We Wait - Aardman VR

At Manimation, I got the chance to watch a VR conference talk, where David Sproxton from Aardman revealed his new VR endeavour with the BBC titled, 'We Wait'

This project interested me for 2 reasons, not only is it VR, but it is VR highlighting an issue of great sensitivity. I can relate to this project because of my Applied Animation last year where I highlighted the Syrian refugee crisis also, and had to consider and evaluate how to remain sympathetic within a cartoon, unrealistic style. I am very interested in VR as a medium of animation that can be used to manipulate the spectators emotions through the immersion, so obviously 'We Wait' caught my interests immediately.

I am very intrigued with the style direction they have taken. In the talk David Sproxton detailed they had gone for a stylised approach but I didn't expect it to be so much removed from reality. This intense stylisation has been employed to purposely put the user at a certain disconnection with the virtual environment to avoid crossing that line of uncanny disturbance. They want the spectator to be immersed and believe the experience is real, but at the same time they don't because of them being disturbed. I don't know how to feel about this aspect myself. I would want the user to be as immersed as possible, I would want them to feel exactly what these people are feeling on the boat, I would want them to think that it is all real, THEY ARE a refugee fleeing for their lives. But I would love to take a stylised approach for a different meaning than to create a disconnection, I would love to play with the style conveying a certain meaning.

 Even if Aardman didn't intend to convey narrative through their style choice, I feel they have achieved it greatly. The low-poly, simple, blocky character design is becoming a common sight within VR animations for ease of rendering, but It also creates this handcrafted wooden style, further complemented by the texture usage which have a paint brush aesthetic. This traditional almost childish aesthetic particularly contrasting with the situation it is portraying, I love contrasts like this I feel it heightens the seriousness of the narrative in a contrasting manner. Because it is so innocent in looks, the greater emotional meaning is emphasised more because our minds notice the contrast and bring it to the surface more. Its child-like manner also makes it universal for all audiences, even children, to experience empathy and open their eyes to the real world around them in a sympathetic manner. This childish nature could also be used to heighten emotion, like the characters are childrens toys and a child re-inacts what they had to suffer, it exposes how children are affected in this too. The aesthetic reflecting our immature and insensitive views towards the refugee crisis...

The animation itself is very simple and not very realistic, very simple 3D animation, almost inorganic in nature, reflective of the inhumane lifestyle these refugees have to endure?

Study Task 2 SWOT test

SWOT test 

In today's PPP seminar we had an individual SWOT test. This allowed time for personal, self criticism and interpersonal critical evaluation. Both are as important as each other, however I feel I critically assess myself regularly in relation to my personal professional practise, so I found this seminar most beneficial in the aspect that another individual will be critically evaluating me, for the first time.

Here is my SWOT sheet produced in the seminar;

As you can see I have been very thorough with my self evaluation, an equal combination of positive and negative points.

Next I partnered up with someone in my class and assessed them, I didn't like doing this to someone else, even though my points all contributed to aiding his professional practice, sometimes it feels like your being cruel, but this is something I understand needs to go  because that's just how industry is.

However, I did like having a partner critically assess me,  I don't mind negative points, I want to know how to improve and develop as a professional individual.

Without seeing my personal SWOT sheet, my partner surprisingly write very similar points about me that I had written myself, showing how well I can critically assess myself.

My main strengths were;

Easy to get on with

Not chained down by an art style

Good work ethic

My main weaknesses were:
- Work too efficient
- Lack of experimentation

The making of Ethel and Ernest - MAF

This talk was beautiful and a sign that traditional media isn't dying! The first 2D animated feature film to be released in what seems like a while.

Ethel and Ernest a film by Lucas films, is an autobiographical tale of how Raymond Briggs' parents met, married and passed on. Following their lives in short, beautiful and very emotional snippets. It's like your seeing in to an animated window of his past...so much so Raymond Briggs himself said; 'it was like having my mum and dad back in the room with me.' 

For the production they used TV paint to rejuvenate the 2D industry in the UK. 

The animation itself took movements from real life rather than animated features. It was interesting that the music soundtrack was recorded in realtime with the animatic too, the pianist was playing to how he felt when he watched the visuals which was really impressive and interesting.

Why TV paint as a medium? 

They were originally going to animate using paper, however they found the software TV paint looks more authentic than pencil itself. What you see on screen is exactly how it will look when rendered, unlike drawing on paper as some character is lost when scanned in. You can add more character using brush strokes and types. They boiled the watercolour to push through that texture. Overall they used 250 model sheets and 600 backgrounds.

There we so many things they needed to consider, such as ageing characters and clothes change and facial mattes within TV paint. Seen as they were replicating real life time passing. 

Manimation - Brave New Worlds

Across the road from Manchester animation festival there was a conference festival named Manimation which had a special VR talk named 'brave new worlds' Steve Henderson my tutor and co director of Manchester animation festival was really kindly able to get me in!

This talk was most insightful as an aspiring VR animator, many points were raised I hadn't even considered, it was really interesting and a little too short for how much there is to talk about.

Here are some of my notes drawn from this conference:

Draw into space not as engaging as something dramatic happening around you. Try new things, break rules make own rules. (Echoing a lot of Gary Napper's talk at YGF.)

AR And VR headsets, blend and be an amazing hybrid thing.

Apple discussing AR. POKÉMON GO is the biggest AR project of all time.

As you explore environment it triggers reaction. 

Storytelling. interactivity. Telling similar stories through games. Cross over with gaming to storytelling industry. Animation, the want to tell a story and know how to get people involved with VR. 

There was a lot of discussion around whether controllers should be seen in a VR environment:

VR no standard controller.  Challenge to develop set of content. Already got standard controller ??? Sticking hands in virtual world is where we should be in 5 years. People don't like games controllers. Why do we need controllers ?? Because they are precise! Technology for hand tracking needs to become flawless. Microsoft VR - Hololens tracks accurately where hands are,  needs to go this way. 

Keep seeing vibe controllers in the games. Projects where they don't look like them. Interesting. 

Spending so much time making cool worlds - that people forget about controllers. 

Your holding a thing and physically holding thing , bridge between yourself and the game.

STORYTELLING IN VR.

We wait - a short from aardman.

First person - refugees on shore of distant land. Puts you in head of someone using VR. 

Empathy immersion , first person or third person ? No rules - what does it feel like to be a refugee waiting ???

Stylised, representitive. Experiential. Cuts included - coast to boat. Soft cuts with spotlight. Use more binaural with game. Mostly in the night. Experiment for the BBC. If photorealistic would it of had as good an effect? Too reallstic and unsettling. Timing is right no latency. Everything more exaggerating - all senses in sync - this can only be real. Took a while for head to register. How fast perception said can't compute this any other way. If become too real danger that it gets locked in memory. If too real then disturbing as like a real life experience because of how brain computes information. 

Brain didn't believe what your telling yourself. 

If invisible and have no presence in scene - layer of storytelling don't need to think about. 

3rd person horror VR detaches you from experience , scary because your in scene. Could YOU be scary thing in horror story? 

VR often seen as isolating. But Facebook conference ??? Have friends in same VR experience and see what they see and talk , really interesting. 

Can we create stories from immersive theatre? 

Suicide bomber . Wrong hands. Alternative to realty. Worries. 

VR classroom , taking kids places increasing the educational experience.

So realistic that it becomes a danger to people would be amazing

VR for education and learning. Empathy - situations hope would encourage empathy - how we can use 360 to enable distant learning.

MS experience. Apollo 11 project. Go into space with group of people contextually. 

Put through mind of someone with autism. 

Blue Zoo -MAF

This was my favourite talk of MAF, so informative and interesting, detailing the whole process from pre - production to production of a VR short. The process of creating an immersive, interactive story.

With VR their needs to be content, If there's no convincing content then there's no chance of certain shorts like this becoming popular.

They wanted something playful, interactive and immersive, and they did just that.

Blue zoo themselves are a company who loves differentiating their style.

When it came to deciding on a style of this animation, everyone put forward a treatment in a box and there was a vote to pick the winner which was an interesting and genius idea to get everyone's ideas put forward in an efficient manner.

Hoodoo was animated in maya and rendered realtime in unity.

Catherine salkeld's Idea was the one that got chosen, she wanted a VR interactive experience. It was great to see such a passion for virtual animation in someone other than myself and managed to engage in conversation with her afterwards which was really enjoyable. 

Catherine visages 4 storylines happening at once ! At first thought to me seemed like too much, and I was right as this got adapted as things developed, but the idea of being immersed in 4 narratives at once is such a wonderful one.

As an aspiring VR animator myself it was great to see the pre-production process, it was a great insight into the mechanics of VR production. For example, the use of panorama boards;

Giving a dimensional 360 view of the set making efficiency in the modelling process. Structured in a way so wherever you looked you can find something.

Their aim was to push out of real world and keep it surreal, which they achieved brilliantly in hoodoo, heightened with the interactivity element.

The panorama boards organised also how to section stage in 360 and wouldn't end up seeing too much in your peripheral.

These are their set design boards, yet again displaying a 360 vision:

For the models they used low poly models, for efficiency in real time rendering.

Hoodoo is a Layered world, wrapped round on planes clouds and mountains with a sky dome. Here are some images of reference they used when designing the stage.

Colour tests:

However they soon noticed an issue with the story, people were too busy looking at everything they couldn't decipher story, therefore it lost storytelling focus so they adapted it, and added a narrator to aid narrative, described as a  'Friend in your ear'.

For the testing stage they took the maya scene and viewed it in the vive, which was great to test game mechanics. 

Interactive stories can put the viewer in a negative view because they feel they are missing out other ending, so narrative was made linear, something for me to consider. Instead they had Interactive sections;... Rewind section... Continues ... Interactive.  

To improve efficiency they had scripts to import sections that were needed. However they racked up 20 seconds a week of animation, exposing VR is a slow going process.

In order to divert the users attention, they needed to use sound to draw attention to things. They used FMOD to position audio to come from anywhere within the scene, even elaborating this with triggers for when you look at something a sound is played. For example when you browse the oriental house a zen tune plays and when you look at the sky an ethereal song plays, creating a magical aura immersing you deeper and fitting with the interactivity.

Sound layering example:

And scene layering:

Animating in VR could be related to theatre.

Gary Napper - VR Rulebook talk at Yorkshire Games Festival

Gary Napper has become quite an all rounder in the gaming industry. From pitching ideas, to designing level sets, to tweaking actual gameplay. Working at many gaming establishments such as; EA, SONY and now Supermassive Games, he has clocked up loads of experience in the gaming industry, it's no surprise he is gaming director now at Supermassive. Now he focuses in the VR realm, producing games for PSVR such as Until Dawn.

I got the chance to watch a talk by him on VR at Yorkshire Games Festival, which was such a brilliant talk! He was so inspirational and educational, I learnt so many things and he made me think of things that I hadn't even thought of. What was most amazing was the fact of seeing someone as passionate about VR as me.

First Gary Napper detailed the 'industry's rules to VR' which were:

-Camera motion avoidance 

-Accelerate decelerate (this can be broken by intentionally making the user feel a sense of motion sickness, like being on a space ship, replicating real life events that would give you motion sickness)

-the aspect of having a body (the weirdness you get when you look down and see no body there, however this can be broken in flying games.

-Frame of reference (directing the subject is hard in a 360 world, however in games such as Airdrift where the game focusses heavily on the aspect of freedom, no direction is actually needed.)

-Audio from somewhere (binaural)

However these conventional rules Gary Napper highlighted you can break in many ways yet still produce an effective example of VR. These rules can be broken as a matter of stylistic choice and still not make the user specifically Ill.

Suggested book: THE ART OF GAME DESIGN JESSE SCHELL

He highlighted how the rules of conventional games don't apply to VR.

Motion sickness is the sick elephant in the room difference between feeling and motion, the feeling disappears when the motion disappears, like real life being on a ride for example.

He revealed how in fact his team is categorized into sickness levels so they can test the games to their full potential. Getting it right is important because for many peoples first times in VR, if they experience sickness they will not want to go back to it, we need to hook them on that first and maybe only chance.

He also highlighted the importance of the focus on the movement, moreover than aesthetics and assets. Getting that movement right is vital.

Bee yang 'what makes you sick in real life, will make you sick in VR' I like this quote it really establishes how immersive VR is, and that it's not the system itself making you I'll it's just the fact it's putting you in a place that if you were in for real would make you Ill. (Even though eye tracking can sometimes produce this motion sickness)

Because of the motion element, first person shooters aren't available in VR (no 360 noscopes as Gary put it) 

Also with VR there is the element of physical drain, unlike normal console games, VR is very intense and utilises lots of pacing. 

Immersion is aided by the element of virtual fidelity. It can be used to enhance the feeling of a location.

Napper also highlighted how there is no shot composition framing within VR, and how because of this, the attention of the user needs to be diverted so they don't miss any powerful visuals. This can be exploited by use of binaural sound and the darkening of visuals In certain positions.

Key quotes: establish your reality, define the rules best for your game.

Adventure games past present and future - Charles Cecil

This talk by Charles Cecil was more inspiring and a great insight into the new industry! I loved his enthusiasm for narrative driven adventure games, a game genre type I'm interested in experimenting myself . 

Charles talk started off with a brief history of adventure games which was highly educational. From text adventures to free-to-plays. Detailing his beginnings, Adventure B being his first game inspired heavily by Indiana Jones which had just come out and become very popular. This exposed how cesil saw potential in releasing games coded with popular relevance at the time, this is also seen within his game 'beneath a steel sky' a reflection of society under Maggie thatchers rule. 

Lure of the tempress was his first game at Revolution. An example of how the style f the game was dictated by limited amounts of resolution. Cesil highlighted the depiction of women within this game. They originally didn't include a female, however the publishers rewrote the game so it suited the tropes in society, thus came the birth of a female, coded for erotic impact. Highlighting how it's not always the game developers fault for depicting women in such a way, if the people who are going to publish your game want to add something , your at their mercy essentially, and all the publishers care about is that your game can make money. Most effective way of making money ? Suiting to the needs of the commercial industry. 

He highlighted the importance of hiring animators to work with and working with those from different disciplines. 

Cecil then highlighted the time when publishers were refusing to publish games that weren't 3D, which was damaging for broken sword. Things became increasingly more poly thanks to the play station which pushed out PC gaming. And now to iPhone apps, the 'infinite storefront' of the app stores as Cecil put it. Cecil exposed the mass industry that is the free-to-play gaming industry, the bizarre element of a matter of minutes selling 4mill downloads of a game. 

And so revolution teamed up with apple to create the broken swords 5 app. For this the team used crowdfunding in kickstarter, for which Cecil gave some key important points on making a successful game. In his campaign video he showed himself green screened into his adventure game world, acting as a cut to the game due to no funding. Thus he exposed the jeopardy of what would happen with no crowdfunding, making people more more likely to donate to his campaign, an effective method.  

Keep points from talk

- free to play is where money is on mobile devices 

- establish a relationship with audience 

- drawing story and narrative into gameplay 

- telling a story interactively 

Inktober

This is the first time I have ever done inktober. 

To do a drawing every day for 31 days is a challenge , one that is very possible and one I wanted to take. In my busy schedule I never take time out just to sit and draw , but with inktober I did just that. Stopping for about 20 minutes each day to sit and draw was both a therapeutic break and a really nice creative release.  I kept very organised , not once forgetting to do a drawing, which meant I was very successful with time management, which I am really happy at myself with. I really enjoyed this whole month , I feel I have been very creative and imaginative with how I have explored the prompts too, creating characters from a single word. Not only was this challenge an exercise of creative ability but also for imaginative ability, relating a single prompt to an illustration in a creative way is hard to achieve. Drawing again so frequently meant I saw a pattern appear within my works , I began to develop some sort of a drawing style I found when I collected all my drawings together. 

First Inktober:

Noise

Collect

Hungry

Sad

Hidden

Lost

Rock

Broken

Travel

Worried

Scared

Tree

Relax

Wet

Battle

Escape

Flight

Squeeze

Big

Little

Slow

One Dozen

Tired

Box

Creepy

Burn

Surprise

Wreck

Friend

Studio brief 2 - Research into practitioners

For this brief considering my great interest in VR , I aspire to interview someone who is involved within this industry. For my review I want to delve deep into concepts and ideas about what principles make VR so immersive and how you can play with the immersion and maximise certain feelings and emotions. I also want to find out about its place in the industry, will it eat traditional media, etc.

At Yorkshire games Festival I came into contact with Charles Cecil. 

I was so inspired by his focus on narrative driven adventure games which is something I am enthused about.

Cecil writes games as part of revolution games who have created games such as Broken Swords. If I was to contact Cecil I would most prominently want to find out about why narrative is so important in video games and narratives place within the games industry. How graphics dictate the story too, for example VR involving you in the narrative. How interactivity can tell a story. I would definitely discuss this talk with him as a starting point, an ice breaker.

Gary Napper is another individual who I will meet at Yorkshire games festival. He has experience in VR the making of until dawn for the PSVR. I would love to contact to talk about his ideas on VR.

Gary Napper is a game director for Supermassive games. He has worked on games such as Alien: Isolation in the past too. I am very excited about talking to someone as passionate about VR as I am.

'he is currently working as a Game Director at Supermassive Games (Creators of Until Dawn, TumbleVR and Rush Of Blood) on some new and exciting things with the recently expanded VR team'

Zwets, B. (2014) Interview with Gary Napper, alien: Isolations lead game designer. Available at: http://www.nisute.com/2014/08/17/interview-with-garry-napper-alien-isolations-lead-game-designer/ (Accessed: 10 November 2016).



Blue-Zoo animation studios I am interested in because of their VR film they are showing off at MAF named HOO-DOO. It would be great to talk to a member of their animation team and discuss where THEY think the VR world is going in accordance with animation and film, not just gaming. I will be attending a talk of theirs at MAF;

about their VR film Hoodoo. This will be a great starter point of conversation.