Detective Clay

Detective Clay is an augmented reality prototype that uses a technique called anamorphic illusion to create a narrative, game-like experience. When viewed from a specific vantage point, the hidden image is revealed. Th experience relies on illusionary triggers that draw the viewer into a perceptual puzzle. As users move their device to find the correct alignment, the distorted environment resolves. Only when the illusion locks into place does Detective Clay appear, animated, moving across the scene, and disappearing through doorways. To follow him, the viewer must shift position again and again. The narrative becomes a process of reconstruction. Detective Clay is not a traditional story with a fixed beginning, middle, or end. Instead, it is a fragmented sequence that the viewer assembles through physical movement and perspective and is shaped entirely by the way they choose to engage. By using anamorphic illusion in AR, the prototype explores how visual storytelling can mirror the fluid, interpretive nature of memory.

Detective Clay is my final research project as part of the Master of Animation, Games, and Interactivity at RMIT University. My research into perceptual illusions as narrative tools in augmented environments has recently been accepted for presentation at Replaying Japan 2025, the 13th International Japan Game Studies Conference, held at RMIT University, Melbourne, in September 2025.