Chalk Circles

• 

  Initial sketches

• 

  Testing the concept out with a physical prototype

• 

  The Happiness Here circle

• 

  The Snack Here circle

Chalk Circles

Context

I've always been a doodler, whether its ink to skin, pencil to paper, or chalk to pavement. Filling up the driveway with chalk murals as a child and then watching them wash a way in the rain was a kind of catharsis that my little brain probably didn't fully understand yet.

Now, living in New York City, one of my favorite things to stumble upon is a sidewalk filled with colorful chalk drawings. A common occurrence around parks as well are these little instructional chalk circles. Some are cure, like a "hug" spot, while others are ominous like the large circles that are drawn with "bad luck spot" written in the middle.

Functionality

Chalk Circles is an AR activation that takes inspiration from those city wide doodles, and creates little prompts for users to utilize and guide their content. Need to get something off of your chest? Set up the "rant here" circle and sit down in the middle and vent. Want to share your latest culinary endeavor? Highlight your fancy sandwich with the "snack here" option! We limited this build to 8 types, to add some constraints (but not too many) and ease choice making.

Creation

The goal of this activation was to let the users guide how much the effect shines. Simplicity was key, but to create realistic chalk drawings I did the obvious, and drew the circles out by hand! With the help of Photoshop I upped the legibility and create some transparency, and then put it all together in spark. I choose to use a UI picker instead of tap to chance since there are over 5 options, and segmentation is the cherry on top that helps make it really look like that chalk drawing is in your living room when you step over it!

Challenges

Chalk isn't the most contrast heavy medium, so bringing these into the digital space and testing it on a range of color surfaces made me realize I would need to add some shadowing and tweaks to the drawings, so no matter where they're placed you can still read the messages. It actually took quite a while to touch up and edit the physical drawings. Initially I wanted to create a ground occluder where the floor was still visible but then a 3D "moat" sank down around the user. Without floor segmentation this was a bit too hard to hack sadly. But when I saw some chalk hearts on my walk I realized that 3D wasn't needed to make something cool and realistic.

Looking ahead

I would love to see how people get creative with these cute circular guides, and I hope that it brightens at least a few peoples days! Even just filming the demos made me smile, before I realized you should mark out where to stand with a physical object, there were a lot of blooper shots of me standing way outside of my designated circles.

Built With

• photoshop
• sparkar