Research: Potentials & Challenges - Virtual Reality

Virtual Reality is a revolutionary technology being developed that offers a more interactive way of telling stories. It is a platform of creating new and convincing content for the gaming industry or perhaps a new form of immersive entertainment.

My first experience of VR is when I was in Manchester Animation Festival, and I think that I can see the potential of VR since it is an interesting medium that focus on immersion into the entertainment different to what the current gaming technology offers. I played BlueZoo's HooDoo simulation which is made based on the idea pitched by Catherine Salkeld, who is a junior storyboard artist at that time. The audience follows the story of a tourist cat named Claw embarking on a journey to Tibet. It is set in a Hoodoo as the title suggests.

As I played Hoo Doo, I noticed that there are more things to be considered in making VR entertainment as compared to making film animation, especially when it concerns with the choreography for a 360 degrees environment. During the BlueZoo masterclass, they identified the challenges for the animators to think about sectioning the stage in a theatrical manner and also the cinematography from the audience's point of view simultaneously. Having things animated all over the place will confuse the viewers, so the world should be designed to attract the audience's senses so that they won't miss the important segment of the narrative.

Blue Zoo Hoo Doo