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User Story

Day of the Dead

Day of the Dead

Every time I put on the headset and jump into Quill, I cannot stop smiling. I’m having so much fun and feel so much more connected with every single character and asset I create now.


My name is Sam Luck and I am a VR Artist and Animator from Toronto, Canada. I’ve been working in Quill for over two years and I love having complete control in creating my own narratives. Quill has the power to allow creators like myself to create narratives from concept to final film/experience.

In 2017, I attended to the Creative Talent Network Animation Expo (CTNX), and the only panel I was interested in was “Designing in VR with Goro Fujita”. At his talk, Goro said these few words that changed everything, “I made a short film in VR.” The moment he said this, it lit a fire in my spirit to pursue this medium and tell animated narratives in VR.

After CTNX expo, I returned to Toronto and bought an Oculus Rift headset as well as a new PC on the Black Friday sale, and started creating pieces in VR.

This summer, Mi Concept + Design, a theme and water park design company where I work as a Concept Designer, tasked us to create our own illustrations and concept designs for potential theme park attractions. I was inspired to pitch concept art for an interactive VR dark ride experience. After researching various theme parks and attractions, I realized that a ride for “Day of the Dead” has never been made before so I dived into research. The project was called “Day of the Dead - A VR Dark Ride Experience”.

Part 1: Concept and Ideation in Photoshop

I started by creating a 2D illustration and used some photo manipulation to match it with the style of Mi Concept + Design. I was happy it evoked the colours and atmosphere I wanted but it was not the complete space I envisioned because I wanted to push this piece further with my newfound skills of world-building in VR with Quill.

concept

Part 2: Mocking up in Sketchup

Before I jumped into Quill, I wanted to create a grey-box model in Sketchup to set the height and distance of the major assets within the scene and position them correctly along a fairly accurate grid. When you are designing for theme parks, everything you design should always be related to the proportions of the rider as the audience. I wanted to make sure the room was always relating to the height of a person in both walking through the queue and the ride carriage.

sketch

Part 3: Building the Scene in VR with Quill

This is where I spent the most time and had the most fun. I really wanted to push what Quill could do for the amount of details I could add into a scene. I had done detailed pieces in the past, but I really wanted to have a lot of detail in the graves and offerings (ofrenda) on the graves.


Part 4: Lighting and Rendering in Blender

One of my co-workers, Adam Homonylo at Mi Concept + Design showed me beta version of Blender 2.8 and its new real-time renderer, Evee, so I decided to bring the highly detailed static model from Quill into Blender and did all the lighting in Blender.

I remember the day I placed in all the lighting and used Evee for the first time. I had never felt so excited about a piece of work I’ve done in my life. I was speechless. My 3D vision I had imagined in my head had truly come to life and become more than I could have imagined.


Part 5: Blender to Photoshop Painting and Submitting it to the Concept Art Awards

Around this time LightBox expo had announced they were taking submissions for the Concept Art Awards. I felt inspired to submit the first VR piece to the awards under the “Independent Art - Environment Concept Art Submission” category. Here is my submission, 90% drawn in Quill, 10% post production work with lighting in Blender, and people drawn in Photoshop.

sketch

Part 6: Animation in VR with Quill

Once the submission was finished, I wanted to animate this scene to bring it to life. Here are some of my small tips about animating with the Grab and Colorize tool in Quill:

One major challenge was keeping the file organized. Often, I had trouble finding objects in various layers even though I organized it fairly well. If I were to go back through the process again, I would better organize my layers and rename them to remember specifically their contents, instead of going through every layer to find the right object. Keep those layers organized!

When I design or animate in 2D, I imagine the scene in my head in 3D. Often, 2D concept is not quite what I had imagined. With Quill however, I can build a scene directly 3D and still express my work with a whimsical tone, like I do in 2D. Quill enables me to concept and animate quicker than I could have ever imagined!

For my next project, I’ll be exploring narrative storytelling. I am currently in development of a short VR film “Korner” that will be made in Quill. You can check out the progress here.

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The Quill App is No Longer Available

Please note that as of 10/18/2021, the Oculus Quill application is no longer available for download and will not be supported or updated by Oculus. Quill has returned to its original roots under the ownership of founder Inigo Quilez and his company Smoothstep.

Please visit Quill by Smoothstep’s website at Quill.art to learn more about Quill by Smoothstep, which is now available in the Oculus Store.

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