Who hasn't dreamed of appearing in a music video by their favorite artist? Trixi Studios shows us a way by creating an iPhone app that can recreate the iconic "Take On Me", putting you inside the A-ha music video (augmented reality).
One of the most memorable music videos of the 1980s is "Take On Me" by the Norwegian band A-ha. Directed by Steve Barron and featuring animations by Michael Patterson and Candace Reckinger, the video has a fantastic plot and tackles a romantic relationship where a comic book character comes to life and falls in love with a girl, who enters his pencil-drawn animated world. "Take On Me" took sixteen weeks to hand-animate, as it features pencil-drawn animation combined with real images, using a technique known as rotoscoping, where images are superimposed frame by frame to give characters realistic movements. However, now you only need an iPhone to recreate the animation on your own.
Step Inside with Augmented Reality
Taking advantage of the recent release of ARKit by Apple, a software platform that encourages developers to create augmented reality experiences for iOS users, Trixi Studios created an app that can recreate the effect in real time of the iconic "Take On Me", putting you inside the A-ha music video through augmented reality. The video uses ARKit resources, Unity 3D, GameFlow, and animations made with Mixamo to combine real-world visual images with black-and-white characters in the style of the A-ha music video. The studio details that this work was done in a couple of days and just for fun, since there is still much to improve.
Chip Sineni's Different Spin
Chip Sineni of Trixi Studios puts a different spin on this idea in his new augmented reality experience inspired by "Take On Me". Beyond the portal, his real environment is depicted in the same way as the rotoscoped sets of the music video, where there is also a 3D model of a guy dancing alongside two competitors armed with a wrench. Unfortunately, Trixi Studios clarified that the app is not publicly available and they have no plans for distribution.
