Alex McCunn - Dissertation - Revitalising Creativity Enhancing Storytelling Using Virtual Reality

5/1/2019

Revitalising Imagination Enhancing Creativity Using Virtual Reality

An Honours Dissertation

ALEXANDER JACK MCCUNN | 1601289 UNIVERSITY OF ABERTAY DUNDEE | BELL ST, DUNDEE DD1 1HG

Declarations Author: Alexander Jack McCunn Title: Mr.

Qualification sought: BA (hons) Computer Arts Year: 4 I.

II. III.

I declare that the dissertation entitled ‘REVITLISING IMAGINATION: ENHANCING CREATIVITY USING VITRUAL REALITY’ submitted by me for the partial fulfilment of the Bachelor of Arts honours degree from the UNIVERSITY OF ABERTAY in Dundee, Scotland is my original work and has not been submitted to any other institution for the fulfilment of any course of study.

I certify that all the work within this document is of my own work unless stated or cited otherwise.

I certify that every measure has been taken to ensure the accuracy of any detail that has been cited from external sources.

Signature: Date: 01/05/19

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Acknowledgments I would like to thank the University of Abertay for allowing me the opportunity to study and work around some of the most dedicated artists and be able to make life long connections by collaborating with them on many different projects over the years. I will not forget the guidance that the lecturers at Abertay gave me from second year through to the completion of my dissertation, them being Dr Lynn Love, Ryan Locke, and Brian Robinson in particular and many more. I wouldn’t have made it this far without your guidance and support.

In addition, I would like to thank the many different online creators of the quality content that will continue to inspire me beyond my university career. Most notably of which the late Colin Wyckoff, whose sense of humour and comedic timing influences me to this day.

I would also like to thank Maggie McCabe for giving me the opportunity to meet with some of the leading talent within the animation industry from around the world first hand through the MOVE Summit organisation. Your enthusiasm and persistence is a shining example to every artist.

Lastly, I would like to thank my close friends and family for the continued support through all the ups and downs over the last decade as I really came into who I am today. My parents Annabelle & Kenneth McCunn, my brother Dr Robert McCunn, my girlfriend Jiahui Liu and my extended family who are both still here today or have passed away. Without your continued support, literally none of this would be possible.

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Contents Acknowledgments................................................................................................................................... 2 List of Figures .......................................................................................................................................... 4 Abstract ................................................................................................................................................... 5 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 6 Animation pipeline and how ANIMVR can be applied to the process. ................................................... 7 Using storytelling as a tool in forming an idea. ...................................................................................... 8 Aesthetically pleasing designs .............................................................................................................. 12 Characters ......................................................................................................................................... 12 Environments .................................................................................................................................... 13 Directing through stages and from far away ........................................................................................ 21 Constraints & Technical strengths/ weaknesses .................................................................................. 24 Reflective Conclusion and what to expect from virtual animation ...................................................... 26 Bibliography & References.................................................................................................................... 28

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List of Figures Figure 1 - Camera placement in a scene in ANIMVR .............................................................................. 6 Figure 2 - Thumbnail Storyboards for Values Short made to stage scenes and direct action, Pencil .... 8 Figure 3 - Promotional art for Samurai Jack, CN ..................................................................................... 9 Figure 4 - Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends, CN ................................................................................ 9 Figure 5 - One Small Step, Taiko Studios, 2018 ...................................................................................... 9 Figure 6 - One Small Step, Taiko Studios, 2018 .................................................................................... 10 Figure 7 - How To Train Your Dragon artbook, Dreamworks................................................................ 10 Figure 8 - Storyboarding sequence from HTTYD artbook ..................................................................... 10 Figure 9 - Storyboard from 'Values' short ............................................................................................. 10 Figure 10 - Basing the animatic movements around the characters (Hope Blade, left) vs my attempt (Values) ................................................................................................................................................. 11 Figure 11 - First concept for main character, Values ............................................................................ 12 Figure 12 - Further iterations of character concepts for Values ........................................................... 12 Figure 13 - Character concept translated in VR .................................................................................... 13 Figure 14 - Rodger Rabbit scene layout, Setting the Scene, Fraser MacLean....................................... 14 Figure 15 - Building Environment Concept sketches, Values ................................................................ 15 Figure 16 - Sea bay Illustration, Sylar113 (Left) vs my recreation in VR (Right) ................................... 16 Figure 17 - My recreation with the camera pulled back ....................................................................... 17 Figure 18 - Through a Life, Tom Haugomat .......................................................................................... 17 Figure 19 - My recreation of ‘Through A life, Tom Haugomat’ in ANIMVR .......................................... 18 Figure 20 - Deer Illustration, Studio Garcia........................................................................................... 19 Figure 21 - My ANIMVR recreation ....................................................................................................... 19 Figure 22 - Sunshine and Rain by Nick Ladd, Quill ................................................................................ 20 Figure 23 - Nathalie by Eric3dee, Tilt Brush .......................................................................................... 20 Figure 24 - Valley Landscape, Bjzaba .................................................................................................... 20 Figure 25 - My ANIMVR recreation ....................................................................................................... 20 Figure 26 -Limitless, Auroralion ............................................................................................................ 21 Figure 27 - My ANIMVR recreation ....................................................................................................... 21 Figure 28 - Mattess & miniatures, emulating the feel of the scenes made in ANIMVR ....................... 22 Figure 29 - Camera trail and preview in ANIMVR ................................................................................. 22 Figure 30 - NuBoyana 24, Filmmaking challenge .................................................................................. 23 Figure 31 - Camera controls/ meshes used in Unreal Engine for cinematic purposes. ........................ 24 Figure 32 - Chinese Landscape, Dadu Shin ........................................................................................... 27 Figure 33 - My ANIMVR recreation ....................................................................................................... 27

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Abstract When creating an animated short, it is a difficult task to bring any idea to life and to make sure that you have explored all of your options when making it the best it can be. It is typical practice to sketch, paint and design 2D pieces of artwork or model 3D objects, character and environments that are rough in form but understandable to see if they are good or bad ideas before moving forward.

This task while necessary can take a long time at any stage of the process if the artist feels like their creativity is being held back by the tools that they have to use and not by their imaginations. This project’s intention is to look forward to what new developments are being made for creators to help them realise their concepts quicker, specifically focusing on toolkits made for virtual reality that can integrate with existing ones. By combining the 2D visual aesthetics that cartoons are known for and generating them in a 3D workspace, can VR be used as a bridge between these mediums and produce a new creative platform for artists to use during production? From this, if the conclusions found are not to be useful, what could have been made that have marketable and practical potential?

Research on the standard production methods used today, followed by experimentations within the medium directly and interviews with industry professionals about the subject, helped in finding the answers to this endeavor hoping to narrow down an exact use for the medium as an additional skill set rather than just as a feature as it has been used for years. The findings overall were supportive in the idea of VR tools working one day and contrary to my own beliefs in its effectiveness, but showcased how in more concentrated and smaller set pieces the work could flourish and have its own unique style to it. By the end of the testing phase and as the practical work began to form, it made itself clear that while an animated short is feasible and do-able by anyone with enough persistence, smaller and more contained pieces of work are what should be aimed for and they can be higher in quality than one long winded project.

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Introduction Within the creative industries, especially for animation, it is common practice to get ideas tested as soon as possible so that you can eliminate anything that doesn't work and get to production quicker with decision made. This is the same for most business practices but when creating an animated short, you would use some storyboarding software or an image manipulation package that lets you draw the images in and then proceed to edit them into an animatic for later viewing. This method has been proven to be very effective through decades of entertainment and because of this it is been used for years by studios all across the world to become an industry standard method of work.

While there are many other steps involved in the creation of any product, in order to save time and money during production there are strict methods that have been tested overtime by creators that not only make the process easier for themselves but also for their team members and fellow employees.

What develops naturally from this process though is that the my typical pipeline doesn't leave much room for change overtime unless they become extremely obsolete like when it was reported that 95% of all websites have ditched Adobe flash completely (Hopping, 2018) and predict it to phased out completely by 2020 (Mackie, 2019). This makes it hard for smaller studios in a creative field like animation to stay ahead of the competition who don't have a lot of wiggle room or funding to change things drastically. What then happens is that style of animation that worked before is then used permanently but if they are thought to succeed all the time they can lead directly to the company’s slow decline overtime (Osborne, 2019). It is no surprise that the logical approach of saving time and money on a production comes first and foremost by keeping it under budget and delivering it on time as appose to trying to produce something with artistic integrity when the reality of running a company sets in. So when new virtual reality software that claims to make this process easier is made public and can be purchased for commercial use called ANIMVR (Mella), how could using something so new become viable for mainstream use? You begin by playing, testing and experimenting with it in every way possible.

Figure 1 - Camera placement in a scene in ANIMVR

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Animation pipeline and how ANIMVR can be applied to the process.

ANIMVR, developed by NVRMIND and officially released in December of 2018, was a new addition to the growing number of VR tools made available online that allow anyone with the hardware necessary to run it to create artistic creations directly in VR (Seyb, 2019). Instead of having to model 3D objects using a mouse and keyboard, ANIMVR allows creators to essentially draw their ideas directly in the virtual space around them and sculpt them out of thin air. This product is similar to what Google and Facebook have already released and helped them to obtain a hold on the VR market with their 'Tilt Brush' (Tilt Brush, 2019) and 'Quill' (QuillFB, 2019) applications. However, their products lacked an element to them that would drive ANIMVR’s inception, which is a feature to key frame animations within VR. Quill eventually adapted to this new demand and implemented a key framing and timeline manipulation function, allowing for the illusion of movement to be created but this came at a price. But by Facebook delaying their involvement in creating an animation plugin for their VR toolkit they had exposed themselves to competitors who could fill this gap and design software completely around this one feature. With the medium of VR still being explored for its potential as it exists today it became the perfect playground for NVRMIND, the developers of ANIMVR, to create their product and eventually start looking for testers once they had a working product (NVRMIND, 2017). Having a uniquely artistic driven software package developed and made available to the public, ANIMVR became the ‘open field’ in which to gather analysis and develop any ideas that could be made using it.

But in order to obtain a fundamental understanding of an existing subject before delving into a new one, a critical breakdown needs to be established of how one typically gets made. By using existing information found in books on the subject (Amidi, 2011) and online and the comments from interviewed professionals (McCunn, 2018) with years of experience on how they produce their work, we can gather together a typical process pipeline to reflect it against my own that explains the need for every step in the process. The starting point of every production begins with a great idea, or a combination of a few existing ideas that could be made better if mashed together. Next, a story layout begins to be made which gives a broad scope of the idea and the general themes surrounding it, to help determine if the idea has been made before using things like a pitch bible or a pilot script.

After it is approved, an extensive amount of work is created across every department from concept artists to outsourced experts if it pertains to a particular theme the studio is not familiar with, say ‘marine life biology’ for example (Sorren, 2018). All of this combined together is what goes into creating your typical animated short for any purpose related to entertainment.

So when breaking down these stages into what they composed of, how can VR toolkits fit into their processes to see if it really does make it easier for the creator? The study outlined in this document analyses these results that were obtained through practice and a few select themes stand out in particular. These bottom line principles are: • • • •

Storytelling Directing Aesthetic design Technical constraints

The storytelling comes from using a strong narrative to play with the audience’s emotions and can be enhanced by the medium that is used from life like CGI to stop motion. The direction of the scenes help to enhance any productions set pieces and emotional responses to the story and characters. Designing and creating appealing worlds that help to build fictional universes that suspend disbelief can be given a unique visual readability by using colour schemes, lighting, 7

composition. Lastly, the new limitations that are brought forward with new technology, both through the software and hardware factors, are new in design and therefore require new solutions with the help of pre established methods of approaching issues logically when they arise.

Using storytelling as a tool in forming an idea.

A story is required to be fleshed out before any production starts in order for the final piece to hold together all the way through, regardless of the visual outcome. The story that was chosen to be created in VR was dubbed ‘Values’ and designed with ANIMVR in mind. The story would follow Ed, a young man set in a modern day based American ‘middle-town’ who recently gets their heart lifted by a potential new relationship only to have it end after the love interest suddenly breaks up with him. He proceeds to pick himself back up soon after by being thrown into a mysterious but perspective changing world that he and the audience experiences first hand. The short itself follows an organised three act structure that each convey a particular emotion that is associated with relationships and new found but short lived love which are ‘euphoric happiness’, ‘complicated realities’ and ‘complacent growth and appreciation’.

Figure 2 - Thumbnail Storyboards for Values Short made to stage scenes and direct action, Pencil

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Figure 4 - Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends, CN

Figure 3 - Promotional art for Samurai Jack, CN

The art direction that was researched for this element came from shows like Cartoon Network’s ‘Samurai Jack’ by Genndy Tartakovski (Wikipedia, 2001) and ‘Fosters home for Imaginary Friends’, created by Dan Harmon and Lauren Faust (Wikipedia, 2004) where their designs are portrayed exactly to a fixed camera perspective, which means that each detail on the characters and environments would only work from one perspective which would be the viewers perspective. The ‘cell shaded’ and ‘minimal outline’ look would be one that would portray the characters helped to effectively separate them from their environments and allow them to move freely while standing out.

Taiko Studio’s animated short ‘One Small Step’ is a more modern take on this idea where 2D design and thorough layout design thought processes can be combined with the 3D software available today to present a familiar aesthetic but help streamline the process for the end result (Wikipedia 2018). This is evident in the behind the scenes footage of the construction of the character hair for example where traditional layering and 3D animation combined to produce fantastic results.

Figure 3 - One Small Step, Taiko Studios, 2018

These products were referenced and broken down carefully to understand their eloquent use of their aesthetic choices and their approach to animating through sketches, concepts and creations to better understand how their approach to achieving their intended effects could translate to VR.

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Figure 4 - One Small Step, Taiko Studios, 2018

As more source material was gathered to understand the process more accurately, several art books by studios from America to Japan were looked at to recognise any particular methods of workflow that could be adapted into VR. Dreamwork’s ‘The Art of How To Train Your Dragon’ presented their storyboards in slideshow fashion with slow transitions from scene to scene and action to action (Wikipedia, 2010).

Figure 7 - How To Train Your Dragon artbook, Dreamworks7

Figure 8 - Storyboarding sequence from HTTYD artbook

I used this knowledge when designing my storyboard by integrating it into particular scenes of mine that required camera pans or movements.

Figure 5 - Storyboard from 'Values' short

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Additional art books for Mokoyo Shinkai (Wikipedia, 2010), Pixar (Wikipedia, 2011) and The Book of Life (Wikipedia, 2014) were used as reference for what the purposes and functions of fully rendered 2D backgrounds, colour scripts and environmental sketches for example would serve the final products they were created for. This would lead a portion of the direction for my experimentation as I would take these factors and translate them into VR to understand how more efficient they could be produced using the medium itself.

When taking all of this into the amount of detail the thumbnail storyboard process required, it would make the impression on anyone that it is not too complicated to achieve. However, replicating it within ANIMVR did not transition as smoothly as I first hypothesised. By taking in a sequence of images into a stage a basic layout could be made if the scene was going to be self-contained within this one environment, but in order to transition between others smoothly they would have needed to be exported out and then re-edited on desktop anyway to achieve any consistency. While shorter pieces of work might benefit from this, longer winded projects would suffer from this lack of fidelity.

The detail that could added though was a sign however that a more fleshed out style animatic could be achieved if the right techniques are known and applied in the new medium. If the characters key movements are layed out around a 3D environment where the spacing is accounted for an can be worked around it is smoother when laying out actions and timings, but if the 2D approach is used where only everything the camera will see needs to be created from a fixed perspective then it becomes more over a set tool for design rather than functionality (Daniels, 2018).

Figure 6 - Basing the animatic movements around the characters (Hope Blade, left) vs my attempt (Values)

Within ANIMVR, animatics are easy to make and can include higher end details like you might see in a professional one but extending the length that most of those projects require is the only snag that was discovered which could prove deterring for mainstream adoption. If the animatic can’t be framed and executed properly from the camera, the narrative will get lost instantly. While any singular professional might work around this and learn what works better, it became evident from the research conducted and practical application that the best approach is to place the actions like you would on a film set and then film around them. On top of this, you would interoperate what works best to convey the right tones for your story and not to stick to the storyboard so tightly as you might do with 2D animation.

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Figure 12 - Further iterations of character concepts for Values

Aesthetically pleasing designs Characters As with any story the main character is the main focus for the whole narrative, but after using ANIMVR to create a protagonist before it was clear from the beginning that they could not be detailed in design. Rather they would need to be apparent in their design choice and be extremely simplified in shape and form. After taking this into consideration I formalised a design for the protagonist that lends themselves to be appealing in design, viable for animating and visually readable for different purposes within the story. As it is essential for the character to stand out from the environment their design, colours, features and aspects wouldn’t ever become too complicated in style. Keeping the character design simple would keep it readable and Figure 11 - First concept for main character, Values easy to create again and again from scratch is a fundamental aspect to animation that is most prevalent in this project alone.

With this new approach to their designs formulised they needed to be tested in VR and the results were again not what was expected. While ANIMVR was great for creating still portrait designs of any subject, having them animated no matter how simple proved once again to be challenging. There were problems with making sure the silhouette of the character would be readable from the cameras point of view, which restricted the ‘straight ahead’ animation process by having to check that everything was consistent in shape and design. The proportions of the character while simple enough to replicate and visualise in 3D space but creating it again and again for every frame was a struggle to try and maintain throughout the stage. The interior outlines on their hoodie design was simple in intention but hard to achieve while moving the camera and so on.

Every factor that is essential to keeping a character light on their feet but grounded within the conext of the world they exist in was loosened by the incorporation of VR and only made the process 12

harder to execute. With this and many other factors needing to be constantly balanced while constructing the narrative, it became apparent that in order for a clearer and concise character to be translated into VR from a drawn concept, there is no consideration for the difference in physical approach when designing them. One element that is taken for granted but missed when its gone, is that when illustrating on Figure 7 - Character concept translated in VR paper and creating coherent piece of artwork for later use, you are leaning against a physical desk to get your stokes converted from pencil onto the canvas. In VR however, this element is gone and it increasingly makes it more difficult to create even the simplist of ideas without having to enable automatic smoothing or getting assistance from the built in adjustment tools. By doing this though you are restcited in how free form and exstatic your designs can be and you have to work around a new technique which is essentially drawing on air with air.

While some artists might revel in this approach to creating content with ANIMVR, having to be as delecate as you have to be when animating in a style similar to that of stop motion where every little inconsistency is highlighted enourmasly is what will partly hold it back from mainstream adoption based on the findings. By changing the formula for creating the content in ANIMVR changes the whole process from the ground up. Instead then looking at what doesn’t work, what does flourish the most when translated to VR? The settings and environments.

Environments While the character creations were lacking in appeal based on the practices made, the environments was what really helped bring my work alive and helped to focus the project more so around them instead. Throughout any completed animated short there is careful thought, detail and attention payed to creating a world in which the characters are able to interact with their surrounds or at the very least be grounded in their ‘suspension of reality’. When studios designs these backdrops they take into consideration many factors such as timing, location, complimentary colours and layouts for animating on top of. In ‘Setting the Scene’ by animator Fraser Maclean which talks about how layout planning was crucial to the animation process, it depicts the way the 2D rendered environments would have to be scewed and manipulated in order for the camera to convey the right direction and for the characters to reflect their distortions or changes in perspective (MacLean, 2011).

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Figure 8 - Rodger Rabbit scene layout, Setting the Scene, Fraser MacLean

While this technique can be attributed to the limitations of the technology at the time it was made, it relates back to the point about the ways you use the environment to direct and tell the story. For this instance the camera is what would remain stationary as a pre-determined layout of what the scene should look like is moved with and focused on alongside the character as they float around the scene, creating the idea that everything is being warped when in fact it is just a ‘smoke and mirrors’ where the elements of the scene are constructed in a way that conveys the idea of a large warping and scaling room instead of actually creating one to trick the viewers mind.

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Taking this production method into consideration and in order to initially plan some of the environments for understanding how to construct them in a 3D workspace, designs were drawn for a building that would be featured in a portion from act 1 of the initial storyboard.

Figure 9 – Building Environment Concept sketches, Values

By creating the scene in VR a new level of depth can be approached to their construction that differs drastically from the characters. The initial approach taken to making the building was to lay out the walls, roof, exterior details and what was required to give me more detailed precision when designing it in ANIMVR. This however led to issues with camera placements having their points of view blocked and more detail meant more processing power on the machine used to make it.

Making one side of a building to look like the exterior of a wooden snow covered home was easy but trying to achieve that from every angle at every altitude becomes a technical problem and it will begin to slow down production, so much so that no more work can get done once it reaches a certain level.

After discovering this though, a new solution was found in the process. By eliminating the fine details that would help to flesh it out like in a typical 3D production pipeline, stages could be constructed that highlighted the key details of the environment surrounding the characters such as big round circle mountains or tall rectangular trees that stretch forever into the sky. In order to 15

understand this change in artistic direction, some scenes were created in VR based off of shots from television shows and others from existing illustrations by artists. which already had consecutive layouts and designs within them and were used to translate them in VR to see if it worked this way better.

Figure 10 – Sea bay Illustration, Sylar113 (Left) vs my recreation in VR (Right)

The results from this one illustration (Sylar133, 2019) adapted into the VR medium highlighted the clear cut shadows created by the harsh light source and changed the solid white ground with a dark blue shadow, with smaller cables, silhouettes and cloud designs added using different brush types for polish.

A clear difference from this finding and the work attempted before can be found when creating a fully realised 3D environment from another illustration. The results were mostly pinned down to the fact that the camera was fixed in place viewing a specific angle, restricting what bad details could not be seen. This technique mirrors that of how 2D animation and layout animation works were made to achieve the deception in the 1950s (Wikipedia, 2019). While taking 2D image planes into a 3D work space and replicating the effect of them moving at different speeds isn’t anything new, taking that a step further and putting it within VR unlocks a whole new world of potential ideas. The effect is even amplified in its simplicity when the scene is looked at from further away and the individual layers of key elements that make it up can be seen independently floating in space as if suspended like in a multiplane camera apparatus.

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Figure 11 – My recreation with the camera pulled back

After this approach was tested and produced results that were more appealing, more works were taken and adapted into VR and examined for their execution.

Figure 12 - Through a Life, Tom Haugomat

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Figure 13 – My recreation of ‘Through A life, Tom Haugomat’ in ANIMVR

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Taking this new approach to designing both the environment and the characters more freely and with less continuity much like a physical painting where you can’t get the exact colour ratio back that you had before, the process began to become more streamlined and less strenuous on what step to do next to ensure consistency. In terms of storytelling, having each brush stroke be completely different than the last continues to emulate the more forward thinking approach to the animation and is reflected in the smaller, more condensed animations within the VR medium that can be found in artistic CG communities found online where they are posted in higher frequency. It doesn’t have to be seen as looking too cubic in form or be distracting for its lack of consistency across all of its strokes but it does require the persistence and patience that animators are known for to enhance them to their fullest potential (Studio Garcia, 2019).

Figure 21 – My ANIMVR recreation

Figure 20 - Deer Illustration, Studio Garcia

The style that most projects generated solely in VR often have an influence from traditional canvas textures with different types of paint applied to them, with loose fraying ends and blending different tones by selecting them from the CG colour spectrum. Where traditional painting would allow for the physical ingredients the paints use for the different key colours to mix in order for the right tones to be created, VR painting preforms best when the individual blends are achieved through layering and scaling so that the right image is perceived when viewed at the correct perspective. This virtual layering technique for sketching and animating in VR allows the medium to obtain its own

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Figure 23 - Nathalie by Eric3dee, Tilt Brush

Figure 22 - Sunshine and Rain by Nick Ladd, Quill

unique appeal without stretching its capabilities too far from the imagination. This is crucial for any artist to figure out if they want to create a masterpiece as not everyone will be fluent in achieving their intended designs when working with a foreign medium until they not only fully explore the possibilities of the medium being used, but delve into their own capabilities as inventors of new art as well.

By taking the approach of working from the camera’s perspective for direction and attempting to replicate Disney’s multi plane technique, we can use this method to capture some of the more cinematic shots the scenes of a virtual animated short can have if fully fleshed out by a studio full of every discipline necessary using the new medium.

Figure 14 - Valley Landscape, Bjzaba

Figure 15 – My ANIMVR recreation

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Whether the final piece of work is either a self-contained scene that only has an element of movement or it is several sequences all pieced together, VR lends me more control as the creator to manipulate every aspect involved exactly how I want and that includes exporting. These elements while subtle in noticeability I found to be a monumental improvement on the engagement and personalisation side of my work. As the files are able to be exported in a compatible file format with typical 3D software like Maya, it’s not a tedious task to even create the scene in VR and then give it a final touch within the Autodesk tools made for desktop use and having the fluidity to do so can allow me as an animator to tackle a rendering and polishing task without hesitation that I will be stuck with ANIMVR want the end result to look like (Ladd, 2019).

Figure 26 - Limitless, Auroralion

Figure 27 – My ANIMVR recreation

Directing through stages and from far away Once the scenes were made they needed to be presented in a way that would show the 3D shapes that make up the final scene to be viewed from a specific point of view. While directing the scenes internally required its own practical testing, the first instance of direction that was used was when a behind-the-scene was made, taking a secondary camera and keyframing the motions of it to capture every element of the scene when pulled back. This directing style lent itself to the technique of only designing the necessary parts of a scene that would be seen and leave the rest out in order to save space. The expression 'smoke and mirrors' (Martin, 2019) is the phrase used to describe visually altering the truth and in a film context is the intended effect that I achieved and is what can be best used to describe my method of production, where creative ideas are achieved by using directing techniques and tricks to make sets look bigger than they are or to create visual effects that appear to be impossible using the tools given to the creators.

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Figure 16 - Mattess & miniatures, emulating the feel of the scenes made in ANIMVR

Figure 17 - Camera trail and preview in ANIMVR

Moving forward with directing techniques when creating my scenes, framing the shot in ANIMVR would be done by placing the camera along the grid guide built in by default to every stage within ANIMVR and then have the parameters adjusted like the aspect ratio and depth of field view within 22

the camera settings to work within the frame. Then it would be placed near the existing piece of artwork on an image plane on its own layer to have it for reference so that no matter where you were looking you could always refer back to it and know what was seen. Adding an image plane was a similar approach to what 3D modellers or animators would do within Autodesk Maya and what 2D artist could do by opening up the reference file in either a separate image viewing program or on another canvas within Adobe Photoshop on a desktop. By ANIMVR seamlessly implementing the image and video importing functions and translating this step of the creation process into the VR medium, it effortlessly allowed for even more creative interpretation and creation by having the source material right in front of me while working. This was one of the many small features that helped me in understanding ANIMVR's place as a creation package and to know where it can be placed and belong within the production pipeline which in my opinion based on my research is where ever you want it to be, pre-vis or beyond.

It is also why game creation software like Epic Game’s Unreal Engine have tools built in for creators to use when directing their scenes that replicate machines like dolly cameras, tracks and cranes to capture their shots perfectly around their creations. Realistically there is no need for a crane model and camera device to be dropped in a scene in order for a user to move the camera the way they want to, it is there purely for the a user to understand how they function relative to how they do in the real world. However, if a story teller wanted more control of how the world would move alongside the characters or be able to build, design, direct, edit and produce the film all by themselves then software like ANIMVR that integrates VR can allow them to do so like not many other tools can. This approach inherently lends itself to appeal to animators in particular as the role/ job of one is to give motion to any scene which could include everything from the walls to the characters to even the cameras, giving them complete control when producing their scenes and ideally for other creators as well.

Figure 18 - NuBoyana 24, Filmmaking challenge

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Figure 19 - Camera controls/ meshes used in Unreal Engine for cinematic purposes.

Constraints & Technical strengths/ weaknesses While the whole process was looked at animation in depth, breaking it down and analysing it from a VR perspective, ANIMVR had its strengths and weaknesses in different areas but overall was a functioning software package that has great potential for any type of artist, not just animators. The key framing was kind of clunky, the limited brush type selection was annoying and the more complex the scenes became the more it would lag and slow down everything. Colour selection became difficult as you couldn’t go back in selection so no sampling, the lighting tools did not function properly because of the hardware used and the glow from the headset lights would become almost blinding overtime. However, ANIMVR does succeed at doing what it promises which is to create animated sequences with VR properly and can be exported for either video presentation or have the 3D meshes themselves work within Autodesk Maya. The frame per second can go from 6 to 60 easily, trails can be made to plan out the motions better which helped during pre-production and the workspace is easy to use once you get used to it. Beyond this, the environments proved to be the easiest to construct, directing was able to record and track user movement and the quality of the exports could be of professional standard. These elements combined helped me to get used to using it quickly and I would feel comfortable using it in the future myself in my own productions and pipeline because of its uniqueness and ability to let me get my idea nailed down immediately. Along with exploring outside of ANIMVR and seeing what else is being made for the platform, I see myself creating more work that is focused both on character animation and environment construction as these are where I found the work to flourish the most for me.

Using a VR headset almost exclusively for the creation of anything within ANIMVR, be it an animated short or a single scene, made the physical demand for using it apparent early on even in preproduction. Above all else though, it felt alien to have to work with new equipment that was primarily made for playing games, not for creating works of art. It felt like more appreciation was taken from the project for how its not others that don’t want VR to be used in the production pipeline, but it’s more that it is completely different from what they are used to using. When you are a professional artist working with a specific set of tools for too long it is necessary to stick to what you know to get your work done and to not experiment all the time. However, based on the 24

comments from the professionals interviewed and their more likeliness to try VR once the process became more streamlined and the hardware was less susceptible to breaking as they improve their designs in the future, studios and individuals could have an easier time picking it up and incorporating it into their pipelines. For now though it may be left to students and individuals to explore this medium further if it is to be taken more seriously in the future.

The functionality of ANIMVR made it easier to get used to overtime and could allow anyone to become familiar with their controls quickly. Its execution of taking 2D strokes and turning them into 3D elements within a virtual space is what helped to define its style as well, giving any kind of artist the chance to create their own style within the medium of VR by using what they know and adapting it to a new platform. An illustrator can take their pencil and use a computer and a copy of Adobe Photoshop instead to produce more or less the same result only in a different way and if a stop motion animator can jump into ANIMVR to produce the same results, there is only one difference which is the platform used to create it. Even when 3D animation was becoming a viable medium to produce for after the success of Pixar’s Toy Story it was feared that it would take over the industry and become the standard which did not happen. What has happened instead since then was a whole that the medium of 3D became a branch of its own off of the creative industry ‘tree’ and crosses into others just like painting, sculpting, animating and more can cover more than one platform. Now what is the standard is for artists to use 3D as a tool in their processes in creating their work either to their full potential or just as a stepping stone on what else they make. One artist may create an animated short entirely in 3D while another only uses grey blocks to generate complex cityscapes to draw highly detailed illustrations on. It may not have been the intention from the inception of 3D but as it got better to use overtime it became a viable alternative to work with for any purpose. So while many people like the idea of creating for VR but never do it, or to suggest that VR could not become a part of the process in animation at all is forgetting how advancements in technology have always helped to push the industry in a direction it never knew it could take.

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Reflective Conclusion and what to expect from virtual animation After studying and analysing the successes of new workflows and testing new VR hardware capabilities first hand and recording my results, the work produced has been based around the idea of whether or not VR animation toolkits have a place in my production pipeline for animation or otherwise and whether or not it can assist in expressing unique stories the same way individuals and studios have done for decades with 2D and 3D mediums. What I found while reading up on how to express a narrative in a short amount of time was that no matter how long or short I made it beforehand, it was going to be too long when exploring the VR medium for the purposes of the project. Learning how to lay out the story beats visually in storyboard form, finding out the methods in which to present the finished work effectively, designing characters and environments that complement each other and how to operate virtual cameras like a director would when telling a story all contributed to how I formulised my own approach method to ANIMVR. Pre-production began as a traditional task by drawing the narrative in a storyboard layout and creating character designs to adapt into the VR medium. This stage was taken to produce a more consistent creation by the end of production but since the overall direction changed completely by the end of it, I understood the value of planning an idea but more importantly being able to adapt to new circumstances and as new aspects to the software became apparent. Adapting VR for preproduction was a trivial task overall, but nothing compared to the actual production of the scenes themselves. From creating the worlds to adjusting their compositions just right, developing the stages for the project became the majority of the effort dedicated to it and produced the best and most colourful results overall. ANIMVR allowed for each environment stage to be controlled like a film set where the objects are placed accordingly and are controlled however the director sees fit in order to coincide with the story events. While this feature offers more control in the way a scene is used, restrictions rose their heads when the processing power within ANIMVR began to lag when lots of elements were present in a stage and became the only thing holding it back from being pushed further. This could be more connected to the computer hardware used during the research stage but if any creator wanted to use these tools for their own projects to enhance their ideas and the tools are available to them, they can. The only limitation for other would be their own existing hardware, which can be stretched further in capabilities if a bigger budget was behind a production.

The developers of the software packages that exist already on the internet are listening to the demand for more interactivity in the creative process and by developing these products that help ease animators, illustrators, designers or directors enhance their work methods for a new medium they can corner a market before it really begins to bloom. I went into this project to better understand the field of animation as a whole and to push my abilities as an animator, story teller and director. Each of these factors represents a different driving force behind the work that I produced and my own production pipeline which is to produce quality motion with believable weight, to engage the audience with a gripping narrative and control every digital aspect of the product as I can to produce my vision clearly. The animated short outlined within this document was what I intended to create as a final piece to represent the culmination of the best qualities that an animator can have but it turned out to change my perspective on how to approach any creative project from now on.

Thinking more rationally about the scale of the projects and to break them up into smaller more achievable pieces that look and feel better in the end will ultimately produce something far greater in the end, which in other words boils down to ‘quality over quantity’. I could have used a combination of ZBrush, Autodesk Maya, Adobe After Effects, Photoshop and Premiere Pro to create another project no one might have batted an eye at, but I think I would have lost my drive to create something unique if I tried to copy what others others have done before but by taking the alternative route and branching out into unexplored territory I have achieved pieces of artwork that 26

show an alternate side to my own skill set which I never had before. While VR toolkits for animation and set design have some way to go before they become the standard, if I come across any artist or creator trying their best to push their profession as far as possible I will have a deep respect for their efforts and will try to do the same with animation as I move forward with my own career.

Figure 20 - Chinese Landscape, Dadu Shin

Figure 21 – My ANIMVR recreation

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Word count:

6203 (excl. Abstract) 6577 (Inc. Abstract)

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