JONATHAN YEO STUDIO APP
THIS AWARD WINNING AUGMENTED REALITY APP INVITES USERS TO EXPLORE JONATHAN’S PERSONAL PAINTING STUDIO IN IMMERSIVE DETAIL
Jonathan spent the Covid lockdown of 2020 experimenting with new ways of painting portraits remotely. By inviting celebrated personalities such as Professor Brian Cox, broadcaster Fearne Cotton and Hollywood director Dexter Fletcher to remotely sit for him, Jonathan was able to continue his portrait painting process from afar, filming and sharing the sittings with a wide online audience as he went. This series documenting the process is called FaceTime Portraits. This app showcases the latest episode featuring the chef, broadcaster, author and campaigner, Jamie Oliver.
Imagine a world in which you can enter the normally private world of the artist’s studio, rendered in full photorealistic 3D, a highly detailed and textured world where you can you wander around the art works of Jonathan Yeo’s real studio and see him as he works on a new portrait, or tune into videos of previous sittings playing on the in-space TV monitor. Fully interactive, you can even see friends and family within the experience using an occlusion setting or record your own videos and photos of the studio to share online.
Not only is it an innovative use of AR by an artist, this is a unique opportunity to glimpse the artist’s working methods, watch a brand new type of artistic practice and hear some of the intimate and entertaining conversation which ensues.
Try it yourself by downloading here:
The Jonathan Yeo Studio App is an immersive AR experience built in the Unity 3D game engine which showcases multiple forms of capture in a new and innovative way. Eschewing the relatively common use of 360° photography, this 3-dimensional, cinematic render of Jonathan’s painting studio combines advanced photogrammetry (used to scan all of the static elements) with traditional film-making techniques and splices them together to form an interactive encounter to remember.
The impressive level of detail in the studio model allows the users to explore it in an extremely satisfying ‘doll’s house’ mode by placing it in their real space. Using simple but effective UX design it can be rotated, re-sized or refreshed with one click or swipe.
Alternatively, it can be toggled into a ‘full-scale’ mode where the user is transported inside the space to engage with the portrait sitting and other pieces of content as if actually in the room.
Jonathan’s portrait sitting was shot from multiple camera angles with all of the footage being edited into one composite piece. It was then re-mapped, synced and projected onto different areas within the 3D space to create the feeling that the user is watching it actually happen inside the studio.
With the iPad and the painted canvas already existing as 2D facets, Yeo and his team needed to find a solution to create the painter’s presence in 3D space using just the 2D asset. The resulting multi-projection is a simple but effective holographic effect to bring his physical presence to life.
Developed during 2020 using Unity’s brand new Universal Render Pipeline (URP) Yeo taught himself to use the software as a means of being able to creatively experiment with all of the technical challenges posed by this project. Using just one developer and his small studio team, he has managed to construct a unique new space showcase his art, opening up myriad possibilities for the future including live in-app events, exhibition openings and much more.
