This past week I went to CTNX (Creative Talent Network Expo) in Burbank, California. It was filled with artists and animators and other professionals in the animation industry. I learned so much and visited as many panels as I could throughout the week and ended up with roughly 20-25 pages of notes on everything, along with a new possible career focus. There was a panel on VR Storytelling by Goro Fujita, the best way to tell stories in VR, and a program that is best for animators to use to tell stories. I learned so much there and it even made me rethink using Unity since it involves so much programming, as opposed to Quill, which will let me focus more on the art and story especially since I am not used to coding. Afterward, I got to talk to Goro to learn more about storytelling in VR and how Quill could be useful for me. He told everyone his own “recipe” for the best way to tell stories in VR and how to guide the user through the experience. He also reminded me that it will never be perfect since sometimes when you think a visual or audio cue will guide a person, they will do the opposite of what you want. That is why voice-overs are so important to help them navigate in the story.
I spoke with another professional in the industry and got some advice about my thesis where if coding isn’t my thing, I can always have the camera be controlled by the player and have the environment change as the story moves on rather than force the player to walk around and interact with things. This could also avoid any issues with it taking too long if the user gets lost from everything going on at the showcase. It would also help with saving time to focus on the story rather than spend most of my time struggling with the coding. She noticed the project was pretty ambitious for the time we have and told me to do as much as I could to get the idea across and create it to its full potential later on. She also provided me the name of someone else she knows who specializes in VR who I can reach out to for some advice and resources. Overall, many seem interested in my general idea to tell a story in VR, someone said it is a future in animation and storytelling since it is a new media and new way to do so and all there is left to do at this point is to perfect it and keep practicing with it. I plan to research Quill more to see if I can either use it instead of Unity or even just use it to create the scenes to later add in Unity. I tried the program at CTNX, and it came so naturally to me that I really would like to incorporate it somehow. It was perfect for me to create environments. I’ll have to get other opinions. I’ve met so many wonderful people and professionals who helped me a lot with advice about my personal career goals and with my thesis.
