One of my aims as an animator is to bring life to impossible narratives, and using VR as my creative tool the past year has confirmed that it is the right medium to embody and strengthen this idea.
At this point I want to asses how well my final piece fit my initial aims for this project:
Use the unique features of the medium to empower narrative
By using interaction, I made use of a unique feature of the medium to strengthen the narrative of my piece. Interaction was something I touched on in my dissertation (specifically its application for creative VR content) and these ideas were confirmed though this project. Interaction greatly empowered the narrative by allowing the player to move through the experience at their own pace, and also feel like they were influencing the world around them.
a few examples of interactions I used which empowered narrative:
Stepping through the original animation in order to enter the interactive VR version of it. (Strengthens the contrast between 2D and 3D VR)
Chasing the foxes (empowers the narrative of separation between humans and foxes, making you question 'why do they fear us?')
Injecting the fox (solidifies the narrative of the foxes injecting brake fluid to be transported to a better world) - also, by the player injecting the fox I present the idea that humans are leading them to do this by how we treat them (metaphor for homelessness)
Flying with the foxes (strengthens the narrative of freedom they feel when they are on the island - under the influence of brake fluid)
Display the 'life' VR animation can add to an artwork/animation
Quill as an artistic tool was incredible helpful in achieving this, since it allowed for expressive stylised animation in a 3D setting, it meant that I could achieve the look I wanted for my piece, while also allowing me to add animation to bring these 3D models to 'life'
I also used flock mechanics in Unity to allows the sporadic and unpredictable movement of the foxes throughout the scenes. This is more reflective of something being 'alive' since they seemingly have their own thoughts and direction.
Portray my personal artistic style in a 3D VR setting
Quill also greatly helped with this, because of the complexity of the software there was a huge learning curve, however, once I dully understood all the tools within it, I was able to easily translate my artistic style into the medium of VR
Create a coherent final piece to be presented to people in the creative VR industry
I believe I have achieved this, and am happy to present this final piece to potential future employers as a demonstration of my technical ability, storytelling capability and artistic style in VR
Overall I'm extremely pleased with how this project turned out, all my previous research and VR work has heavily informed my methodology throughout. Using a combination of VR narrative theory, 3D asset design and animation techniques all paired together to form a cohesive VR interactive animated narrative. My aim was to use the unique features of this medium to creatively display narrative through interaction and stylised animation. I believe I succeeded in achieving this. By using an already formed strong narrative, I was able to focus purely on translating it into this medium in order to test the advantages of an interactive VR animation over a 2D animation.