and keep coming back to uncover something else, or bring a friend in to show them a video you liked,” he explains. And if this packed calendar is any indication of tech-driven art’s momentum of the art/tech, we have a lot to look forward to from GabyGaby and his contemporaries.

Art based on tweets