My aims going into this project were as follows:
Use the unique features of the medium to empower narrative
Display the 'life' VR animation can add to an artwork/animation
Portray my personal artistic style in a 3D VR setting
Create a coherent final piece to be presented to people in the creative VR industry
After finalising 'The Seed' - A stereoscopic 360 VR experience (can also be viewed on 360 mobile devices). I knew I wanted to push the idea of immersive narrative further and continue to explore potential methods for creating VR content. Since I had recently gained access to a VR capable PC, this opened up new potential methods for approaching this. One aspect which hindered immersion in my last project was lack of viewer movement - C4D stereoscopic 360 essentially meant the animation is stuck to your head, while a software such as Quill can provide 6DoF (Degrees of Freedom).
Degrees of freedom is an essential concept in VR that allows human movement to be converted into movement within the VR environment.
Using A 6-DoF software such as quill, I can increase viewer immersion and interaction. Allowing for more engagement with the narrative, as well a stronger sense of presence within the animation.
This is evidenced in 'Goodbye Mr Octopus', where you are able to peek round the bookshelf to explore the main characters room. This was a moment that made me recognise the strength of 'self initiated discovery' within a VR context. Rather than the narrative being forced onto you, this moment allowed the user to explore and make their own assumptions about the narrative. This is something truly unique to VR and therefore I wish to explore it's potential in practice.
Making 'The Seed' taught me a lot about timing, tone, composition and narrative in VR, so I decided to apply this knowledge with a focus on strengthening narrative immersion.
There were two main software's I could explore which could be used to further apply what I had learnt over the last year:
Quill
6-DoF
Quill is relatively new, with the timeline feature (allowing animation) only being added in 2018. For this reason there is not a huge amount of content on the platform, however from the Quill narrative animations I have seen, it allows the most expression and ties heavily into all forms of animation. I have covered Quill a lot throughout my research into this medium, and I now understand that it holds the most creative potential of any software within this medium
Some potential routes for a career path based around Quill are:
VR artists/animator working with other Quill artists on projects for Quill Theatre
Freelance Quill animator (any stylised 3D animation work)
Advertising with Quill, generating 2D animations from 3D VR animations
Motion graphics designer
Unity
6-DoF + Interaction
Unity is a Game Engine which allows the creation of interactive Virtual Reality experiences. This opens the door to boundless possibilities however it requires a completely new direction for my research and development. All creations in this software require some knowledge of coding/game design, which I currently do not posses. However, a large part of the process would be building 3D assets for the game/interactive animation, which I now have extensive knowledge and ability for (from learning gravity sketch and Cinema 4D in my last project).
Some potential Unity career paths:
VR Game Developer working with a team
Indie VR Game Developer (Freelance)
3D Asset Designer
3D Asset Animator
3D Character Artist/Model Rigging Artist
Creative Technologist
I decided against using Unity because of the amount of work required to learn and apply it, especially alongside already learning and applying quill animations. I did, however, want to keep it in mind as a potential route after this projects, since unity has a lot more industry application than quill does at the moment.
Since I have recently acquired access to hardware which can facilitate either of these directions, I will not rule out either for future projects. However I have decided to focus heavily on Quill, since it seems to allow the most expression and creative tools for me as an animator. It is an extremely complex software but the artistic potential it holds is vast and largely undiscovered.
Though I had decided to create and display on Quill and Quill theatre, this self contained ecosystem of VR animation means that only people within it can experience my animations. For this reason I want to learn potential ways to share my work on alternative platforms.
Exploring potential workflows:
Quill to Cinema 4D - 2D or 3D stereoscopic (like 'The Seed')
2D animated footage from within Quill (using the capture feature)
Quill to Blender - 2D
Quill to Unity - 2D animated (camera)
Quill to Unity - 3D Immersive
This is an example of creating 2D animated content from Quill, clearly the results can be extremely successful. The benefit of this is accessibility, meaning the final piece can be viewed from any platform.
At this point I had a solid sense of direction in terms of what software I would use and potential industry application for this route. From this point I needed to form a solid idea of what narrative I would present within my Quill animation.