Bubble World - 泡泡世界(English.ver)

Hi, I am an interaction engineer/designer MAO (@rainage) of The Designium. In this article, I'm going to introduce a beautiful and fun project, "Bubble World".

Introduction

"Bubble World" is an interaction installation project for New Taipei Kids Art Festival 2019. This event was held from 2019.8.2~2019.8.11. Around 8,200 users played this installation.

The Designium was only one art foreign group which be invited to joint to create an interactive installation. We cooperated with the Taiwan exhibition company, "Chiao Friendly", to complete this interesting work.

Space Design

We were invited to create a large scale installation for kids. Space is around 6Mx8Mx5M of the city hall lobby.

Besides the installation, we also need to consider how to install the projection, light pollution problems, computer room, and queuing route, so we must make a large room.

In the space planning, we also have designed many details to protect the safety of children.

Game Design

Because it was the first time we have a project in Taiwan. We chosen our Aizu ball project (2019) and customized some different elements as a whole new artwork.

(1) Japan monster vs Taiwan monster
We would like to introduce more elements about Japan to Taiwanese children, and this kids art festival also has their own mascot characters. So we got the idea that let Japan monsters play with Taiwan monsters.
We design a simple story concept:

Japan monsters invite Taiwan monster to join the summer celebration. But when they were on their way, they were all trapped by bubbles.
Kids, please help them, release energy together. Let the little monsters come out of the bubbles, collect energy to complete the celebration

We picked crafts in mainly Northeast Japan, then design those characters as cute 3D animation characters.

There are only 2D design images of the Taiwan mascot characters. To make it more visually consistent, we also turned them into 3D characters.

Taiwan characters 2D design (from NTPC Children's Art Festival website)

(2) Game Flow
Because every day will be 500~1000 people to play this installation. Each round needs to be mastered within five minutes, but also let the children have fun. In order to control the number of people playing, we must design the game flow.

[Standby Mode]
- show star particle tile "Bubble World" and play BGM
- enable small effect while ball hit the wall
- the floor will show user's position tracking star particle effect

[Play Mode] (270 sec)
- play the simple story introduction voice
- play game BGM
- monsters surrounded by bubbles moves down from above
- bubbles will break after being hit 10 times. you can start hitting small monsters, which will become a constellation after being hit 10 times
- When the little monster starts to be hit, there will be stars particles scattered to the user's position

[Dance] (30 sec)
- play the dancing BGM
- the staff led the children to dance with the little monster

(3) Hit effect
Because each round duration is short, we need to design the game rule simple but fun. The only rule is children drop the ball on the wall to hit the characters. But how we make it more fun? We make the hit effect as 4 levels:
- hit on the bubble will make the bubble deformation
- after broken the bubble, you can hit the character. When hitting the monster will generate the star effect based on character current shape.
- the star effect will move from the hit position to your position
- the last hit will make the character become a constellation, then change another character coming.

(4) Dancing

As a buffer and end of the change over time, we design a clip which the characters could dance together with children. Children like this clip very much and this chip is very beautiful.

Interaction System

In this installation, we made Immersive projection with 3 walls and 1 floor. This interaction space could let max 30 children play at the same time.

The wall part was included 4 projectors and 1 speaker and using 4 Hokuyo Lidar devices to sense ball hitting.
The floor part was included 3 projectors and using 2 Hitachi-LG TOF sensors.
This was also first time we tried to use the TOF sensor to track users for exhibition. Each TOF sensor could cover up to 6M of human tracking. That is why we use 2 TOF sensors to deal with 8M floor.

(1) Hardware

(2) Immersive interaction projection

For Immersive experience, We make effects will follow user's position and moving from wall to floor.

The upper image is wall part, there are 3 walls (left, middle, right).
The bottom image is floor part.

While hitting the characters on the wall will generating the star effect, then moving to the floor.

This testing video show how the effect will move to target user positions from different wall.
The floor part always passes the user's tracking positions to wall part by OSC message.
When star effect generated, it will calculate the direction of movement based on the character's position on the wall and the user's position on the floor. When the star effect moves out the bottom of screen, it will pass its position to floor part by OSC message.
You could also see when the effect come to floor part, it wall also follow the original position from wall. So it will be like the effect moves from wall to floor smoothly.

How Children enjoy it

The crowd in the queue like Disney

Parents can’t play, they can only take pictures by the side

Below are parts of the questionnaire

Editorial Note　編集後記

広報のマリコです！今回Maoが解説してくれたデジタルボールプールアトラクション「Bubble World」は、台湾で開催されたキッズフェスティバルでなんと8千人を動員し、大人気アトラクションとなりました✨たくさんのボールで楽しそうに遊ぶ子どもたちの可愛さは世界共通ですね❗日本だけでなく、世界の子どもたちに楽しんで貰えるアトラクションを紹介でき、同じ会社の人間として誇らしい気持ちです😊大型アトラクションの裏側を知りたかった人には貴重な記事になったのではないでしょうか。他にもデザイニウムでは様々な体験型コンテンツを制作していますので、よろしければチェックしてみくださいね❗

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