WDFM
Mary Blair Immersive AR
Mary Blair Augmented Reality Artwork
Triptych collaborated with The Walt Disney Family Museum to create an AR experience that showcases Mary Blair's artwork. As a prominent artist and close associate of Walt Disney during the 1930s to 1950s, Mary Blair contributed to films like Peter Pan, Alice In Wonderland, and Cinderella. Our project involved developing a QR code-activated site that features her artwork and stories, along with custom AR backgrounds that visitors can unlock as they explore the museum.
Weaving The Past Through The Present
Triptych’s design approach centered on accessibility, playfulness, and immersion. Instead of requiring a separate app, we developed a mobile-first, browser-based AR platform powered entirely by QR codes embedded throughout the physical exhibit.
Each code unlocked a specific “Did You Know?” moment from Blair’s career — whether it was her commercial work for brands like Johnson & Johnson, or her early collaboration with Ub Iwerks — along with a unique AR background inspired by her artwork. Visitors could take selfies with these environments and share them on social using #MaryBlairWDFM, creating a social feedback loop that extended the reach of the exhibition.
Her Life
Mary Blair was a pioneering artist who brought bold color and modern design to Disney during the 1940s and ’50s. From her early studies at Chouinard to travels in South America with Walt Disney, her life was shaped by creativity, exploration, and a drive to stand out in a male-dominated field.
Her Creativity
Blair’s style was vibrant, graphic, and ahead of its time. She used flat shapes, vivid color, and collage to create imaginative worlds for films like Peter Pan and Cinderella. Her work blended playfulness with sophistication, always pushing artistic boundaries.
Her Impact
Mary Blair changed the look of animation and design forever. Her influence lives on in it’s a small world and across generations of artists who followed her lead. She opened doors for women in creative roles and left a lasting mark on visual culture.
AR For the Web
On the technical side, the experience pushed the boundaries of what’s possible with in-browser machine learning and real-time rendering. We leveraged TensorFlow.js and the BodyPix model to run live person segmentation entirely on the client side — no external servers, no image uploads. The system preloads a catalog of stylized background assets, maintains aspect ratio fidelity, and composites users over these visuals using layered HTML5 canvases. Each frame involves capturing the video feed, running segmentation, blurring the original background, and redrawing the scene with the selected Mary Blair background, all within milliseconds. Our bundled codebase ensures performance across a wide range of devices, while a custom-built UI framework tracks visitor progress and enables dynamic background switching.
We designed every screen to reflect Blair’s iconic mid-century color palette and graphic motifs, ensuring the digital experience felt native to the exhibition. The result is a joyful, seamless layer of interactivity that deepens visitor engagement without distracting from the art itself.
An Experience Worth Sharing
Since launch, the Mary Blair AR experience has been met with overwhelmingly positive feedback — both from in-person visitors and online audiences. Museum-goers are actively sharing their AR selfies and fun facts on social media, amplifying the exhibit’s reach and reinforcing its emotional resonance.
