VR Diversity Initiative - 13th June

I was thrilled to get selected for Catherine Allen's VR Diversity Initiative One-Day Bootcamp, which meant a trip to London for the day!

Having never travelled to London on my own before I was slightly nervous but went great and it turned out to be a fantastic and valuable experience!

The day kicked off with a series of talks from industry professionals, talking about their VR projects and diversity within the industry. With VR being a relatively new industry, there is that chance to make it as diverse as possible, unlike the games industry and so many industry's in male dominated 'tech world'. 

The talks were inspiring and powerful, with some great sources and shocking statistics which will be of help when I start writing my dissertation.

It was especially great to hear from Tania Baltista who is a VR Animator at Found studios and now Golden Wolf and find out her workflow, as she is the epitome of where I want to be in industry. 

At the end of the day we set into groups to create something in VR with great help from Harvey Ball and his VRTK which allowed us to achieve that In just an hour. Here is a video which I feature in about the Unity workshops, created by VR Focus:

https://youtu.be/nc865ay6JbI

This was a great experience working with likeminded people interested in VR, and getting to know Harvey Ball and Catherine Allen will be invaluable for the future. 

Today was an amazing learning curve, I have learnt a lot about the VR industry and the current gender gap which is emerging.. Dr Sarah Atkinson exposed the lack of diversity in the animation and games throughout time, which was another learning curve. Overall a valuable experience ! 

Here's an all round video about the initiative which I also feature in:

https://youtu.be/AxkeYfCZTIc

Sketchfab Animal Family Challenge

Back to the low-poly again! Here's my entry to the Sketchfab Low-poly Animal Family Challenge;

A panda brood in a tree;

This challenge was very fun! Loved the limitation of only 3K tris too. Modelling low-poly is something I have grown very used to now and enjoy how the style looks, so I really enjoyed this challenge.

It was also fun to test out my modelling skills again after purely animating in CG for so long now and Im happy with what I created.

Even though the characters are static, there is still an animation to them, a life to them, which I aimed to capture.

Exploring Digital Futures Festival Scarborough - 26/27th May

Woop! I am writing this blog from Scarborough after an exhilarating day. Sooo much has happened that I had to write this post now before I forget such a great day it has been.

I knew about a VR festival coming to Scarborough around November time, finally when the tickets were released I found the prices to be far too high for what I was able to make... But thanks to my wonderful tutor Annabeth who contacted Zoe (festival organiser) and after recommending me and passing my details on, I was given the chance to volunteer at the festival! By bringing my HTC Vive to be a Tilt Brush host just like LYFF, but also having the chance to show off my own work too to industry VR professionals and the general public. Exciting times.

Setup went smoothly, there were no technical glitches! A few VR stations had to be shifted around from being too close and getting interference but when they were moved everything was fine.

I even got the chance to attend the talks I wanted to, like this talk from Sarah Jones about storytelling in VR:

She explored VR being used for tattoo pain relief, as your heart rate drops significantly drops when in VR being tattooed. 

When immersing people into her environments she included smells of the virtual environment around the spectator in tuppaware boxes, therefore capturing the very essence of the environment increasing that immersion significantly. I got excited after hearing this and would love to incorporate this myself.

She said that narrative isn't important because your creating an experience. Experiential takes what they want from the story.

 Immersive theatre. Computers as theatre. Embodying specific reality. 

We had Jan Bee a fashion designer for theatre pop by and try out the mannequin on Tilt Brush!

And Marcus Romer:

It was great to see Cat and Tom from Blue Zoo again and experience HooDoo again.

I was even trusted to demo HooDoo the next day to the general public, where it got great reactions.

I also was part of a panel talk on art and VR!

Which was a nerve-wracking and also thrilling experience. I found confidence through the passion and knowledge of the subject I was talking about, being so passionate about VR I found it easy to talk about infront of so many people.

On the 2nd day of the festival, it was all about the general public and giving children the chance to experience Tilt Brush, to which one child created this;

Seeing peoples first times in VR will never get old! Especially with enthusiastic children.

I really enjoyed being a Tilt Brush host, at LYFF and EDF and hope to host my VR at more events in the future, its just so fun watching people experience VR for the first time, time went by so fast just like LYFF, and I can't wait to do it again. Being at LYFF before EDF meant I brought a lot of experience with me and methods of how to host Tilt Brush, which definitely helped things run smoothly at EDF.

Volunteering and hosting at EDF allowed me to make many more exciting contacts and has actually opened many many doors...  I have taken a lot from the talks which will aid me in my VR ventures in my final year too. The panel talk was a HUGE confidence boost for me and a beneficial experience, developing those skills in public speaking and it also put me in the limelight for many people to come up to me afterwards.

I took photos of all the Tilt Brush creations and uploaded them onto a google photos gallery for the theatre and organisers to promote;

https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipNIaypPq8jYOVlPd3Ir6xdaWl0J4IyukKjJGff1HxwQYA9XLLqdyJXDSlpAlAc_Ig?key=OFlpSEN4dGFEN0NGNF9ZdmlEaUVHUG1rZjNGWF9n

Leeds 360 Meetup - 25th May

This was the first VR meetup I had ever attended and the one to kickstart my summer of VR.

While this meetup was a small turnout, it was a great chance to talk with everyone. I came to the meetup early to meet Superla.tv (a 360 company based in Leeds) and talk about being a runner on one of their 360 shoots, I also helped them demo the Gear VR.

I also talked with Simon Barratt from Cooperative Innovations who did a great talk on Raiders of Erda.

I really enjoyed talking to a bunch of people for the first time who share the same enthusiasm for VR as me, with this common interest it was so easy to network and talk to people. With VR being a relatively new industry, it is still exciting people, with this collective excitement in the room it really aids with approaching random people and making new connections. The freshness of VR as a medium for developers also means that there are hurdles because of the research involved and lack of help available at this time, so in a way that means we are all stuck in this VR boat together, meaning more people are likely to connect with you because the more contacts you have in the VR industry the more people you can approach for help. Because I have such a passion for VR, when I talk to people my excitement comes through, and it makes me more confident in conversing.

This successful networking session has made me driven to attend as many of these events as I can over the summer and throughout my 3rd year.