Art Camp: Living Characters & Spatial Worlds

1. Sculpt the head first. Start with air-dry clay and shape a head large enough to read clearly on screen: forehead, cheeks, chin, nose, and eye sockets. The head establishes the character early, which helps every later decision about body, pose, and personality.

2. Paint the clay head. Once the surface is ready, use paint to add skin colour, features, patterns, and mood. Painted heads are more legible than unpainted clay and help the scanned model keep its personality.

3. Build the armature. Twist together lengths of aluminium wire or pipe cleaners into a figure-eight torso, two arm wires, and two leg wires. Twist all joints tightly. The armature should stand up on its own.

4. Attach the head. Secure the painted clay head to the neck wire. This joins the sculptural and soft-body parts into a single character.

5. Pad the body. Wrap the torso, upper arms, and thighs with strips of polyester batting, cotton wool, or scraps of soft fabric. Secure wrapping with thread or light stitching. This builds up the three-dimensional form that the camera will photograph.

6. Add the fabric skin. Cut simple tube shapes — one for the torso, one per limb — from cotton fabric or felt. Slip them over the padded armature and hand-stitch the seams closed, or wrap and tie them in place for a faster build.

7. Draw the clothes. On the following day, participants draw the outfits and costume ideas for their character. The facilitator prepares those clothing pieces for the dolls using fabric, felt, and simple costume elements.

8. Pose and finish. Bend the armature into a characteristic pose: arms out, mid-stride, sitting, reaching. The character will be scanned in this pose, so choose something expressive. Touch up any loose seams, paint, or attachments before photographing it.

A pannable, zoomable map. The tool opens on a navigable Leaflet map. Each room is pinned to a GPS coordinate with a trigger radius. Walking into a room’s radius on foot (or clicking its pin on screen) opens that room’s stage automatically. A live compass panel shows the nearest rooms and their distance so participants always know where to walk next.

A Three.js room scene. When a room is entered, the tool renders a live three-dimensional scene using WebGL (Three.js). The floor and walls are tinted to match the room’s chosen backdrop — forest, stone hall, waterside, wooden room, garden, or dark cave. A coloured mood ring glows and pulses on the floor beneath each character when they speak.

Characters as 3D models or sprites. Each character stands in their room. If the character has a GLB model (exported from Polycam or Scaniverse after photogrammetric scanning), the full textured 3D scan is placed in the scene and its embedded Mixamo animation plays on a loop. If no model is ready yet, a photo or GIF appears as a billboard sprite that always faces the viewer.

Room objects. NEW Props and scanned items can be placed directly in the room scene as interactive 3D objects. In Facilitator mode, the + Object button opens a modal where you paste a GLB URL, name the object, write a description, and set its position, rotation, and scale. Clicking any object in the scene shows its description overlay. Objects are saved alongside characters and rooms and are included in the Twee export.

Characters in multiple rooms. NEW A single character can now appear in more than one room — useful if a character travels between locations, or if a prop should be visible from two adjoining spaces. The character card shows all rooms joined by a dot (·). The multi-room chip-picker in the Edit Character modal replaces the old single dropdown.

Dialogue builder. Clicking a character in the scene opens their card: name, mood, items they own, and their full dialogue tree. Dialogue is organised into five prompt types — Hello, Question, Secret, Reaction, and Item — authored with simple text fields, no coding.

Facilitator mode vs. Visitor mode. The mode toggle switches between two views. In Facilitator mode all editing controls are visible: Add Room, Add Character, + Object, Edit, and Delete buttons. In Visitor mode all editing UI disappears and only the world is visible — ready for the group presentation on the projector.

Simulate mode. NEW The Simulate button automatically cycles through all rooms in sequence, pausing in each one, so the facilitator can demonstrate the full world without needing to walk the real GPS route.

Cloud save & load. NEW The ☁ Save and ☁ Load buttons read and write the entire world — rooms, characters, objects, and all dialogue — to a file called story/main.twee in the project’s GitHub repository. The facilitator saves Thursday night; any machine in the room loads the same world Friday morning. Binary media (photos, GIFs) stays local; only text passes through the cloud.

Twee export & import. The whole cast and all their dialogue can be exported as a standard .twee file — and reimported by dragging the file onto the map or using the file picker. This makes the world portable, archivable, and playable as a standalone Twine story independent of the authoring tool. Props and room objects are included in the export as CharacterName-object passages.

1. Create rooms. Click Add Room, enter a name, drop a pin on the map (or type GPS coordinates), set a trigger radius, and choose a backdrop. The room appears as a circle on the map.

2. Add a character. Click Add Character, fill in the name, mood, items, and assign one or more rooms using the chip-picker. Paste a GLB URL (from Polycam or Scaniverse) or upload a photo/GIF. Save — the character pin appears on the map and the character stands in the room scene.

3. Write dialogue. Click the character in the room to open their card, then click the dialogue prompt buttons (Hello, Question, Secret, Reaction, Item) to write what they say for each situation.

4. Place room objects. Open a room in Facilitator mode and click + Object. Paste a GLB URL for a scanned prop, name it, write a short description, and set its position and scale in the 3D scene.

5. Save to the cloud. Enter the GitHub token once (stored locally). Click ☁ Save — the entire world is written to story/main.twee. On another machine, click ☁ Load to restore it.

6. Switch to Visitor mode. Toggle the mode switch. All editing UI hides. Walk or click through the world — enter rooms, click characters, read dialogue. Use Simulate to cycle through all rooms automatically.

7. Export the world. Click Export Twee to download a .twee file of the whole cast, rooms, and objects — a permanent, portable record of the week’s work.