Dancingbear is an interactive character, projected at human scale. He’ll tend to his campsite, lounge, gather firewood, and hang out. He’ll respond to your greetings, and if he sees high-energy movement, might break into a dance. If you come and sit, he will join you in meditation, whereupon his environment will evolve into an entrancing, spiritually evocative composition.
The piece is meant to encourage meditation and stillness - and quiet interactions with the piece and among its audience.
The project runs in Unity3D - and is projected onto a rear-projection screen so that users can approach without obscuring the image.
I modelled, rigged, and animated the DancingBear avatar in Blender. The character’s AI was driven by a simple state machine, mirrored by the animation state machine in Mecanim.
Interaction is made possible by Microsoft Kinect: we track a handful of viewers at a time, and an IK system on the avatar lets the character track and look at them through the screen.
Ambient high energy movement (or sound, depending on the venue,) drives the character to dance.
If a user sits on the provided pillows in front of the character, the character will join them in meditation.
