"Cat Playing Yutnori, Panda Wearing Seolbim" AR Animal New Year's Cards This Seol

[Asia Economy Reporter Joselgina] "A panda dressed in Seolbim, a cat playing Yutnori."

SK Telecom announced on the 22nd that ahead of Seollal, 3D animals such as a mouse, cat, and panda will deliver New Year's greetings through the ‘AR New Year's Card Service.’

‘AR New Year's Card’ is a service based on SK Telecom's AR service ‘Jump AR Zoo’ characters. It allows users to summon five types of 3D animal characters: a mouse and panda dressed in Seolbim, a cat, a Welsh Corgi, and an alpaca.

Users can easily access the service by running the ‘Jump AR’ app on their smartphones, selecting ‘Seollal’ from the top menu, and then choosing an animal card dressed in Hanbok. After scanning the surrounding environment with the smartphone, users can summon the desired animal to create a New Year's card and share it with acquaintances via social networking services (SNS).

In the AR New Year's card, the protagonist of this year (the Year of the Rat) is a mouse dressed as a curious princess. This lively character swallows a grain of rice in one gulp and bows while greeting, sometimes dropping her jokduri (traditional Korean bridal crown).

The cat sometimes gets hit on the head while throwing Yut sticks, and the Welsh Corgi unrolls a scroll delivering the message "Please take good care of 2020." The alpaca shows a comical side by begging for New Year's money (Sebae money).

To celebrate Seollal, new animal families will be added to ‘Jump AR Zoo.’ The new additions include three Jurassic-era dinosaurs and three rare animals (panda, sloth, polar bear).

The three newly added dinosaurs are Tyrannosaurus, Brachiosaurus, and Triceratops. SK Telecom applied proprietary realistic rendering technology to evoke the feeling of seeing dinosaurs from Steven Spielberg's movie 'Jurassic World' in real life. Especially when the Tyrannosaurus appears and roars, fine skin textures and muscle movements are expressed to enhance realism.

Based on the ‘T-real Rendering’ engine, SK Telecom utilized the latest graphic technologies such as ‘Normal Map,’ ‘Metal Map,’ and ‘Ambient Occlusion’ to vividly render the texture and shading of the dinosaurs.

Additionally, SK Telecom partnered with NBC Universal in the U.S. to hold a ‘Jurassic World Special Exhibition’ at Lotte Department Store Gimpo Airport branch. SK Telecom customers can enjoy ongoing discounts (20% on weekdays) and admission tickets for 10,000 KRW (before 2 PM on weekdays). During the Seollal holiday, 5G content experience events will be held at about 10 major Boost Park locations nationwide.

Jeon Jin-soo, head of SK Telecom’s 5GX Service Business Division, said, “By internalizing various realistic rendering technologies in the ‘Jump AR Zoo’ service, we were able to implement animal characters more vividly,” and added, “We will evolve the service to a level where users can summon and interact with animal characters anytime.”