Using no digital technology, create an AR experience.
Inspired by a broken pair of sunglasses I have, along with the theater lighting gel sample book that has been sitting on my desk unused for several years now, I decided to make my own pair of “rose-tinted glasses”.
Using an old sunglasses frame, I popped the lenses out, and used tape to reattach the broken temple back to the rest of the frame. I then picked out some pink and gold gels to create my new lenses with. Unfortunately, because it’s a sample book, none of the gels are big enough to create two whole new lenses with, much less even one. That means I had to get creative and pull a few together.
The old frames with the lenses popped out, next to my current pair that I do actually wear. They are from Goodr, the running sunglasses company.
My Rosco lighting gel sample book from a Lighting Design class I took un undergrad at Smith College.
I spent some time flipping through the gel book looking for a variety of color tones and translucency. I wanted some warmer pinks and some darker pinks, as well as some pinks that were more purple, red, and orange.
Having different translucencies basically means having pinks that allow different amounts of other color light through. A high translucency means the gel will allow most light through, and it will just tint your vision slightly in that color. A low translucency means that most light frequencies cannot pass through the gel, so everything looks monochrome in that gel color.
I cut out my favorite options and made a list of what I had so I could then start pairing colors to create my new lenses.
Final Gel Selections
A sample of how one of the gels affects color. This is Roscoe #01, Light Bastard Amber.
From here, I started mixing and matching the gels to see which ones I liked together. I wanted to put two on each eye, one eye getting high translucency gels while the other gets low translucency gels. This way the wearer can change the color they are seeing by closing one eye and choosing a direction to look out of the other.
The process of cutting out my new lenses.
The final lenses.
For the glasses, I ultimately chose the high translucency colors R01 and R05 for the right eye, and the low translucency R32 and R342 for the left eye. I used a clear, completely translucent tape to connect the different gels to each other (the same way we would for a theater light if mixing to gels for the design), but the tape was still a bit difficult to look through and focus on anything in front of me.
I’m personally very happy with this one week project - I love playing with light and color, and hope to do more of this as we transition into Lens Studio.