This programme ran from 2008-2010 at the Pervasive Media Studio. For more projects like these please visit the Studio website.

Projects 2008

Company Profile

HMC Interactive is a multimedia production company, based in Plymouth. With a passion for exhibition and education, HMC have completed projects for clients such as National Museum of Scotland, Battle Abbey Visitor Centre, the Royal Observatory and Cadbury World.

Aardman is a multi-Oscar winning studio and a world leader in character led 3D animated film production making animation for idents, short films, commercials, web series, web content, TV services & feature films. Best known for Wallace & Gromit and Creature Comforts.

Journal Authors

Korash Sanjideh

Dan Efergan

Mike Cobb

Physical Cartooning

by HMC Interactive and Aardman

Merging animation with real life video footage on screen has been done for years. Classic films like ‘Mary Poppins’ has spellbound adults and children alike. But what if this could happen in real life? Could a cartoon reality become part of our reality, creating an augmented hyper-reality?

Through explorations in face tracking and digital puppeteering, Physical Cartooning brought animated characters to life in real locations. A number of playful installations were developed and placed across Bristol, potentially allowing people to interact with Aardman characters on the street.

Journal Entries

Journal Entries

Mirror Mirror in my Frame

Fri 28 Mar, 2008

The two-way mirror arrived in our office yesterday. I've been busy with my box of tools and a load of timber, and have just finished the setup for the Magic Mirror screen. Here's a quick look at how it went: I started with a nice wooden frame for the acrylic mirror. In even lighting the mirror is semi-transparent.

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Look at the size of my peripheral

Wed 26 Mar, 2008

Over the top webcam setup.

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Simple But Getting There

Wed 26 Mar, 2008

These simple shapes are the first stages of our digital 'sock puppet'. The shape of the mouth is being generated from the position of four fingers.

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Problems and Joys with Processing

Thu 20 Mar, 2008

Processing's been out a lot recently… Unfortunately we can't seem to get the Face Tracking C++ stuff into Processing, even though someone else has been kind enough to create a Processing Library for us. I think it's just instability with the latest version (as running simple Library commands throws up Memory errors), but we're just not sure.

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Kit’s a Coming, Production Starting

Wed 12 Mar, 2008

It’s time to put our production where our mouths are, as today production started down in the strange and wonderful workshops of HMC Interactive. Here's an update:

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