Watch the Saints Come Alive: Behind the Scenes of AR Prayer Cards
Saints like you’ve never seen them before—our upcoming, new AR prayer cards bring faith to life!
We revealed our amazing, new project that we’re working on - AR (augmented reality) Prayer Cards in last week’s blog!
Behind the Scenes of Making Pope John Paul II AR Prayer Card: AR Prayer Cards - Gotta Catch em all!
by Bridget Baker
In order to prevent the city from putting a swimming pool in their field, my local art center installed a collection of ugly outdoor art pieces. And to get more traffic to their new exhibit, (which was struggling gaining visitors) they made it a “Poke-Stop.”
Back in 2015, I remember watching people in droves gather in this field just to stare at their phones and walk around. “What are they doing?” I’d ask my brother. “Playing Pokemon Go, there’s a Poke-stop there,” He’d often reply. Oh duh, I should have guessed. He’s usually better versed in pop culture than I.
I think I would enjoy playing Pokemon Go if I enjoyed Pokemon more. But there is something appealing about experiencing the invisible world within our reality. And as Catholics, that’s something we believe wholeheartedly.
Our Concept:
Now although saints and Pokemon have little in common, when Trevor introduced the AR (augmented reality) prayer card idea, I was excited. Not only was this my chance to have my own Catholic version of Pokemon Go, but it speaks to the truth of the invisible reality that we Catholics believe.
Currently we are in the development stage of our AR prayer cards and to start us off, we are working on St. Pope John Paul II.
Myself, Trevor, Josh Martin, and a former Pixar employee are collaborating to create 3D models of saints to project onto prayer cards so when you scan them, they come to life. The process involves character design development, 3D modeling, animation and rendering.
The idea is to reveal the saint performing surprising actions that reveal their humanity. Oftentimes, we forget that the saints were normal people just like us. John Paul II skied, Carlo made movies with his dogs, and Kolbe started his own radio show.
The Process
Character Design
Josh Martin is one of the most talented illustrators I know, and he’s been handling the designs of the cards as well as the characters.
Modeling
To give us a leg up on our modeling, we turned to Meshy AI to get us started. Meshy creates 3D models based on images, it serves as a great starting point but we still have much work to do. This is an image of our model after going through Meshy and hours of my own sculpting work on top.
Animation
Not only are we experimenting with AI in modeling, but we are trying it in animation as well. Cartwheel is an AI animation software that turns videos and text prompts into character animations.
Texturing
We are taking inspiration from shows like Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse and are hoping to explore painterly texturing techniques to give each character its own hand-made flair.
Compositing
Once we get the character colored in, we’ll place them in their scene and watch them move! For St. John Paul II, we’ll add in some snow, some skis, and some ski poles to really complete the scene.
Now how cool would it be if we could turn every church into its own “Poke-stop?” That might be a bit out of our scope for this project, but the AR prayer card project gives us a good start.
Although our project is still in the development stages, the possibilities are endless and we are more than excited to continue sharing our work in progress with the world!
St. John Paul II,
Pray for us!
Support the Prayer Cards
The AR cards are really cool, aren’t they?!
Creating animations takes a lot of dedicated work and funding — and since we run our non-profit from the generosity of others, buying our handy printables and merch helps support our mission!
If you’d like to support the creation of these prayer cards, you can do so below! Every gift helps us bring more saints to life.
Be Part of What’s Next
What do you think of AR prayer cards? Let us know if you like this idea and what saint you would love to see!
In Christ,
Trevor & the Claritas Studios Team