Have an appy holiday: bringing Santa to smartphones

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This article was published 04/12/2020 (2100 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

You’d better not cry or pout if you can’t get a festive seasonal photo at the mall this year — because a tech-savvy Winnipeg mom has come up with a safe way to bring Santa to you amid the global pandemic.

Sharon Knutson, a married Charleswood mother of two, is the creator of the Santa Pics App, which allows users to take holiday photos with a virtual Santa without leaving the comfort and safety of their own homes.

“In July, I was reflecting on how COVID-19 was affecting my kids,” Knutson says of daughter, Grace, 13, and son Chris, 10. “I thought about my annual tradition of taking taking the kids to the mall for a photo with Santa.

“I’ve done that every year since they were babies, never missed a year. We display the photos in our house every year and it’s fun to see how the kids have grown over the years.

“So when I was thinking about Christmas, it made me sad because I didn’t want to miss out on our tradition of getting their photos with Santa. I didn’t want to let COVID-19 steal a family tradition away from us. I didn’t want to see moms and dads risk getting sick at the mall.”

Which is when this businesswoman hit on the festive notion of using augmented reality technology to let smart-device owners take photos of — or even dance with — a virtual Santa.

Fortunately, Knutson knew just how to turn her holiday dream into reality — along with being a part owner of Winnipeg’s Sherpa Marketing, she’s also part-owner of a local software developer.

“I brought my idea to work and shared it with my business partners at First Descent Software and they loved the idea and supported it 100 per cent,” she says. “We quickly gathered a team together and started building the Santa Pics App.”

The app is available for $1.39 on the App Store, Google Play and at santapics.com, but Knutson says her high-tech holiday dream isn’t about making money.

“The money didn’t come to my mind,” she says. “Creating apps is actually very expensive. My first reaction was just to help parents. Christmas is a crazy time of year. I wanted to provide an alternative solution for parents so they could take customized pictures in the comfort and safety of home.

“I knew our holiday and family events would be forever changed this year, and providing a fun app for families to use meant a lot to me. My goal was to keep our community safe and keep families at home.”

After downloading the app, users select a virtual Santa in the pose they like best, add in a holiday prop — everything from a snowman and a reindeer to a nutcracker and a Christmas tree — then position their subjects in the frame and take the photo.

“The Santa Pics App allows you to take customized photos in your home or outside,” Knutson notes. “Santas can be posed in six different positions — a fun yoga pose, a traditional Santa sitting in a chair — and you can add props like a Christmas tree or a reindeer and a poinsettia.”

You can also record 15-second videos of your subjects busting a move with a dancing Santa. “There are six different ones to choose from,” she said. “There are three easier dances and three that are hip-hop and a bit more difficult and fun. You can save them on your phone or share them on social media and even post them on TikTok.”

Along with sharing their Santa photos online, users can print them on home printers or hit a button on the app and order professional prints. “There’s an additional cost if you order pictures,” Knutson says. “It depends on the size and where you’re shipping to. But you can absolutely print at home. You can do whatever you want with them.”

Manipulating augmented reality takes a bit of practice, but if this columnist — who took photos of his two dogs posing and dancing with a virtual Santa — can manage it, anyone can. There are instructions on each screen and how-to videos on the santapicsapp.com website.

“Augmented reality is taking a real-life experience and enhancing it with something digital,” Knutson explains in a telephone chat. “Santa won’t actually be in your living room, but he will appear in your photos and videos.”

It’s the perfect solution for creating holiday memories amid a pandemic, she says. “The doctors are telling us to stay home and this app helps our community stay safe and still have a visit with Santa,” she said.

She said users don’t have to worry about their Santa photos falling into the wrong hands. “Privacy is very important to us as parents, so we designed it so the photos and videos from the app stay on your phone. The only way they are shared is if you choose to share them on social media or if you order pictures through the app.”

The homegrown Santa app will also deliver a gift to a worthy charity. “We’re donating a portion of the net proceeds to the Canadian Red Cross’s violence-prevention program, which helps fight bullying and violence against children,” she said. “The Red Cross is such a well-respected charity. I wanted to give back to the community.”

Her family — including husband Shane and new puppy Charlie — have been giving the app a workout in the run-up to Christmas.

“They love it,” she says, laughing. “I’ve been testing the app on my children since August. We’ve been taking hundreds of pictures with it. There’s lots of dancing going on. I’m surprised, but they haven’t got sick of it yet.”

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca