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Which Lippy Is
The Bee’s Knees?

ClinkClink & Fuse

Project

An Interactive
Installation

The Brief

How can you try on a range
of lipsticks, without having to
remove every one?

Burt’s Bees have built their reputation and business on their use of 99% natural ingredients, choosing them over test-tube chemicals as our skin is more receptive to them. They were set to release their latest natural lipstick range, with 18 different shades, when their experiential agency, Clink Clink, asked us for help. Could we build an augmented reality ‘Magic Mirror’ that would allow customers to try on all the shades, without physically having to apply and then remove each one? Of course we could.

Our Solution

Finally, lipstick you can try virtually

Mirror mirror on the wall, which colour lips are the best of all? To create the impression of a mirror, we used a touchscreen displaying a live video feed from a webcam placed directly above it. The video feed was required for the face tracking, which was based upon Visage’s SDK, with extra detection points added to refine the lip contouring.

Our interface, which was built in Unity, positioned the menu of lipsticks at the bottom of the screen, and the other controls on the right-hand side, so as not to impede users’ view of themselves. These controls allow users to not only see what the different shades look like on their lips, but also to take and share either a photo or GIF of themselves and enter a competition.

The animated GIFs are created by recording a video, which is processed and converted on a local server. Photos and GIFs are automatically sent from this server to users’ email addresses via Mailgun, and to the ‘Wall of Kisses’: a big screen gallery that appears in-store beside the Magic Mirror. The files are simultaneously sent via a syncing system to a remote web server, which stores them in an admin system for Burt’s Bees to use on social media and promotional material at a later date.

Both the mirror and the gallery screen were integrated into a touring unit, which also housed make-up stations, at which people could sample the physical lipsticks.

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